Alot of the time, they have stories about japanese martial artist coming to kick some serious butt in China back into Qing/early republican era to show that they are superior and all that. Somehow they beat a whole bunch of losers and the hero of the story comes out and regains the honour of Chinese people. However, I have come to realised that almost in all cases, the "national representative" is always a karateka or uses alot of karate techniques
But when you come to think about it, strictly speaking, karate is not going to be the martial arts the japanese government would want to use to beat up the chinese. Several reasons comes into this.
(1) Karate, strictly speaking, isn't Japanese. Until the founder of shotokan (sorry, can't spell his name) brought it to japan, it wasn't even known there. And during those times, it wasn't really accepted well.
(2) If anything, karate is actually anti-japanese. Karate was used by the Oakinawans to fight off the japanese rule over their island hundreds of years ago. Not too unlike style used by the boxers in the boxer rebellion. True, there have been a change in government since those times. But hey, at the end of the day, a bunch of Oakinawan farmers and fishermans beating full blooded Japanese warriors isn't something every japanese back then is proud of. Isn't using karate to represent the japan 100 years ago just another slap on the face ?
(3) There are plenty of other styles that the Japanese government can use that are great. Why would they chose that ?
Hence, I am wondering why is it that HK movie are always using the "evil karate vs the good kung fu" as a plot ? Sure, after WW2, I can see why people like using the japanese as being the bad guys. You see Nazis as being shown as bad guys in all kinds of American fiction. But why use only karate ??
Is it because they know nothing about other forms of japanese arts ? Or is it because the fight scenes would look a whole lot better if people where throwing sum punches instead of grappling.
Anyone familiar with the HK movie industry that can explain this ??