The story below is originally published on Mainichi Daily News by Mainichi Shinbun (http://mdn.mainichi.jp). |
They admitted inventing its kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original gossip magazine. |
In fact, this is far from the general Japanese' behavior or sense of worth. |
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Chinese lathered up over Liu Longnian's lewd lessons in lusty lingo 2008,3,29
Shukan Shincho 4/3 By Masuo Kamiyama
"Wo xiang yongbao ni" (I want to hug you). "Hao shufu a" (It feels great).
The above are certainly useful phrases in any language.
But as Shukan Shincho (4/3) reports, the 239-page Chinese-language phrase book by Liu Longnian, titled "Otoko to Onna no Kaiwa-shu" (Selected Conversations between Men and Women, publ. Natsume-sha, 1,365 yen) has already unleashed a deluge of disapproval by fellow Chinese, who see it as nothing more than a seduction manual.
At first glance, it may very well seem just that.
Some other examples, which are written in simplified Chinese "kanji" (ideographs) and "hanyu pinyin" (romanization) -- plus a Japanese "katakana" pronunciation guide -- include "Luozhe wo" (Hold me close), "Wen wo" (Kiss me); "Ganjue hao ma?" (Does it feel good?); "Wo bu xing le, kuai chu lai le" (I can't hold back any longer, I'm coming); and "Zai dengdeng, bie na me kuai" (Hold on, not so soon).
Many Chinese who have learned of the book's existence became so incensed they were moved to post acerbic remarks on the Internet.
"This book is to help Chinese women improve their Japanese so they can work (as prostitutes) in Japan," one mutters.
And this: "For the rest of my life I will hope and pray that 500,000 Japanese women will be forcibly taken to China and made to work as prostitutes.
The first 200,000 should go to northeastern China, and after that, the next 150,000 should go to the city of Nanjing."
That's a pretty strong reaction for a mere book, sighs Shukan Shincho.
"Before, we issued various Chinese-language texts," says an unnamed editor at Natsume-sha, the book's publisher.
"But readers were requesting more practical conversation guides that helped men converse with women.
"Also recently, many Chinese women are coming to Japan, and some take jobs working in bars and so on. The book was also aimed at facilitating their work."
Actually, the magazine explains, Liu's book goes well beyond the function of a one night stand phrasebook for hookers and their johns.
Its contents run the full gamut of relationships, starting from the first meeting to going out on dates, proposing marriage, the wedding ceremony, pregnancy and child-bearing.
But response by Chinese has nonetheless been overwhelmingly negative, and a continuous stream of visceral reactions keep popping up on web sites.
"Down with Japan!" ranted another one. "Let's wipe out those little Japanese and annex their islands as a province of China."
"These kind of anti-Japanese flame messages on the web are nothing new," shrugs a Japanese journalist based in China. "Anything that serves to annoy or agitate people is enough to generate angry outbursts.
"In the 2005 film 'Memoirs of a Geisha' (titled 'Sayuri" for distribution in Japan), rumors flew that Japanese actor Koji Yakusho engaged in a sex scene with Chinese actress Zhang Zhiyi," the reporter continues.
"This was viewed as a national insult and generated a deluge of criticism.
"Anyway that film was not shown in China. Because of that country's strict one-child policy, the ratio of males to females is out of whack, and in the future there's likely to be a severe shortage of marriageable women.
"It may be that these angry outbursts reflect people's worries that women will be taken out of China by Japanese males," he explains.
But one harrangue concerning Liu's allegedly lusty language book, at least, took a somewhat different tack.
Apparently written by a young Chinese woman, it reads: "So what? Even though you Chinese males outnumber Japanese by a factor of 10, despite the much larger land area and vast resources, your personal assets are only one-tenth that of Japanese men."
Whatever the country, cringes Shukan Shincho, women can be truly frightening creatures.
(By Masuo Kamiyama, contributing writer)