As this column went to press, the Japanese media had their collective attention focused on a potential hot-spot in the disputed South China Sea, where the destroyer USS Lassen, in a modern-day show of "gunboat diplomacy," took an in-your-face drive-by (or sail-by if you prefer) past Chinese encamped on newly constructed man-made islands.
The media's schadenfreude over China's apparent loss of face is palpable, and understandable considering the Japanese government's displeasure with UNESCO's having accepted, on Oct. 9, materials from China related to the 1937 Nanking Massacre for its Memory of the World register.
Commercial TV's "Mr. Wizard," Akira Ikegami, in his column in Shukan Bunshun (Oct. 29), discussed Nanking (which is now known as Nanjing). Over a period of six weeks, Ikegami maintains, marauding Japanese soldiers could not have possibly slain 300,000 people — as claimed by the Chinese government — because that comes to 7,000 per day and "it's not possible to dispose of such a large number of bodies."