Hostile books fill shelves in Japan

Books and publications carrying disparaging content about South Korea and China have been growing in popularity in Japan to the point that some bookstores even have a dedicated corner for such xenophobic material.

But to fully understand the recent rise in this trend, beyond Japan's recent trials and tribulations with some of its closest neighbors over territorial and historical issues, anthropologists advocate looking at the situation from a historical and psychological perspective.

They note that Japan has always been a homogenous culture that largely isolated itself from the rest of the world until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.