How do the Japanese see the Chinese calling them “little Japan”?

日本人如何看待中国人称他们为“小日本”？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Simon Meri

The Japanese in general aren’t aware of this expression in Chinese. But the Chinese in general are aware of(with an exaggeration of the narrative) the derogatory terms for Chinese. Hence if the Japanese should react to it, many options are out there and every one of them is an effective one to trigger the Chinese. Japanese should skip the part of history of imperial Japan V.S China, especially the part of the Nanking incident. There’s no need to know that. The Chinese can entertain this chapter of history on their own and you can have fun with their reactions.

日本人一般都不知道这个说法，但中国人普遍都知道这个贬义词。所以，如果日本人对此做出反应，不管是什么反应，都会让中国人激愤不已。日本人应该跳过日本帝国和中国的战争。你们没必要知道这些。中国人可以自己纪念这段历史，你也可以在他们的反应中寻找乐趣。

A Fluffy Dog

Eh. I don’t think they see the Chinese calling them 小日本 because that was like a WW2 thing and no one really says that anymore.

嗯。我觉得他们没听过中国人叫他们小日本，因为那已经是二战的事情，现在真的没人这么说了。

Takeru Iseya

Frankly speaking, I don’t think anybody cares. I have never met any Japanese who cares.

It is because in Japanese the character for little “小” does not have a derogatory meaning. In other words, no Japanese would know “小日本” is a derogatory term until some Chinese person tell them. And even after they tell them, it does not look like a derogatory term to the Japanese.

To the Japanese, it just neutrally means Japan is geologically smaller than China.

老实说我觉得没有人会在乎这个。我就没见过哪个日本人在乎过。

因为在日语中，“小”这个字并不带贬义。换句话说，没有哪个日本人会知道“小日本”是一个贬义词，除非中国人告诉他们。但即便如此，这个词对日本人来说也不像一个贬义词。

对日本人来说，这只是在说日本的国土面积比中国小而已。

Hara Thomas

To be honest, I don’t get why Chinese people have been sticking to that word this long, probably for decades, or even centuries?

In Japanese language, in general the kanji 小 doesn’t carry such a derogatory nuance. It just implies “small” in an utterly objective way. (While 大, “big”, may sound a bit flattering indeed, but if you say 大日本 to us we may chuckle as it sounds almost comical, or somewhat ominous even for us because of some historical fact.)

说实话，我不明白为什么中国人这么长时间了还在说这个词，可能得有几十年，甚至几个世纪了？

在日语中，一般来说，汉字“小”是不含贬义的，它只是客观地表示“小”(不过“大”会略微带点夸赞的意味，如果你跟我们说大日本，我们可能会笑，因为这听起来挺滑稽的，或者出于某些历史事件，这对我们来说不太吉利。)

And therefore if we see a Chinese person saying 小日本(シャオイーベン), we’d be like

”Yeah, our archipelago is indeed smaller than your continent is, just like the UK is smaller than Russia is, and is it that important? And in the first place isn’t China one of the largest countries in the world? It’s not we are small. It’s you that is big.”

And furthermore, in Japanese culture being small does not necessarily mean it’s weak and worthless. It’s space efficient and sometimes adorable which is our strong point.

所以，如果我们听到中国人说小日本，我们的感受是：“没错，我们的群岛确实比你们的大陆小，就像英国比俄罗斯小一样，但这重要吗？毕竟中国就是世界上最大的国家之一呀！不是我们太小，而是你们太大了。”

此外，在日本文化中，小并非就意味着弱小、一文不值。小的东西节省空间，还很可爱，这可是我们的强项。

Even though we’re using the same characters commonly between our languages, sometimes these miscommunications take places in a funny way. In the same way a Chinese guy bursts into laughter when seeing the name of Japanese city 我孫子 while we’re like “Eh… doesn’t that simply mean ‘The place we have lived in for three generations’ ?”

尽管我们两国的语言使用了相同的汉字，但有时会导致有趣的误会。同样的，当一个中国人看到“我孫子”这个日本城市名时，他会突然爆笑，但我们却觉得莫名其妙：嗯……“我孫子”的意思不就是“我们生活了三代的地方”吗？有什么好笑的？

Toshiyuki Shimono

My feeling when I hear 小日本?? Not a clear answer here. I met such things many times when I visited Dalian, Taiwan, Singapore and so on.

When I saw each of them, I vividly remember them and begin to try making no trouble with him/her by knowing his/her profile as much as possible, then disguise myself a friendly person as much as possible because I know a Japanese can be an easy target from nationalists of the other Asian countries, and then begin to communicate.

我听到“小日本”这个词的感受？？这些回答都没说清楚。我在大连、台湾省、新加坡等地遇到过很多次。

我见他们每个人的时候，我都牢牢记清，并尽可能多地了解他/她的个人资料，不麻烦他/她，然后尽可能地让自己表现得很友好，因为我知道日本人可能是亚洲其他国家民族主义者的公敌。

Tony Tan

I think that an endearing address. It's like calling your own bro.

我觉得这是个可爱的称呼，就像给自己的兄弟打电话一样。

Emanuel Leung

Related

Do your Chinese grandparents hate Japanese people or Japan?

My grandparents lived through the war, though were very fortunate in that they never had to live under Japanese domination personally (they ran away to western China)

My dad’s mom (dad’s dad passed away when I was 1 so i never knew him) was no fan of Japan. She recalled being so joyful when news came that the Americans had joined the war, and she remembered being really happy when the atomic bombs were dropped. So she clearly didn’t like Japan in the war years.

你的中国祖父母憎恨日本人或日本吗？

我的祖父母经历过战争，但他们非常幸运，从未生活在日本的黑暗统治下(他们逃到了中国西部)

我的奶奶(我爷爷在我1岁的时候就去世了，所以我不认识他)不喜欢日本。她记得美国人参战的消息传来时，她有多高兴。她还记得美国在日本投下原子弹时，她真的很高兴。所以她不喜欢战争年代的日本。

However, years later, she told me of a dream that she dreamt she was back in Sengoku era Japan (not WW2 Japan, literally like Samurai Japan) and saw the castle and how depressing it was and how the Samurai would fight and die against each other. Then when she travelled to Japan on tour in the 1970s or something I guess she went to Himeji castle and was like “this is it! This was where I went in my dream!” and it was kind of remarkable.

She never liked sushi and spit it out when we took her to eat it one time LOL

不过多年后，她跟我说了她的一个梦，她梦见自己回到了战国时代的日本(不是二战时期，是日本武士时代)，看到了城堡，看到了武士们如何搏斗厮杀。她在20世纪70年代去日本巡演时，我估计她去了姬路，她很吃惊：“就是这里！我梦里来过这儿！”太神奇了。

她从来都不喜欢寿司，有一次我们带她去吃寿司，她把寿司吐了出来，哈哈。

During the War years, without question, the Japanese were the enemy. However, my grandmother was lucky in that she never personally encountered the Japanese army, who never took Kunming (where my grandparents escaped to). After the war, she didn’t think much about them and in fact remembered her trip there in the 1970s fondly. And she had that weird dream, so I dunno. :P

在战争年代，日本人毫无疑问就是敌人。不过我的祖母很幸运，她没有遇到过日军，日军也从未占领过昆明（我的祖父母逃到了昆明）。战争结束后，她也很少想到日本人，事实上，她对20世纪70年代的日本之旅印象不错。她还做过那个神奇的梦，所以我也说不清。

My mom’s dad was a KMT soldier. As such, the Japanese were the enemy. Somehow though again he was lucky and never saw frontline combat, though he was in the military. He was a trainer who specialized in grenades, apparently. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he didn’t much like Japan after the war either but we had other things to talk about. He wasn’t a hateful guy I’m sure if he saw a Japanese tourist in Hong Kong after the war he would have been nice to them because he was a nice man overall.

我外公是一名国 民党军人。所以日本人就是敌人。他也是很幸运的，虽然身在部队，但从未上前线打过仗。他是个专门研究手榴弹的教练。但我知道，他对战后的日本也没有好感。他不是一个心怀仇恨的人，我敢肯定，如果战后他在香港看到日本游客，他也会对他们很和善，因为他就是个好人。

Actually it was my dad who disliked Japan more than any of my grandparents did. Dad is just very patriotic to China, which is fine, and it is what it is. He still likes Sushi though, oddly and he doesn’t hate Japan a priori, just its WW2 actions. We both like talking about the Sengoku Jidai and Samurai era, for instance, and our family being christian he talks about the Christian samurai during that era and things.

其实，和我的祖父母相比，我父亲要更讨厌日本一些。我爸爸非常爱国，这是好事，事实就是如此。不过他还挺喜欢寿司，奇怪的是，他并非天生就讨厌日本，只是讨厌日本在二战中的行为。比如说，我们都喜欢谈论战国时代和武士时代，我们家是基督徒，他谈到了那个时代的基督教武士。

I can only speak of my own Chinese grandparents and parents, who never directly experienced the atrocities of the Japanese army. I’m sure if they did they would think differently.

我只能说，我的中国祖父母和父母没有亲身经历过日军的暴 行。我相信如果他们经历过，想法肯定就会有所不同。

Andy Matsumoto

Words like “little Japan” or “little Japanese devils” sound like old Chinese movies. It gives me an impression that Chinese population is surely aging.

“小日本”或“小日本鬼子”这样的词听起来就是中国老电影的味道。这让我感觉中国人口确实正走向老龄化。

Nodashi

Related

How do the Japanese people view China?

I think (only think) most of the Japanese people see Chinese people negatively. One of the reasons of this is because the mass media here only report negative news about China. There are a whole bunch of TV shows here introducing trips to foreign countries but they don’t include China. This sounds strange but true. I think there must be some sort of rules to exclude them or report negative info within Japan’s media companies. I would want to see such TV shows as I would like to visit China one day but none exsted as far as I can recall. Instead, TV news report how rude Chinese tourists are and so and so. In a way, people here have very little info about China. You need to search by yourself if you want to know more information.

日本民众如何看待中国？

我认为大多数日本人对中国人是持负面看法的。其中一个原因是，日本媒体只报道有关中国的负面新闻。日本有太多介绍国外旅行的电视节目了，但从不介绍中国。虽然这听起来很奇怪，但真的是事实。我认为日本媒体行业肯定有某种行规来剔除中国并报道负面信息。我计划去中国旅游前，很想找找有关中国的电视节目，但在我的记忆中是完全找不到的。相反，电视新闻总是报道中国游客有多粗鲁多不堪。在某种程度上，日本人对中国知之甚少。如果你想知道更多的信息，就必须自己动手找。

There was a very interesting occurrence the other day. I love Chinese music played with Chinese instruments. I told one of my friends about my favorite Chinese musician (actually he is a Taiwanese to be precise but still he is a Chinese). She was instantly hooked and told me it totally changed her view on Chinese people. See? People here have only limited information and those are mostly in the negative side. But once they see the good/positive side, they will love China. There are a huge number of good things in China - food, music, nature, philosophy, martial arts and the great history. And now they are starting to lead the high tech industries. And most of all, they have the 4000 years of the past that we can dig into.

前几天发生了一件非常有趣的事。我喜欢中国乐器演奏的中国民乐。我跟一个朋友谈及我最喜欢的中国音乐家（确切地说他是中国台湾人，但他也是中国人）。她立刻就被吸引了，跟我说这完全颠覆了她对中国人的看法。由此可知，日本人对中国并不了解，知道的还多是负面新闻。但只要他们发现中国好的一面，积极的一面，他们就会爱上中国。中国的好东西太多了——美食、音乐、自然、哲学、武术和伟大的历史。现在他们甚至开始引领高科技产业的发展。而且最重要的是，他们拥有可以深入探究的4000年的历史。

Kayak

Related

If a non-Chinese in China says that Chinese and Japanese people are 100% the same in every way, would Chinese people be very upset considering the two countries' histories with each other?

I think people will be upset not because of the historical issues between the two countries, just because this person is so stupid. Saying Chinese and Japanese are 100% the same, just as ignorant as saying German and British are the same or saying Chinese and Native Americans are the same.

鉴于中日之间的历史，如果在华外国人说中国人和日本人在各方面都完全一样，中国人会生气吗？

我觉得中国人是会生气的，倒不是因为两国之间的历史问题，而是因为说这话的人实在太蠢了。说中国人和日本人完全一样，就好比说德国人和英国人完全一样，或者说中国人和美国土著完全一样，实在是太无知了。