New | Beware the ‘chubby blue guy’: Chinese dailies warn public against Japan's ‘Doraemon’

A few state-run newspapers in the western Chinese city of Chengdu earned themselves a barrage of ridicule after they warned that the Japanese cartoon series Doraemon is just another tool used by the Japanese government to cover up its war atrocities.

The Chinese people “should be less blind and think more carefully” when looking at the drawings of the robotic cat and its human friends, the paper said. The article was widely carried by other official media including the Xinhua news agency, which seemed to indicate official support of its reasoning. 

“Doraemon is a part of Japan’s efforts of exporting its national values and achieving its cultural strategy; this is an undisputed fact. Taking this to heart, we should be less blind and keep a cool head while kissing the cheeks of the chubby blue guy,” the newspaper said.

The Chengdu newspaper said consumers of Japanese pop culture should  “be clear about the murky nature of Japanese culture and never forget history”.

The article referred to Japan’s occupation of China during the second world war and the current Japanese government’s ambiguous stance on the events almost seven decades ago.

Rising nationalism in both countries and a lingering territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea has dragged the relationship between the world’s second- and third-largest economies to new lows over the last two years.