DID YOU KNOW?

That sushi is originally an import from China? That Sun Yat Sen’s name is Japanese? That the Chinese legend of Xu Fu (徐福) is also a foundation myth in Japan? That half of modern Chinese vocabulary comes from Japanese, and that the word kamikaze comes courtesy of a ‘Chinese’ navy? Given the millennia-long interaction between China and Japan, it should be no surprise that there are plenty of surprising aspects of the history and relationship, from the historical aspects above, to the similarities between the 1964 Tokyo Olympic and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the parallels between media coverage of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the 3-11 triple disaster in Japan nearly three years later. With entertaining stories and dozens of graphics (pictures and video) Quarrelling Cousins reviews these surprising aspects of the relationship between the two Asian powers, with an eye toward how the two might reduce the quarreling a bit!