What’s behind Japan’s Anti-foreigner Movement? East Asia as the Battleground for Japan’s Extreme Right

• In Event: The Extreme Right, Xenophobia, and Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the sudden rise of Japan’s xenophobic extreme-right movement, focusing on the case of Zaitokukai. Curiously, most right-wing groups ostracize Zaitokukai, asserting it has nothing to do with the patriotic right. Some right-wingers have even joined counter protests against it. However, I argue that the origin of Japan’s recent anti-foreigner movement is to be found in historical revisionists’ focus on Japan’s history with neighboring countries—a move that reflects the changing concerns of Japan’s right wingers. In the cold war era, right-wingers were committed to traditionalism and anti-communism, and targeted the Soviet Union, with the aim of reinstating many aspects of prewar Japan; they were rather indifferent to East Asian historical concerns. Two broad changes emerged since the end of the cold war. The first transformation occurred in the 1990s when the historical revisionist movement arose in response to governmental policies toward historical issues such as comfort women. In addition, the first decade of the 2000s saw heightened nationalistic sentiment in the right-wing vis-à-vis East Asian countries, following the confirmation of North Korea’s abductions, and territorial disputes with South Korea and China. My interviews with activists have revealed that Zaitokukai took advantage of this hostility. It first appropriated the idea of historical revisionism and nationalism to claim to be patriots defensively fighting against anti-Japanese forces. Then, their concerns deformed into hate against Koreans in Japan. Consequently, Zaitokukai came into being as an inevitable result of the changing battleground of Japan’s right-wingers.

Author

• Naoto Higuchi, Tokushima University