A BESTSELLING Japanese comic book that demands a more assertive attitude to Asian neighbours has been condemned by South Korea as “dangerous”.
The controversial manga (comic) has sold more than 360,000 copies in three months, and spawned a new genre of fiercely polemical comics lamenting Japan’s “weakness” in dealing with regional disputes.
KenKanRyu (Hating the Korean Boom) has been joined on the shelves of Japan’s mainstream bookstores by Chugoku Nyumon (Introducing China) and Yasukuni Shrine. All three appear to offer an easily accessible account of historical and current affairs, but the cartoonists quickly lurch into inflammatory issues.
Yasukuni Shrine lashes out at the “sickness” of a Japanese public that would succumb to Chinese and South Korean pressure by dismantling the monument which honours war criminals with the rest of the war dead.
Chugoku Nyumon, subtitled A study of our cruel neighbour, questions the extent of the Nanjing Massacre and catalogues a long series of human rights abuses in China, including allegations of past cannibalism.
KenKanRyu opens with the hero beside the deathbead of his grandfather, a war veteran. The old man’s dying words are “we were only trying to help Korea” — a reference to Japan’s occupation of the peninsula in the early 20th century.
A South Korean Embassy spokesman said that KenKanRyu contained numerous factual errors and that it would be dangerous if Japanese readers treated the comics as an accurate view of the real world.
