Books and publications with disparaging content about China and South Korea have been growing in popularity in Japan, to the point that some bookstores even have a dedicated corner for such xenophobic literature.

But to fully understand the recent rise in this trend, beyond Japan's recent trials and tribulations with some of its closest neighbors over territorial and historical issues, anthropologists advocate looking at the situation from both a historical and a psychological perspective.

They note that Japan has always been a homogenous culture that largely isolated itself from the rest of the world until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.