“Before I was born Japan and China were in a dispute. China wanted Japan to forgive them so in return they gave them cigarettes. The Japanese did not trust the Chinese and they tested the cigarettes which they found had poison in them. In return we cut off their heads.”
This was a very vague story that she told me when I was about five and I was not exactly sure what her reasoning was behind her telling me it but from then on I looked at China differently. Because I was a little naive girl I thought that if I had to be Japanese and embrace my culture I would have to dislike the Chinese. My grandmother also said that her school taught them how to tell the difference between a Japanese person, a Chinese person, and a Korean person. She also taught me how to tell the difference between the races. My grandmother told me that this was important in her time because they were scared of the different races coming into their country to spy on them. In many cultures traditions are passed down through the generations. Some regarding recipes, some stories, and others practices. This is a tradition that my grandmother and some of her generation thought was important to pass down. She was brought up like this and went through her whole life having resentment towards the Chinese although in retrospect she never knew someone with Chinese heritage personally. Some traditions should not be passed down and this is one of them. Many of my friends are from China and most of them do not understand why Japan and China are in conflict. Just from looking at my grandmother and Japan, Japan thinks that they are the superior of the Asian race.

“To most Chinese, the Japanese are “devils,” and the hatred reaches far into the past — from China’s humiliating loss in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 to World War II-era atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. Anti-Japanese anger has both ethical and visceral dimensions, sustaining it unlike other more fleeting forms of nationalism.”
-New York Times History seems to be repeating itself, the same inability to agree still exists. The story of the dispute over territory sounds all too familiar. The distrust of China and Japan, the fight between power, and an untold story of the focus of these islands to take the attention away from the elections in China. China and Japan are not able to learn from what has happened in the past. Neither side is going to let go of the struggle, but progress can not be made if they can not look toward the future instead of the past. Both are powerful countries and if they gave each other some support their economies would grow. Although China and Japan have a history of fighting they can make new history by mending their relations.