China as Funhouse Mirror: Yomiuri Shimbun's China Coverage during the Cultural Revolution

摘要

This article examines the Yomiuri shimbun's portrayals of China during the Cultural Revolution of the early and mid-1970s to demonstrate the process by which Japanese journalists 'domesticated' foreign coverage. It argues that Japanese reporting on China was framed by the fundamentally Japanese questions: 'who are we?' and 'what do we stand for as Japanese?' The paper demonstrates how norms and structural changes mutually reinforce each other and jointly shape foreign coverage. In doing so, it historicizes the current animosity between Japan and China, and reveals how the commercial nature of the media and patterns of production render journalistic objectivity practically impossible.