ABSTRACT
Among the soft power in most countries today, popular culture plays a pivotal role in international influence and communication. China and Japan are economic and cultural powers in the world, and the popular culture of the two countries has an obvious the “other” form in shaping each other. Taking the most representative Japanese anime and Chinese television drama in the cultural industries of the two countries as examples, this paper compares and analyzes the image of the “other” in Chinese and Japanese popular culture in three time periods, that is, the hostile “other” before China's reform and opening up, the friendly “other” in the 1980s and 1990s when the economy was booming and open and accessible, and the vigilance of the “other” since the 21st century. This paper clarifies the multiple factors that influence the image mentioned above formation from the perspectives of the development of politics, economy, and social culture. The behavior of official diplomacy affects the collective psychology of the public, and the psychology of the mass group will have a particularly negative effect on diplomacy.
