People’s Daily publishes online game whose aim is to shoot Japanese war criminals
State media introduces online game targeting 14 war criminals whose purpose is to "expose the crimes of Japanese invaders and make netizens remember history"
PUBLISHED : Friday, 28 February, 2014, 2:03pm
UPDATED : Friday, 28 February, 2014, 3:48pm
Darren Wee [email protected]
A screenshot of the People's Daily online game 'Shoot the Devils'. Photo: SCMP Pictures
The People’s Daily social media arm has released an online game that encourages players shoot Japanese war criminals amid mounting tensions over the country’s wartime atrocities and territorial disputes.
The developers of ‘Shoot the Devils’ said, “The purpose is to expose the crimes of the Japanese invaders through the much-loved game form and make netizens remember history … [and] cherish peace.”
Players choose one of 14 Class A war criminals honoured at the Yasukuni Shrine, then shoot at a target with his face on it with a mouse-controlled gun.
The simple game is similar to one the state released last month where players taser corrupt officials.
Shoot the Devils provides brief descriptions of each of the war criminals and their crimes. Developers said 13 of the 14 criminals directly participated in the invasion of China or formulated related policies.
The ‘devils’ in the title is a derogatory term used to describe Japanese, especially invading troops during the second world war, and the game features a racist caricature of a Japanese solider with buck teeth.
China reacted angrily when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours 2.5 million war dead and the 14 Class A war criminals, in December and on Thursday ratified a national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing massacre, a six-week slaughter of up to 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers by Japanese troops in 1937.
But many Weibo users called the game “childish”.
Others asked if the People’s Daily had learnt from North Korea, whose army use cartoons of US troops as a targets.
“It’s exactly this kind of self-deceiving cowardly behaviour that makes Japan noncompliant and indignant”, one user wrote.
Others pointed out that manufacturers in the US had made many second world war games where allied solders shoot enemy troops.
“This is actually really not bad,” another user wrote. “After all, most of my compatriots (including myself) aren’t very clear who the war criminals were.”
