Chinese gamers lead in-game protest against ‘Japanese’ symbol

According to this site, an image that resembled a rising sun within a Chinese massively multiplayer online game has sparked huge protests:

Early this morning, the Netease game “The Fantasy of the Journey West,” there was a mob scene of cursing players at the area known as “Jianye city government office.”  The reason was that this Tang dynasty “government office” had a background that looked like a “Rising Sun.”

At around 1am, the reporter found a screen capture of the game in which there was a white screen at the back of the government office.  In the middle, there was a red sun from which light rays emanated, such that it resembled a Japanese flag.  According to Mr. Guo, a Beijing game player, someone noticed this “Rising Sun flag” about three days ago.  The news spread quickly on the Internet the next day.  Almost 10,000 game players from around the nation gathtered there to express their dissatisfaction or anger.  Yesterday morning, the curses reached a climax.  The reporter visited the game area known as Summer Palace and saw the place filled with the IDs of all the dissatisfied game players.

The players, many of whom created special protest characters with names like “kill the japs” and “fight the Japanese”, were horribly misled by their own ignorance.  Their anti-Japanese hatred had exploded against something that was clearly based upon actual Chinese paintings of that time [which had nothing to do with Japan or Japanese imperialism].

Oh well, better safe than sorry when it comes to anything that might be associated with the evil Japanese, right?

[Story found on Broken Toys]