[agency]

I suppose I'm lucky to live in the US where we have no problems with ultranationalist sentiment and racially motivated hate crimes.

I wonder if any anti-Japanese sentiment has to do with the fact that, to this day, the ruling party/LDP actively denies the numerous war crimes perpetrated against the Chinese in the second world war, including the Nanjing massacre. But I guess it must be all that propaganda. Though the Chinese may need to fine-tune their approach, since per the Newsweek article you linked "Among Japanese respondents, 92.2 percent had an unfavorable opinion of China, up from 87.3 percent in 2022. On the Chinese side, 62.9 percent viewed Japan negatively, about the same as the previous year."