A Japanese spy drama has moved from prime-time entertainment into China’s information-war debate. CCTV calls it deliberate slander. Japanese viewers call it fiction. The real story sits somewhere between television, historical memory and deteriorating trust between Beijing and Tokyo.
A television drama has suddenly become part of the argument between China and Japan. TBS’s hit spy series VIVANT is now airing its second season in Japan. The story follows members of the fictional Japanese covert organisation “Betsuban.” This season brings them into conflict with “Xinxi,” a fictional Chinese secret intelligence organisation. The controversy exploded after Episode 19 aired on 4 October. The episode showed Xinxi personnel brutally torturing captured Japanese agents. One prisoner loses his fingers before being stabbed. TBS even placed an unusual violence warning at the start of the broadcast. Japanese viewers themselves described the scenes as difficult to watch.
China’s reaction went much further. On 25 October, CCTV accused the drama of deliberately smearing China and creating hostility. It argued that the torture methods shown in VIVANT resembled abuses committed by Imperial Japanese forces against Chinese resistance fighters during Japan’s invasion of China. Global Times, Guangming Daily and other Chinese media then joined the criticism. The debate also climbed Chinese social-media rankings. Beijing’s media argument is no longer simply that a television villain looks Chinese. It is that popular entertainment can reshape historical memory and normalise a hostile image of China. Yet that claim raises another question: when does criticism of fictional storytelling become an attempt to police how another country is allowed to imagine China?
When Fiction Becomes a Front Line
One Japanese spy drama. One fictional Chinese intelligence organisation. One very real argument about history, propaganda and how countries imagine each other.
VIVANT presents an exaggerated world of covert operations, secret military units, kidnappings and international missions.
Japanese viewers also criticised the brutality of the torture scenes. Their objections focused mainly on violence, not China.
CCTV argues that VIVANT demonises Chinese people, reverses historical victimhood and creates hostility toward China.
Other Chinese state and Party-linked media quickly amplified that interpretation.
Security, Taiwan, military policy and historical memory already make the bilateral relationship politically sensitive.
A fictional spy story therefore enters an environment where almost every symbol carries more weight.
The controversy did not begin with CCTV.
It began with a difficult television scene, spread through social media and only later became a state-media argument about Japan itself.
Xinxi interrogators torture five captured Betsuban members. One character suffers particularly graphic violence. Japanese social media fills with complaints that the sequence is too disturbing for prime-time television.
A large Chinese entertainment account argues that Japanese hostility toward China has entered a new stage of entertainment-driven “cognitive warfare.”
Asked about another television programme, Takaichi says she has recorded VIVANT and hopes to watch it during the year-end holidays.
CCTV News publishes a harsh commentary accusing VIVANT of intentionally smearing China and reversing historical morality.
Discussion of the programme rises to the top of Weibo’s search rankings.
The dispute expands from one violent television scene into a larger accusation about Japanese historical memory, security policy and anti-China narratives.
Japanese and regional media begin asking whether the dispute could spill into already difficult China–Japan relations.
Fiction, violence and a real national label
Five members of the fictional secret Japanese organisation Betsuban fall into Xinxi’s hands.
The story presents Xinxi as a fictional Chinese special intelligence organisation.
Episode 19 depicts mutilation and stabbing. TBS issued a warning before the episode began.
CCTV is arguing about much more than a villain.
CCTV objects to Chinese intelligence personnel being portrayed as brutal, backward and willing to torture Japanese prisoners.
Chinese commentary argues that the fictional torture resembles methods associated with Japanese wartime abuses, but assigns those acts to modern Chinese characters.
CCTV argues that portraying a secret Japanese military organisation operating internationally makes expanded Japanese security activity appear heroic and normal.
The Chinese argument expands beyond VIVANT. It presents television, AI content and historical narratives as parts of an information struggle over how audiences see China.
Why did the torture scene hit such a sensitive nerve?
The Second Sino-Japanese War remains central to official Chinese historical memory.
Japanese military atrocities form part of China’s national narrative of resistance and victimhood.
Beijing therefore treats portrayals that appear to reverse Chinese and Japanese roles with exceptional sensitivity.
VIVANT places Japanese agents in the victim position and Chinese-linked intelligence personnel in the role of torturers.
That reversal is fictional. But CCTV interprets the visual symbolism historically.
This is where television storytelling and national memory collide.
How entertainment becomes an information-war story
A television writer creates a fictional intelligence enemy.
Viewers isolate scenes and debate their political meaning.
Official media connects the scene to history, nationalism and foreign policy.
A drama becomes evidence inside a larger argument about another country’s intentions.
Separate what happened from what people say it means.
Season two uses real China as part of its setting while “Xinxi” itself is fictional.
Popular entertainment can shape attitudes toward nations, militaries and political identities. The size of that effect is difficult to measure.
No public evidence currently establishes that TBS produced the drama under Japanese government direction.
On 14 October, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi mentioned the programme during a parliamentary exchange. She said she had recorded it and hoped to watch it later.
Chinese coverage repeatedly highlights that remark. But the available record does not show that Takaichi commissioned, supervised or politically endorsed the programme’s portrayal of China.
The significance is contextual. Takaichi already has a difficult relationship with Beijing because of Taiwan and security issues. Her casual entertainment comment therefore carries more political weight in China than it otherwise might.
Japanese viewers were already criticising the episode.
Domestic criticism appeared immediately after Episode 19. Many Japanese viewers complained that the torture scenes were excessive or unsuitable for a national prime-time broadcast.
That reaction matters. It shows that criticism of VIVANT did not begin as a simple Japan-versus-China argument.
Japanese audiences were debating violence and storytelling. Chinese state media transformed the controversy into a debate about nationalism, historical memory and cognition.
Is CCTV wrong to criticise the portrayal?
Governments, viewers and critics can legitimately object to stereotypes or national portrayals in fiction.
VIVANT’s decision to use real China while creating a brutal fictional Chinese intelligence organisation invites political interpretation.
The harder question is whether criticism of a portrayal justifies describing an entertainment programme as organised state cognitive warfare.
Does fiction affect foreign policy?
Film and television influence public imagination. Spy stories can shape perceptions of threats, allies and national competence.
But cultural influence is not the same thing as government-directed propaganda.
Evidence of coordination matters.
Why is China reacting so strongly?
Historical memory remains highly sensitive.
China–Japan relations are already strained over Taiwan, military security and strategic competition.
Beijing also increasingly treats information, entertainment and historical interpretation as elements of national security.
VIVANT therefore enters a much larger political framework.
Is “Xinxi” a real Chinese intelligence organisation?
It is a fictional organisation created for the drama.
The controversy comes from placing that fictional organisation inside a real country and giving it recognisably Chinese characters.
Could this become a diplomatic dispute?
The current dispute is primarily occurring through media commentary and public reaction.
Researchers should watch for statements from China’s Foreign Ministry, Japan’s Foreign Ministry or TBS before declaring that the controversy has become an official bilateral dispute.
Beijing is expanding the definition of the information battlefield.
CCTV’s response matters because it places entertainment inside the same conceptual space as historical education, artificial intelligence and strategic communication.
VIVANT is revealing a new problem in China–Japan relations.
The important question is not whether one television programme can transform Japanese public opinion.
The larger issue is that entertainment itself is increasingly interpreted through national-security language.
Once fiction is labelled “cognitive warfare,” the difference between criticism, storytelling, propaganda and strategic influence becomes much harder to preserve.
Research & Source Base
The most revealing part of the VIVANT controversy may therefore be the distance between the television screen and the political interpretation placed upon it. TBS created a fictional intelligence thriller. It used a real country, China, and gave its fictional Chinese organisation an exceptionally brutal role. That choice is open to criticism. Popular entertainment can reinforce national stereotypes, and Japan’s wartime history makes some imagery especially sensitive. Yet there is still a significant difference between arguing that fiction contains hostile stereotypes and claiming that the programme forms part of a coordinated Japanese state campaign. No public evidence currently establishes the latter.
The dispute becomes more important because it arrives during an already difficult period in China–Japan relations. Prime Minister Takaichi has tried to describe China as an “important neighbour” and has called for a stable relationship. Beijing, however, remains deeply suspicious of Tokyo’s position on Taiwan and regional security. A television programme cannot create those strategic tensions. It can expose them. VIVANT has done exactly that. A fictional spy organisation has become a screen onto which both countries project very real fears about history, militarisation and hostile narratives. When governments begin treating entertainment as part of the security battlefield, the question is no longer simply what audiences are watching. It is who gets to decide what fiction is politically permitted to imagine.
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