This chapter exposes the fabricated origins of Han Chinese history, the violent traditions embedded in modern Chinese political culture, and the systematic use of intimidation and propaganda as tools of statecraft.
Through a dialogue between veteran journalist Masayuki Takayama and China specialist Katsuo Hiizumi, the text dismantles long-held Japanese illusions surrounding China’s moral legitimacy. It examines falsified ancient history, the brutal realities of the Sino-Japanese conflicts, and the long-standing pattern of disinformation—from the Jinan Incident to manipulated Unit 731 imagery.
The chapter concludes by arguing that China views diplomacy as coercion rather than negotiation, and asserts that Japan must confront Beijing not through idealism or appeasement, but through sober realism, strategic restraint (taoguang yanghui in reverse), and firm national resolve.

Emerging from the Haze: The Han People

Takayama:
The Japanese have continued to harbor illusions about China.
Even Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian is highly esteemed in Japan, but more than half of it is pure fabrication.
When Sima Qian looked back two thousand years into Chinese history, he realized that the Han people were nothing more than slaves.
That truth was inconvenient, so he first invented the imaginary Han ethnic state called “Xia” and began his history from there.

Hiizumi:
And Japanese scholars have been conducting Chinese studies based on that falsified history.
It is truly terrifying.
On the other hand, some American scholars argue that “it is impossible to determine where the Han people originally came from.”
They describe the Han as having “emerged from the prehistoric haze of the loess plateau in northwestern China” (Lloyd E. Eastman, Chinese Society, Heibonsha, 1994).
That interpretation is the most accurate.

Takayama:
They claim the Central Plains as their birthplace, don’t they?

Hiizumi:
They insist, “This is our homeland,” yet there is not a single piece of solid proof.

Takayama:
Former Ambassador to Ukraine, Masubuchi Mutsuo, quotes Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s The Smile of the Gods, saying that the Japanese possess the power to “transform and remake.”
Christianity, anything at all, becomes Japanized—such is Japan’s assimilative strength.
By contrast, the Chinese seem to be the exact opposite.
They lie without restraint and devour every form of wealth.
This mentality is precisely what I earlier called a “slave mentality.”
Many peoples—Manchurians, Uyghurs, and others—entered China, yet none tried to adapt to that Chinese mentality.
Only those who became accustomed to that mentality remained as Han.
That is the reality.

Hiizumi:
Which is why countries all over the world have been manipulated by China.
Take Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of taoguang yanghui—“hide one’s capabilities and bide one’s time.”
The United States and the entire Western world were completely deceived by it.
Yet, this very strategy is precisely what Japanese diplomacy now requires.
It should be applied not only to China, but also to South and North Korea, and even to the United States.

Takayama:
But even including Ambassador Tarumi from earlier discussion, the level of Japan’s diplomats is simply too low.
Those who aim for posts in China start by studying the Chinese language.
By doing so, more than half of them end up being thoroughly染められる—absorbed into the Chinese way of thinking.

Hiizumi:
For more than a century, Japan has admired the Chinese, and yet has continued to misunderstand them.

Takayama:
Even in the Sino-Japanese War, after being subjected to countless atrocities by the Chinese, once the war ended, Japan simply forgot them all.
The Japanese army restored 780 wounded prisoners of war to health and returned them through prisoner exchange.
But the Japanese captured by the Qing forces were mutilated—arms and legs severed, eyeballs gouged out, bodies ripped apart—and their corpses were displayed under the eaves of buildings.
That was the kind of enemy they were.

Hiizumi:
The Japanese must once again grasp the true image of the Chinese as they actually are.

Takayama:
In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek’s forces attacked Japanese residents in Jinan, Shandong Province, looted their homes, and massacred sixteen people.
One 24-year-old woman was raped, her upper body flayed alive, her breasts cut off, and a rod thrust into her genitals before she was murdered.
Because the killing was so brutal, the Japanese side prohibited newspapers from publishing it.
After the war, however, China exploited that secrecy and presented the photographs in school textbooks as images of the Japanese Army’s “Unit 731” vivisecting Chinese women alive, using them as propaganda to incite hatred against Japan.
This is a people utterly devoid of morality.
Yet in Japan, unfounded theories of “atonement toward China” have spread unchecked, and under a diplomatic policy of “avoiding trouble at all costs,” these vicious fabrications were never challenged.
Japan obediently allowed the lies to prevail.
And what happens when one does challenge them?
When Prime Minister Takaichi merely suggested the possibility of a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan, China’s Consul-General in Osaka, Xue Jian, hurled back threats such as “I will slash that filthy head (the Prime Minister’s)” and “China can punish Japan militarily at any time under the UN’s Enemy State Clauses, which Japan has completely forgotten.”
To the Chinese, diplomacy is nothing but intimidation.

As Professor Hiizumi suggests, perhaps it is indeed best to confront such a people with a strategy of taoguang yanghui.
Yet, one might also hope that Prime Minister Takaichi, with an even more shrewd diplomacy, could outmaneuver China and expose its true nature.
That is my expectation.