Name: Japan's rising right-wing nationalism
Uploaded: 2018-02-20T22:00:00.000Z
Duration: 7 min 46 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

While I was in Japan I got my hands on a Japanese
history textbook.

But this isn't an ordinary Japanese textbook.

Adverbs of degree

It's a very political one, and if you look
inside you'll see a version of history that

is very different from the one the world knows.

An example is the Nanking Massacre, the 1938
event in which Japanese troops murdered tens

To the world this this massacre is considered
one of the most infamous war crimes commited

by the Japanese during their takeover of Asia,
but in this textbook it basically gets no attention

It's referred to as the "Nanking Incident"
and the only attention it gets in this book

There's no mention of the hundreds of thousands
of Korean women who were forcibly brought

over to serve in brothels on the front lines
of the Japanese wars.

They're these comfort women that are a huge
part of Japanese history,

When I was in Tokyo for a Borders story, I
actually visited the people who publish and

It's this group of old Japanese men who are
part of this lobbying society that basically

try to push a different historical narrative
into Japanese schools,

This textbook publishing society is one of
many expressions of a rising Nationalism in Japan

He's the public face for the Japan First Party.

This group launched just a month after another
rightwing faction across the Pacific Ocean

took power of the White House, proclaiming
a like-minded message.

Within the first five minutes of Sakurai,
and even through a translator, I could tell

that this guy would get along great with Donald
Trump.

Sakurai's Japan First Party hasn't won any
elections yet, but other Nationalists in Japan

have, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
in 2012.

He has surrounded himself with advisers and
ministers from some of these fringe groups,

Up until now these guys, and yes most of them
are guys, have been known for driving around

in their decked out vans preaching the restoration
of Japan's pre-World War II greatness.

Their agenda is similar to nationalist movements
in other countries: they want to restore strong

military, they call for the deportation of
Koreans and limitation to the little immigration

I chased after these guys and filmed them
for an afternoon, watching them spar with

This yearning for a return to some ill-defined
golden age is the basis of many far right

The main historical fixation of these Nationalists
is the 1860's, when Japan underwent a massive

transformation, giving the Emperor lots of
power which he used to rapidly educate the

people, grow the economy, and develop a massive
military.

Japan became an economic and military powerhouse
in just a few years and over the following

decades, they did what powerful countries
did back then: they started expanding, committing

horrific atrocities like mass genocide in
the process.

By the mid-1900s, this aggressive expansion
brought Japan into a natural alignment with

Hitler's Germany, who was doing the same thing
in Europe.

And then, at the height of the Japanese empire...

The bomb was exploded above the city and in
the towering mushroom, Japan could read its doom

They came in, dismantled Japan's military,
and wrote them a new constitution that ensured

To the Nationalists, this was the moment that
everything was lost.

Japan was brought to its knees, stripped of
the pride and national values thousands of

years in the making, emasculated by these
western powers who were now occupying their country

In Tokyo there's this huge controversial shrine
called Yasukuni.

It's where all the people who died in the
wars under the emperor are memorialized, including

After Japan lost the war, a huge trial was
held.

Thousands were convicted of war crimes and
thrown into jail and even some were hanged.

And what's tricky about this very beautiful
shrine that I'm walking through, is that over

a thousand of those war criminals are enshrined
here, and are prayed to every day.

But a lot of Japanese people have a different
narrative about what happened after the war.

According to this narrative, the tribunals
after World War II were not an impartial exercise

in justice, but rather an emotional backlash
against the atrocities that had just occurred

So, the fact that they're here in Yasukuni
doesn't bug a lot of these people.

In fact, they revere them and they worship
them for their sacrifice to the emperor.

All of the symbolism and the memorials point
to a glorification of the imperial period,

The shrine is at the symbolic heart of the
Nationalist narrative, censoring any mention

of atrocities and glorifying the imperial
age as worthy of restoration.

Upon leaving the shrine, I come across a rightwing
group that was visiting the shrine to pay

So it's tempting to draw parallels with what's
happening in Japan with Nationalism and what

we see happening in the U.S. and Europe, with
figures like Donald Trump.

But while that parallel works for a little
bit, it breaks down really quickly, and the

differentiating factor that is the most important
for understanding the difference is a word

Many of these movements in the U.S. and in
Europe have been led by outsiders, populists

in Japan that's not the case; people like
Shinzo Abe are

through and through establishment politicians.

There isn't a disruptive figure who's coming
in from the outside and winning elections.

While the rise of rightwing nationalism is
similar between Japan and the United States

and the West, it's still fundamentally quite
different and it appears that the rise of

a Japanese Donald Trump is still a ways off.

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Japan's rising right-wing nationalism

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