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Japan's anti-immigration backlash

noahpinion.blog · 3,215 words · saved by 4 readers

We often talk about ways in which Japan is ahead of other developed nations; in the old days, people said this about technology, while more recently it’s usually about social trends like sexless youth. But when I lived there, I often noted ways in which Japan was behind the U.S. Trends in fashion, music, and culture seemed to get popular in Japan about five to ten years after their heyday in America.1 For a long time, mainstream Japanese politics was essentially devoid of the type of xenophobic, conspiratorial, nativist populism that has defined the MAGA movement in America and parties like AfD in Europe. The late Abe Shinzo, Japan’s prime minister from 2012 to 2020, had the reputation of being a rightist. But in fact, he governed as much more of a Reaganite conservative, or sometimes even a liberal; he opened the country to immigration and supported women in the workplace. When an anti-Korean hate group arose in the early 2010s, Abe passed Japan’s first law against hate speech and put

We often talk about ways in which Japan is ahead of other developed nations; in the old days, people said this about technology, while more recently it’s usually about social trends like sexless youth. But when I lived there, I often noted ways in which Japan was behind the U.S. Trends in fashion, music, and culture seemed to get popular in Japan about five to ten years after their heyday in America.1 For a long time, mainstream Japanese politics was essentially devoid of the type of xenophobic, conspiratorial, nativist populism that has defined the MAGA movement in America and parties like…

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