China-Japan, the crisis also affects Pokemon
The Nintendo-linked company forced to cancel an event in Tokyo and also apologise in Chinese after protests over the choice of Yasukuni shrine. The episode is the latest sign of deteriorating diplomatic and trade relations between Beijing and Tokyo
From our correspondent
TOKYO - The company's motto is: 'Connect the world with Pokemon'. Easier said than done. Especially today. Especially if the two pieces of the world to be brought closer together are China and Japan. Pokemon Company, the gaming giant Nintendo's subsidiary, had to pull out of a planned event on Saturday and publicly apologise for endorsing it through its website. The Japanese company is the latest victim of the ongoing diplomatic and trade war between China and Japan, the two economic and political giants of the Far East that have been grappling for months with the most serious bilateral crisis in several years.
What sparked the case, forcing the Japanese company to back down, was the choice of location for the event, the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto place of worship in central Tokyo that pays homage to the souls of Japanese war dead, including some war criminals. It did not take long for Beijing's wolf warrior diplomacy to come back into vogue and for the Chinese government to take advantage of the misstep to put pressure on Tokyo again.
First by allowing the case to mount on social networks (China exercises a fairly strict control over what can and cannot be said on the web) and then by using the state media to turn the more or less spontaneous popular indignation first into a news story, and then into a political case. Result: event cancelled and profusion of apologies, both in Japanese and Chinese.
The Pokemon affair is just the latest chapter in an affair that began last November, when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, speaking off-the-cuff in Parliament, stated a truism that everyone in Japanese political and diplomatic circles whispers, but no one says out loud, namely that if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan put Japan at risk, Tokyo would intervene.
