MCLC: war criminals video game

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: war criminals video game
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Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (2/27/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/videogame-uses-japanese-war-
criminals-as-targets/

Video Game Uses Japanese War Criminals as Targets
By BREE FENG

An official Chinese news portal unveiled an online game
<http://t.people.com.cn/g/daguizi> on Thursday that allows users to shoot
Japanese war criminals, in a move that is likely to please Chinese
nationalists but do little to ease tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

The move came the same day that China’s top legislative body, the Standing
Committee of the National People’s Congress, ratified two new national
days: Sept. 3 to mark Japan’s defeat in World War II and Dec. 13 to
commemorate the victims of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, when the Japanese
military went on a deadly six-week rampage in the city.

The game launched by People’s Daily Online Weibo, a microblog affiliated
with the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, is provocatively titled
Shoot the Devils. In China, “Japanese devil” is a common slur. The game
also features an offensive caricature of a Japanese soldier.

The point-and-shoot game allows users to fire a handgun at one of 14
Japanese convicted as Class A war criminals after the war, to the
accompaniment of a popular Chinese military tune. The 14 are the same men
now honored at the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, as the game reminds users as
they choose their target. The selection screen includes biographies of
each one, describing their roles in the war.

The game’s creators said
<http://game.people.com.cn/n/2014/0227/c40130-24484604.html their purpose
was to “expose the war crimes of the Japanese invaders” and allow players
to “forever remember history” through a popular game form. A
representative of People’s Daily Online Weibo declined to comment when
reached by telephone. The website set up a similar game in January in
which the targets are “corrupt officials.”

The game comes at a time when tensions between China and Japan, which have
the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, are running high,
exacerbated by colliding perceptions of history. China often accuses Japan
of not showing enough contrition for its wartime past and reacted angrily
last December when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan visited the Yasukuni
Shrine, which commemorates 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including the 14
Class A war criminals.

The two countries are also embroiled in a territorial dispute over a group
of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, called the Diaoyu by Beijing
and the Senkaku by Tokyo.

Regional tensions mounted last November after Beijing declared an air
defense identification zone in the East China Sea, which both Japan and
its ally the United States have refused to recognize. Under the rules
listed by China, any aircraft entering the zone must report its flight
plan to the Chinese authorities and follow their instructions.

Beijing has not ruled out establishing a similar zone in the South China
Sea, where its territorial claims overlap with those of several Southeast
Asian countries.

During a regular monthly news briefing on Thursday, a Chinese Defense
Ministry spokesman, Yang Yujun, defended
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/27/c_133147972.htm>
China’s right to establish such zones but said that whether it would do so
in the South China Sea would depend on the “extent of threat.” He accused
“right-wing forces in Japan” of “again and again hyping up news” that
China had immediate plans for an air defense identification zone in that
region.

Gu Jinglu contributed research.