Review of interesting book Jews in the Japanese Mind in religious journal First Things.
Japan (which is, let's be very very clear, not Taiwan) is complicated:
Their exposure to Western anti-Jewish stereotypes notwithstanding, a number of turn-of-the-century Japanese converts were determined to forge a Christianity with a uniquely Japanese identity, and promulgated a uniquely daft form of philo-Semitism. In extravagant interpretations of Scripture and archeological evidence, these clergymen found confirmation of their "millennial fantasy" that the Jews and the Japanese were a fraternal "holy people" with a shared mission to usher in Christ's second coming. (Several present-day quasi-Christian sects in Japan echo this doctrine.) On an entirely different level, historical developments, particularly financier Jacob Schiff's fervent fundraising on behalf of Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, contributed to a fascination with what seemed to be the Jews' astounding business talents and powerful worldwide networks.
Virulent anti-Semitism regained its momentum, however, in a vicious xenophobic form with the translation and dissemination of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Japanese army officers after World War I. The grotesque appeal of this book has never waned in Japan, and for the last ten years variations on its themes have topped Japanese best-seller lists. As Goodman and Miyazawa point out, early editions of The Protocols had a phenomenal effect on vast segments of Japan's intelligentsia: on the one hand, they stoked the paranoia of ultranationalist right-wingers; and, perhaps more ominously for the fate of pluralism and freedom of conscience in pre-World War II Japan, the book transformed many fervent Marxist activists and philo-Semitic Christian thinkers into rabid anti-Semites and added them to the ranks of the right-wingers.
Goodman and Miyazawa agree that "sheer political cynicism" underlay Imperial Japan's use of this groundswell of anti-Semitism as its armies bid for mastery of Asia. As far as the Japanese government was concerned, "The real significance of anti-Semitism . . . was its usefulness in formulating and maintaining Japanese nationalist ideology and not in facilitating the persecution of Jews." By no means were Japan's leaders prosecuting the war to satisfy any "homicidal hatred" of the Jews, regardless of the Nazi-inspired propaganda they actively employed. On the contrary, the Japanese made strenuous efforts to coax Jews in Asia into joining the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere as willing subjects.
So, wacky pro- and anti-Semitism linked to war propaganda and religious missionaries.
Now, let me look around for China.
The comments on this blog post on an antisemitic article in a Chinese magazine seem to follow the same pattern as the Japanese stuff above -- weird ideas imported from Christian missionaries at the turn of the century (and there were plenty of those), then twisted marginally during the world wars and by economic uncertainty.
The fact that Karl Marx was a Jew is probably not a selling point in virulently anti-Communist Taiwan.
Also interesting are the points that the Chinese commenters make that the internet is one factor that would allow ideas like these (anti-semitic memes) to spread rapidly in a largely, um, non-inoculated population. |
