I’ve been really into this old PSX/PS2 game recently, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. It’s produced by Natsume, a Japanese company with the tagline “Serious Fun”. The premise is that you own a farm, and you have to grow crops, raise livestock, etc.
And there’s this one character, Won. He’s a huckster–a hustler, a hawker, a peddler, a shyster, a cadger. He’s useful (his black market sells you the stuff you can’t get in the regular store), but he’s blatantly a conman.
He is also very obviously, very stereotypically Chinese. He’s got slanted eyes, a Ming mustache, a yellow coat and cap, and stilted English (compared to the rest of the characters)–it’s cringeworthy.
Does Wan-fu’s frustration at not finding any worthy warriors in Japan count?
Seriously, if you see a sterotype, it’s probably just that, a stereotype. I haven’t seen any indication of overt hostility to China. (If anything, I’d expect the opposite…Rape of Nanking, Tibet invasion, etc.) There are Chinese villains, to be sure, but there’s generally a good reason…the historical Dong Zhuo wasn’t exactly an admirable figure.
Now Korea, definitely, to the point of completely different versions of some games. The Korean Soul Edge had the samurai-esque swordsman, Mitsurugi, replaced with Hwang Sung Kyung. (I don’t remember any flap over Taki, so this may have just been a marketing call on Namco’s part.) And every Korean port of Japanese music games has the lyrics completely removed. IIRC, this isn’t required by law, Koreans just don’t want to listen to Japanese lyrics.
Yeah, Hwang was in the game generally, or at the very least my game had him, and i’m not Korean. Mitsurugi was definetly replaced by Arthur. Taki wasn’t removed because she’s not a samurai.
As for Japanese games in general; well, they sometimes can have quite stereotypical characters. That seems like a pretty extreme example, from what I can tell.
Edit: Research! Hwang replaced Mitsurugi in the Korean arcade version. Arthur later replaced Mitsurugi in Soul Calibur 1 arcade version.
