Fed Up? Japanese Youth and Rising Nationalism

The consensus of the speakers at this Feb. 22 Asia Program event was that nationalism among Japanese youth is no more extensive than among other age groups, and that this is not a rising trend. Put in its historical context, this is the fifth time since World War II that there has been concern of about rising nationalism in Japan, and at no time in the past have any of these concerns been realized. However, what is new today is that Japanese politicians are much less constrained by the bureaucracy, and they also feel the need to cater to a wider audience and adopt a more populist approach. Furthermore, nationalism amongst Japan's near neighbors, China and South Korea, is growing. Thus, there is always the danger of some small event triggering an overreaction, which would escalate into a "nightmare" scenario that no one would want.

Daqing Yang led off the discussion with some excellent polling data, noting that love of country has remained fairly constant over the past few decades at a little over 50 percent. In an NHK poll in 2000, more young people said they knew little about World War II than a similar poll conducted in 1980. He also said the polls indicate young people in their twenties have more in common with people in their seventies than they do with their parents' generation. The only polling data which indicated a significant shift in attitude is toward China: a higher percentage of Japanese, including youth, have a lower opinion of China because of the Tiananmen Incident of 1989 and anti-Chinese demonstrations against Japan in recent years. There is also no doubt that the end of the Cold War, unease over the rise of China, and the economic uncertainty of the 1990s have combined to give Japanese youth an increased sense of anxiety, which has created an opportunity to focus on nationalism. However, this has also had the effect of distancing Japanese youth from politics: the young tend to be the least likely to vote.

Alexis Dudden gave a spirited presentation asserting that without youth and nationalism, there would be no modern Japan. She referred back to the 19th century Meiji Era to note that most of those leaders were in their twenties when they started planning to build Japan into a "modern" nation. She also asserted that in the early 1870s, these leaders carefully planned to take over Korea. They succeeded in doing so in 1910, and then Japanese leaders tried to use similar tactics to conquer China in the 1930s. Dudden advanced the interesting theory that Japanese foreign policy toward China is almost always first "practiced" on Korea. Returning to the topic of Japanese youth, she mentioned that they refer to themselves as the "super-flat" generation. Everything is on the surface; there is no deep meaning to anything, including history. Dudden then moved to a discussion of the politics of apology, asserting that from 1965, the time of normalization between Japan and South Korea, until 1995, there was an official "apology era" which allowed Japan to make "hollow" apologies to South Korea in order to advance political and economic relations. However, these apologies paid no real attention to the victims. Since 1995, these victim groups, such as Korea's sex slaves, have become more politically active. This has produced a backlash, where the Japanese assert that they have apologized enough and are never appreciated, and the victims of Japanese aggression charge Japan with insincere apologies. She said the backlash in Japan often leads to a distortion in history, most exemplified by the popular right-wing cartoonist and novelist Yoshinori Kobayashi, who, Dudden asserted, twists history to appeal to emotions for personal financial gain. Kobayashi's attitude toward the sex slaves, for example, is that they made ten times more money than the average Japanese soldier, thereby benefiting from the war, so why would anyone need to apologize to them?

Thomas Berger agreed with Professor Yang that there is a certain crisis among Japanese youth. He noted that the economic downturn in Japan in the 1990s was the longest among advanced nations since the depression of the 1930s. Berger stated that concern about rising nationalism has been a constant since World War II, and actually the current concern is the fifth over the last fifty years. Berger said such occurrences always follow the same number of steps. First is an international event (such as North Korea firing a missile over Japan in 1998) which galvanizes concern within Japan. The next step is that people on the right begin to agitate for a revival of patriotism in Japan, and a stronger defense posture. When the right does this, the center and left resist. The result is some adjustment and change, but not all that much. Yet the situation today, especially in the area of Japanese domestic politics, differs somewhat from before. The power of the bureaucracy is weakening, for example, and changes in the Japanese electoral system are producing more populist politicians, who feel they have to appeal to broader audiences. At the same time, there are changes in the domestic political systems in South Korea and China, not simply trumped-up emotionalism, but grass roots nationalism. When such South Korean or Chinese nationalism comes face-to-face with apology fatigue in Japan, where the Japanese feel that the more they apologize, the more they get "spat upon," the results could be troubling. One horrible event, such as the killing of a Chinese tourist by a Japanese fanatic, could set off an escalating political crisis.

Toshihiro Nakayama agreed that among Japanese youth, those under 30, there is a sense of rising frustration regarding foreign criticism. On the other hand, right-wing flag-raising nationalism leaves a majority of the population, including the youth, absolutely cold. He asserted that the problems of the graduates of the 1990s were not just about economics, but involved a lack of a sense of identity as well. He noted the U.S. has its Declaration of Independence and its Constitution, but in Japan, "there is little to connect us to our past." Therefore, the Yasukuni Shrine, the source of so much international controversy when the prime minister visits there, is in Nakayama's opinion the strongest symbol to connect the Japanese people to their past. He continued that the Yasukuni Shrine is, as a political symbol, more about who the Japanese are than any conscious anti-Korean or anti-Chinese statement. Picking up on Dr. Dudden's remarks about Yoshinori Kobayashi, Nakayama said he's like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly in the U.S. Most Japanese youth pay little attention to Kobayashi. Nakayama concluded by asserting that he doubted the current nationalistic trend in Japan has much momentum, and felt that while some sentiment for it exists, there is no real political infrastructure to sustain it.

Drafted by Mark Mohr, Asia Program Associate
Robert M. Hathaway, Director, Asia Program, Ph: (202) 691-4020