A Country of No Significance? Interpreting The Japan Times's Inattentive Approach to Chinese Affairs in 1997

Abstract

This article seeks to explain why The Japan Times takes a backseat approach to events in China. Specifically, the Japanese English‐language newspaper demonstrated a lack of sensitivity when dealing with events that took place in China during 1997. The Japan Times's attitude is tantamount to actualizing a familiar identity strategy of withdrawal. For modern Japanese thinkers, such as Nishida Kitaro, Takeuchi Yoshimi, and Mizoguchi Yuzo, the withdrawal is a common strategy when dealing with the issue of universality. This is a surprising observation, given these scholars' vast differences when narrating Japanese identities. Accordingly, China has defined the condition from which withdrawal seems imperative for Japan to fulfill modernity. The Japan Times's apparent inattention to China may serve as the contemporary example of “withdrawing for universality” and poses different narrators against one another to show the indecisive condition The Japan Times has created for all of them.