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Notes -
The phenomenon you describe is pretty illegible to the salaryman on the street, at least if you're suggesting--as you seem to be--that the Japanese look at China and Korea and think "Wow they're advancing but we're old" and are therefore "embarrassed."
While I can't speak for Japan or Japanese, let me do so anyway. Chinese are largely seen as uncouth, unprincipled vulgarians who scrawl graffiti on venerated shrines and stab honest citizenry for baubles and wristwatches. Koreans get more slack for being somewhat more represented by pop culture (music, dramas, etc.) but there are certainly anti-Korean elements here as well.
Never underestimate the ability of superficial prejudice to cloud the big picture.
Yes, the Japanese perspective on the Chinese and Koreans is poor which is why it would be all the more irritating to see their rise while your own society stagnates. Imagine if the Swiss economy had been stagnating for the past 40 years, the value of the Swiss Franc falling to 1/3 of its former power against the USD and conditions stagnating so much that Switzerland became a viable manufacturing base of low cost workers (all of which describe Japan today) while, let's say, Greece grew to be the second largest economy in the world exporting high tech electronics and a good portion of the world's pop culture during the same time period. (Messy metaphor trying to tie together China and South Korea but you see where I'm going.) Surely the Swiss would be embarrassed on some level to be falling behind the historically dysfunctional country of Greece and begin to regret their situation or rethink foreign alliances at some point, no?
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