Japan-China relations "in crisis," and sentiment toward China

This chapter uses public opinion survey data to examine the ebb and flow of relations between China and Japan in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It finds that events do not have an identifiable influence on any specific social group or respondents with specific attributes, other than males and those who cite a sense of pride in being Japanese. At the same time, the worsening relations seems to be perceived fairly uniformly across social groups and, despite improvements in actual relations at the political level, negative sentiment toward China among Japanese citizens tends to linger rather than wane. The chapter concludes that negative perceptions of China look to persist and deepen.