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The original was posted on /r/askhistorians by /u/Addahn on 2023-08-17 14:04:38+00:00.

In many dramas regarding the Japanese occupation of Chinese, it’s common to see Chinese collaborators speaking Chinese to the Japanese administrators, but the Japanese administrators speaking Japanese in response. Was this dynamic common in Japanese-occupied China? Would Japanese administrators speak Chinese, or would it be expected that Chinese underneath them speak Japanese?