Sharing the pain

The emotional fallout in China from Japan's disaster offers a walk down memory lane of Sino-Japanese love-hate attitudes.

My first exposure to screen depictions of nuclear disaster was in 1984 when a Japanese television drama called Akai Giwaku was aired in China. Roughly translated as "Suspicion of Blood" in Chinese, it portrays a 17-year-old student who is accidentally contaminated by radiation. This happens in the first episode, and for the remaining 28 episodes, she fights a losing battle against blood cancer. However, it is more an affirmation of love and family than an indictment of nuclear mismanagement.

Like me, most of my countrymen shed tears for the continuously frail protagonist with her beguiling smile and sunny disposition. Pop icon Momoe Yamaguchi, who essayed the role nine years earlier in 1975, became an instant superstar in China. This tear-jerker even provoked spasms of pessimism, with reports of a couple of teenage girls in China committing suicide because Yamaguchi's role was doomed from the beginning and no miracle happened by the end of the series.