For Japan’s sake, don’t mix it up with China

It’s fortuitous that it was Prince William who made the faux pas, otherwise asking children at a Japanese cultural centre in London whether they enjoyed Chinese food, could have led to an embarrassing stir-fry. His conciliatory revelation later that he and his wife love sushi would be cold comfort for Japan. Nor did it help matters that just last month, British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt referred to his wife as Japanese when she is Chinese — while on an official visit to Beijing. That too, after tactlessly conversing with his Chinese counterpart in Japanese. The future British king should ensure he never again “gets it all Wong”, as a British tabloid headline described his grandfather Prince Phillip’s gaffe about ‘slitty eyes’ during a royal tour of China in 1986.

However, Prince William’s question was not entirely far-fetched either. Chinese cuisine has seen a huge surge in demand in Japan, with even fast-food brands from the mainland making inroads into major cities there in the past decade. Both countries have even developed their versions of each other’s cuisines, much like India’s take on Chinese food. Indeed, Chinese becoming the most popular foreign cuisine in Japan — followed by Korean, Italian and Thai — is not merely sweet (and sour) revenge for some historical wrongs but a testament to China’s increasing soft power.