The Far Right of Japan, with Jeffrey Hall | Ep. 038 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lemonade Stand Ep. 038 – "The Far Right of Japan, with Jeffrey Hall"

Podcast: Lemonade Stand (Vox Media Podcast Network)
Episode: 038 — The Far Right of Japan, with Jeffrey Hall
Date: November 19, 2025
Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug
Guest: Jeffrey Hall (Lecturer, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan)

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Overview

This episode offers a deep dive into the rise of right-wing politics in Japan, the nuanced landscape of Japanese conservatism, the influence of social media, historical revisionism, and Japan’s shifting geopolitical stance. The conversation, led by hosts Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug, features expert insights from Jeffrey Hall, an American academic specializing in Japanese politics and society. Hall debunks common Western misconceptions and provides clarity on sensitive topics ranging from anti-immigrant sentiment to conspiracy theories, all while discussing the unique way Japan’s rightward shift is playing out both similarly and differently from trends abroad.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jeffrey Hall’s Background and Path to Expertise

• [03:08] Hall started as a self-admitted “weeb” interested in anime, studied abroad in Nagoya, returned to Japan as an English teacher, then pursued graduate studies at Waseda University, focusing his research on the early phenomenon of right-wing Japanese YouTubers (“back then it was just kind of starting out”).
• His research on right-wing activism, especially around nationalism and historical revisionism, led to academic positions and frequent media appearances.

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2. Japanese Political Apathy and Social Norms

• [07:48] Hall explains that in Japan, it is considered impolite to discuss religion, baseball (apart from Ohtani), or politics, which contributes to widespread political apathy.
• Political education is minimal; Hall often has to teach Japanese students foundational knowledge of their own political system:

  “Most people don't learn much about politics in school… I have to start from square one.” (08:22, Hall)

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3. Takaichi as a 'Conservative Outsider' and Media Vibes

• [09:14] Japan’s new prime minister, Takaichi, commands sky-high approval among younger voters (70-80%), despite pushing policies similar to her unpopular predecessor—attributed to “good vibes,” outsider status, and media narrative rather than substantive change.

  “A lot of it is just because of the vibes on TV… first, an outsider, a woman as prime minister.” (09:17, Hall)

• Hall notes the contrast between policy stasis and dramatic increases in approval due to optics; her administration has only slightly diverged on issues like Taiwan.

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4. Shifting Security Stance: Taiwan and China

• [10:25] For the first time, Japan’s government has publicly acknowledged it might militarily support Taiwan if invaded—a marked break from “strategic ambiguity.”
• Chinese officials responded angrily; Hall recounts a Chinese diplomat’s veiled threat on social media, interpreted within Japan’s “high context” communication culture.

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5. Japanese Right-Wing Movements: Inside and Outside the LDP

• [14:15] The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is actually a broad conservative coalition, with internal factions ranging from centrist to far-right.
• Many hardliners espouse historical denialism (e.g., denying comfort women were forced or WWII atrocities occurred), though the party also co-opted socialist ideas (like universal healthcare) to blunt opposition.
• Immigration, once hushed, is now a rallying issue for far-right YouTuber-founded parties like Sanseito:

  “The globalists bringing in immigrants… caused the rise of an alternative far right party called Sanseto, which is a YouTuber party.” (18:14, Hall)

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6. Social Media, Right-Wing Influence, and Immigration Panic

• [18:11–27:52] Japan’s right-wing YouTube and Twitter spheres stoke anti-immigrant fervor by exaggerating the presence of foreigners, using foreign viral videos as “warnings,” and focusing on isolated issues (e.g., Kurdish community in Saitama).
• Despite harsh rhetoric, the real numbers are low:

  “The number of illegally residing foreigners in Japan… is about 70,000 and it's actually going down because the yen is weaker.” (29:20, Hall)

• Government policies use euphemisms for guest workers (“talent,” “skilled workers”) and maintain an official stance that “Japan does not have an immigration policy.”

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7. Comparison with Western Far-Right Trends

• [27:52–32:37] The anti-immigrant shift in public opinion mirrors trends in the US and Europe, but Japan’s actions are more performative—few mass deportations or sweeping legal changes:

  “The real globalism that's happening here is the globalization of anti-immigrant theories and ideas.” (27:52, Hall)

• Public anger is building, but so is political cynicism; economic stresses (post-COVID stagnation, inflation) are present, but party politics remain dominated by the LDP.

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8. Scandals, Political Cynicism, and the Power of ‘Vibes’

• [36:12–41:01] Despite recent LDP scandals (fundraising abuses in which underlings took the fall), Takaichi remains wildly popular—attributed to her “outsider” image, work ethic, and media focus on trivialities (“the pen she uses went viral”).

  “People are just caught up in the good vibes in the media… That’s like the level of news reporting that’s been going on forever.” (39:41, Hall)

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9. Historical Memory, Revisionism, and Apologies

• [61:22–76:58] The Japanese right’s narrative is that “war apologies were overblown,” embracing “masochistic history” and pushing back on “woke”—or, as now imported, “woku”—curricula:

  “They want to change history to be more patriotic… mention the good stuff, don’t mention the bad stuff.” (73:08, Hall)

• Notably, Abe and now Takaichi share revisionist or nationalist views, yet refrain from overtly reversing apologies, preferring ambiguity.
• Hall explains the “comfort women” controversy and how denialist arguments hinge on technicalities of forced labor and perceived exaggerations by Korea and China.

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10. US-Japan Relations Post-WWII & Trump Era Diplomacy

• [56:10–84:24] Japan pursues a strategy of extreme courtesy and gift-giving to US leaders—especially Trump—to secure favorable relations:

  “The Japanese government treats our president like a child: ‘Here’s the coloring book… the pictures we show him… the investment numbers we make up that we can't actually commit to.’” (57:03, C)

• Despite anti-American moments in history, polls show enduring Japanese positivity towards the US—especially compared to China, which is widely distrusted:

  “Japan needs America… It cannot defeat China militarily. It needs the Americans, it needs their bases.” (84:25, Hall)

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11. Russia, Territorial Disputes, and the Use of Mascots

• [46:56–52:13] Japan keeps alive its claim to the ‘Northern Territories’ (southern Kuril Islands, held by Russia) via mascot campaigns and even educational isekai anime, without escalating into risky confrontation.

  “They have mascot characters… an isekai anime… to remind people about the Northern Territories.” (46:56, Hall)

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12. Conspiracy Theories—Japan’s Flavor

• [92:46–98:31] Hall shares quirky examples, including beliefs the US Occupation spread cancer via bread, and a persistent (and fringe) view that “secret Koreans” control Japan’s bureaucracy.

  “Think of every conspiracy theory in America about Jews and just replace it with Koreans. And you’re almost… almost the same.” (97:38, Hall)

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13. Misconceptions About Japanese Historical Denial

• [99:37] Hall closes by clarifying that most Japanese academics and many in general society do not deny wartime atrocities. Detailed accounts exist in Japanese-language books and documentaries, underlining that denialism is a minority, albeit vocal, view.

  “Not every person in Japan is like a history denier… The denialist view is a minority. Most of academia in Japan is not like that.” (99:37, Hall)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Takaichi’s Popularity:

  “She sleeps two hours a night. Do you want somebody to be running a country if they sleep two hours a night?... But she’s basically saying, ‘I can do two. I’m so strong,’ and people are like, ‘Wow, she’s so hard-working and she’s smiling all the time.’”
  (36:53, Hall)

• On ‘Vibes’ Over Substance:

  “It’s all vibes at the end.” (40:29, C)

• On Immigration Reality vs. Rhetoric:

  “In Takaichi’s campaign… they've talked about the need for zero illegal foreigners. But the number… is pretty much zero, statistically speaking.” (29:20, Hall)

• On Bread Conspiracies:

  “One of their conspiracy theories is that you must eat organic rice and it’s because bread is a globalist scheme to cause cancer… ever since the American occupation, the Americans have been importing grain and trying to make Japanese people eat bread.”
  (92:59, Hall)

• On Western Perception of Japanese Denial:

  “Not every person in Japan is like a history denier. Lots of people think the war was terrible and that it should never have happened and there should never, ever again be another war like this. And that's the very mainstream view in Japan… Denialist view… is a minority view.” (99:37, Hall)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:08 — Jeffrey Hall’s academic journey and focus on right-wing YouTubers
• 07:48 — Japanese political apathy & “three things you never discuss”
• 09:14 — Takaichi’s rise and the politics of media “vibes”
• 10:25 — Japan’s new stance on Taiwan; escalation with China
• 14:15 — LDP’s history, ideological breadth, and approach to social policy
• 18:14 — Rise of YouTuber parties & right-wing immigration rhetoric
• 27:52 — Similarities/differences between US/JP right-wing politics
• 29:20 — Reality of illegal immigration numbers in Japan
• 36:12 — Scandal fatigue and Takaichi’s politics of personality
• 39:41 — Viral “vibes” and trivial media focus
• 61:22 — WWII memory, apology debates, and right-wing revisionism
• 73:08 — Textbooks and the battle over “masochistic/Woku history”
• 92:59 — Japanese conspiracy theories: bread, cancer, “secret Koreans”
• 99:37 — Correction about wartime denialism in Japanese society

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a nuanced, accessible primer on the evolution of Japanese far-right politics, updating worn-out Western assumptions and revealing how youth, the Internet, and economic anxiety can combine to produce a “vibes”-based populist surge, even as underlying policy remains unusually consistent. The conversation is packed with humor and cultural references but anchored by Hall’s thoughtful expertise, making it a valuable listen (or read) for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Japan beyond the headlines.

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Guest Social Links:

• Twitter: Mr. Jeffu (MrJeffU)
• YouTube: Japan Matters

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Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist. And I'm Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist. Between us, we have decades of experience studying the indicators that drive the economy and how they can have a direct impact on your investments. We know that investors have a lot of questions about the markets and the economy, and we're here to help. So download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast in Me. As ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice, and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix. Una silla de masajes puede pares er extravagante.

[B]

Ocho configuraciones differentes intensidada justable.

[A]

Com O los aceros con masaje dispon.

[B]

Ibles solo parese extravagante.

[C]

All right, we're back with Lemonade Stand in Japan, joined by Jeff Jeffrey hall, who is a special lecturer in Japanese studies.

[A]

Actually. Lecturer.

[C]

Oh, not special.

[A]

That was. I got promoted a couple years ago, so I'm a lecturer now.

[B]

You get promoted and lose the special.

[A]

Special in Japan means you're a temporary employee who will be.

[C]

So funny because I read the title and I was like, oh, he's a special.

[A]

Yeah, they're normal. When you see special in a name in Japan, it usually means that you're not a regular employee yet. I see.

[B]

Okay. Well, congratulations on the promotion.

[A]

Yeah, thank you.

[B]

And thank you so much for coming on our show. I mean, this is really, I think, interesting to all of us.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. I think the big reason we wanted to have you on is I think we talk about Japan a lot on this show. Brandon talks about Japan a lot in his content, but I think Japan's politics or the issues that it's facing and the way that information circulates through Western media. Media is always a little disconnected just because of the language barrier, because things don't get reported in the fashion that it would if it was happening in your own country.

[A]

Right.

[C]

So people have a very, like, disconnected or distorted view of what problems actually are here. And I figured we'd. We'd ask you maybe the, maybe the obvious question first, which is we're having you on as kind of our Japan expert. I've seen you on a ton of shows. I've seen you on like Al Jazeera, cnn, BBC. But you're a white guy from the United States. So could you give me a little background on your pathway to becoming this person that gets interviewed across all of these big news programs and why you're here with us?

[A]

Sure, yeah. Well, anyway, thanks for having me on, guys. But I started out in America as a weeb who likes anime. So you write it off. I'm actually very impressed, actually. That is super cool that I'm here in this studio. But. But I also had academic interests as well. And I was a history major in college in America and I decided to study abroad in Japan for one year. I studied abroad in Nagoya. I loved it there. I loved living in Japan. The vibe of just being here. I mean, I'm sure you guys love it too, visiting. And I was like, I got to get back. And so I did the easy mode to get back in Japan, which is become an English teacher. And I did that for a couple of years. Then I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and research Japan. So to do that I needed better Japanese language abilities than I had from studying four years in college. So I spent two years full time studying Japanese at a Japanese language school. Then I went to graduate school at Waseda University for a master's and a PhD in international studies. And I researched and wrote about what was emerging at that time, which was right wing YouTubers and the kind of. In Japan? Yeah, in Japan. And it's a huge thing now, but back then it was just kind of starting out and the only kind of politics content that was on Japanese YouTube was basically right wing stuff. And so what year is this? This is around 2010ish. So they start their, their, their online channel in 2005 and eventually these activists move to YouTube and they organize offline protests. They crowdfund a fishing boat that they take to the disputed islands, the Senkaku Islands that the, the Chinese claim and the Japanese control. And so they get to film themselves being basically attacked by Chinese patrol boats and the Japanese patrol boats protecting them. And so they go viral in China for this cause. Protests in China. They are involved in all kinds of things related to historical revisionism. And they're the kind of people who today would be very happy that Ms. Takaichi is prime Minister because she shares a lot of their views on History and nationalism and that kind of stuff. But by studying that, I wasn't sure I was going to get a job. But it turned out that my professors really liked my dissertation. It became my book eventually, and I was able to be introduced to some part time gigs, a postdoc, and then eventually. Now I have a full time position teaching at Kanda University of International Studies, which is outside Tokyo in Chiba, near the Makuhari Messe Convention Center. But it's a very nice campus. We have many students who study abroad there. If any of your students are listening or any of your listeners are students or students, I think you have a younger audience than I do when I'm on the BBC with elderly people in hospital waiting rooms. But if any of you are considering studying in Japan, if you study through IES Abroad, which is a consortium that involves many different universities, and you choose Tokyo, I will be one of your teachers at Kando University of International Studies, teaching, depending on what year it is, a politics or popular culture or Japanese society and culture.

[B]

I mean, you told us you were considering not coming on our show, and then some of your students said they'd heard of us and you're like, all right, I'll give it a shot.

[A]

Yeah. I was like, does anybody know what a lemonade stand is? And then during the break time, a student came up to me. He's like, my boyfriend's a huge fan. Like, a huge fan. Like, oh, and he also loves Ludwig. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I guess this is pretty big.

[D]

I mean, did he mention Dug Dug at all?

[A]

No, no. I don't think they're big readers, so they wouldn't read a published author.

[B]

That's true. That's true.

[D]

More of a literary. Makes sense.

[A]

That tracks.

[C]

That tracks.

[B]

Do I ask a high level question? So we covered like the breaking news or whatever in America a lot. Whatever it is, Trump Epstein, whatever the big news of the week is. Can I ask you, like, what is the big stories in Japan right now? What is moving everyone's minds in Japan? What is everyone talking about? What's the gossip?

[D]

Or as part of that, I think something I also hear is that the average person in Japan is not very politically inclined. And maybe that's also part of the answer, is that the average person isn't really thinking about it. And I'm curious. Yeah.

[A]

Yes. And I think one of you on your last podcast, you mentioned that your haircut person asked you about politics or something. Yeah.

[B]

So I asked him and he didn't want to ask.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So in Japan, there is a saying there are three things you should never talk about with people. One is religion, because you could have a different view of, you know, somebody could be going to hell or something like that. You don't want to have that conversation. The second is baseball, because you might have different teams.

[B]

Doesn't everyone agree on Ohtani, though?

[A]

Well, yeah, everybody in Japan loves Ohtani, but among their local teams.

[B]

I see.

[A]

And the third is politics. So people don't talk about politics normally here. Most people don't learn much about politics in school. In high school, in an effort to be very neutral, they basically end up learning very little about the political parties and what they stand for. Really? Yeah. So when I have Japanese students coming into a class that I'm teaching about Japanese politics, I have to start from square one, just basically giving them the political history of their country because they'll get some in their history class, but they won't know what the parties really stand for right now. And now that we have the first female prime minister who is very, very, very, very, very conservative for some reason, she has an 80%, 70% approval rating among young people under 30, which is like incredible for a Japanese prime minister.

[C]

Yeah, it was like a record high, right?

[A]

Yes. And in general, the population, except for elderly people who make up a big chunk of the population, are overwhelmingly positive about her. And I think a lot of it is just because of the vibes on TV of like, oh, cool, like a first, an outsider, a woman as prime minister. But if you were to ask them about specific policies, they wouldn't really even know that much about what the policies are. And basically most of the policies she's been following so far are just the same policies as the last prime minister who was extremely unpopular. But yeah, I mean, one of the big stories here is that she did finally come out and have a policy that is different from her predecessors and that is saying that Japan's Self Defense Forces could face a situation where they help Taiwan if Taiwan is blockaded or invaded. And up until now, Japan has kept quiet. Strategic ambiguity. They would call it like the big, the big lie that we must all agree to so that there's no World War Three.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Is that Taiwan is a part of China. It's not a completely separate country. Don't talk about it like it's a separate country. Don't say you're going to defend it directly. And she broke that taboo by saying, oh well, it could be a life threatening situation for Japan. So we would likely send our Self defense forces. And so now China is very pissed off about this. One of their diplomats tweeted about cutting off her head. He didn't. Japan is a high context language. So he didn't say her name, but he was quote tweeting article about her, saying that about Taiwan. And he said like the dirty neck that sticks its way into somebody else's business will be chopped off. So most people, he could be referring to anybody.

[D]

Missing.

[A]

I mean like that could be anything.

[B]

You can't say anything nowadays. You can't say anything nowadays.

[C]

You can't even wokes come for the guillotine talk. And I won't stand for it.

[D]

So, I mean, Aiden was trying to run into some forbidden area. Maybe he was talking about his neck.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean. Or the whole neck of the country even. I mean. But so I'm glad you mentioned this.

[C]

Because this is the one.

[B]

You know, I was doing a little research. That's the article you're seeing. That's, you know, there's, there's like dozens of updates on this. It's like really big. And then I think Japan or no, China's responding now or something, right?

[A]

Yes. I mean, in addition that, that tweet, the guy did sort of get canceled for it. He had to delete it. But the Chinese government just said, oh, that was just his personal opinion. But China is taking its first steps beyond words. Now, by last night, in the middle of the night, the news broke that they were going to tell their citizens, please don't travel to Japan. And you guys have been traveling around Japan. You know, there's tons of Chinese tourists here. They're usually the number one or number two amount of tourists coming into the country. Them in Korea, South Korea, the two countries that Japan often has disputes over history with. And so if the millions of Chinese tourists who are coming to Japan just drop off, that will hurt a lot of tourist companies and restaurants and things like that. But Takaichi supporters online, they don't want Chinese tourists in Japan. They despise the Chinese and their government and they think the tourists are rude. They think the tourists are kicking deer. So, you know, they, they are happy. Like their reactions online are like, hell yeah, she's done it.

[B]

No more.

[A]

Chinese are, yeah, they're not thinking about the hotels and the restaurants and the other businesses that are like selling stuff to Chinese. They're like, I don't have to see as many Chinese people anymore. Like, this makes me happy. And so that could be good for her supporters. But it will have an economic impact on the country.

[C]

I did want to ask because you're stressing that Takahashi is so conservative, but she's a part of this party, the LDP that has been in power for a very long time, basically since the 50s with some very small gaps. And I wanted to get a feel for how that intersects with other things I've read about. In the recent election there was a growth in other parties that are maybe further to the right or just right wing in general, like the Senseito Party. And how she, is she like more centrist than these other parties that have also experienced growth? What are, what is her like political position within Japan? Where do these other parties fall? What is the political spectrum or sorry, how has the political spectrum changed as of the recent election and where does she stand among that?

[A]

Well, I mean it's a difficult question to answer because in Japan being conservative or liberal or left wing or right wing, there's totally different issues than Canada or America. So for example, the ldp, it's, it's, it's called the Liberal Democratic Party, but it is a conservative party. It's a big tent conservative party. Today as we're recording this, it's, it's the 70th anniversary of the party's founding and that was in 1955. And they called it the 1955 system because they had this system where they won almost every election and easily and had a majority until the 2000s or until 1990. But still they have been in power almost all the years since 1955 and they're conservative. But within this conservative party you have people who are like center right people, people who might fit within the U.S. democratic Party. I would not call the U.S. democratic Party totally left wing. From my perspective internationally of course there are Bernie Sanders like people in Japan, but most Democrats, mainstream Democrats in the United States would be considered sort of center right ish in Japan. And the LDP has delivered a basically a socialist health care policy for the country. It's not single payer but it's, it's, it's somewhere in between the hell of the United States health care and, and Canada's free health care. So the taxes pay for the health care. And if this recent or is this a long. During the post war years, one of the things the LDP did to stay in power was basically lift ideas from the Socialist party so that the Socialist Party would be weakened as a political force and the LDP could continue having a pro business conservative stance but while also providing a social safety net to people. And so the socialists didn't really have much to argue about because, you know, people were already living comfortable lives. It wasn't extreme wealth inequality or anything like that. And there was generally just a big middle class in Japan and there weren't huge billionaires and stuff, stuff like that. So for if you, until the 1990s, if you were Japanese, why would you want to change horses? And when you're already winning, Right. So the LDP easily won. And then since then, the LDP has sort of had various problems where it's had parties split off for it from it and people leave. But generally they've remained a big tent conservative party with also some very right wing people in it. And some of these right wing people have views about World War II that most of your listeners would consider very extreme. Like Japan was not at fault. Japan didn't commit this atrocity or that atrocity. The comfort women are lying. They were just prostitutes. This kind of ideology, many members of the LDP hold it, many of them don't, but the party keeps them within. And also another thing that has become one of their policies that you wouldn't really expect from a conservative party is that since Prime Minister Abe became Prime Minister in the around 2012, he opened up immigration to Japan. And so immigrants have been increasing. He also wanted Japan to have millions of more tourists. And this was continued on by successive administrations to the point where there are now too many tourists in the minds of many people over tourism and too many immigrants in the minds of many people. If they go on the Internet, they'll read all about how bad tourists and immigrants are.

[B]

And so is this the right wing youtubers are they feeding into this?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, that's their bread and butter now. So they didn't really talk about immigration back when I was writing my book, only a little bit about like Chinese people being potential spies and things like that. But now immigration is a huge issue and you know, the globalists bringing in immigrants, importing immigrants is one of these main things that caused the rise of an alternative far right party called Sanseto, which is a YouTuber party founded by a YouTuber.

[C]

That could be us.

[A]

That could be us YouTuber party. Yeah, just you know, thing in that in 10 or 15 years you guys can, can make a far right party and cash in.

[C]

This is. Yeah, give us the playbook. Well, this is, this is a really interesting thing to dig in on because I just watched a video that Dogan put out and he was explaining that there's this growth behind the Senseito Party or this anti immigrant sentiment in general, that, that doesn't just come from this fatigue of the LDP or the existing power. I think there's a common story that we've heard across a bunch of different countries right now is that they're, they're swinging to more Right. Extremes in a reaction to immigration or other factors in their country with some underlying economic issues that are making people upset. And then they get pushed in some, you know, extreme direction.

[A]

Right.

[C]

He was going on this kind of newer tangent that I think is, I hadn't seen before, which is that the assassination of Shinzo Abe and his connection.

[A]

To the Unified Christian Unification Church.

[C]

Unification Church, excuse me, the Unification Church and the amount of LDP people that were connected to the Unification Church in that scandal was like this huge fracturing of political trust in the country. And that's a huge reason why people are leaning in this direction or why they're fading away from these institutions. I wonder if you can give some more context to that, like what credence that has or.

[A]

Yeah, I think he's completely wrong. But I mean, like, my, my, my, my political scientist friends and I in our discord were like, reacting to his video. Like, what is this? No, no, no, no. But like, but yes, yes, yes. And a little bit. I mean, he was partly right, but I mean, I think he, he's, he tries very hard to downplay the rise of Sanseto and make it seem like it's not a big deal or, you know, that racism isn't as big a deal as people think it is or something like that. But I think anti foreigner sentiment in Japan is very much a real thing and it's getting worse. And Prime Minister Takechi in her campaign speech running to be leader of her party, she started out by talking about rude tourists. Rude foreign tourists, kicking deer.

[B]

I saw that.

[A]

So, so, I mean, she has, I mean, this kind of language against foreigners, as is now part of the mainstream conversation, made more acceptable, if you will, because Sanseto is now a major party that has seats, is that her attempt.

[B]

To like, pull some voters back from Son Saito? She's like leaning like she probably doesn't believe it herself, but. Is, Is that what you think or. I don't.

[A]

Absolutely. It's. It is. There is this feeling within the LDP that they lost voters to Sanseto because Ishiba was seen as a left wing prime minister, but he was conservative. He just wasn't the kind of, you know, conservative who believes things about World War II that Takaichi does. So he wasn't right wing enough for them. He wasn't nationalistic enough for them. So they were turned off by him. The right wing media, the conservative media was running constant attack pieces against Prime Minister Ishiba Takaichi adjacent. People were criticizing him from within the party. So she undermined his premiership and then took over. And they hope, I think the party hopes that the people who went to the right and voted for Sanseto will come back. But the problem is they're not changing the immigration policy. It doesn't look like they are. At least they're going to maybe crack down on people who don't pay their taxes and you know, you can't renew your visa or something if you haven't paid your health care premiums, but that's nothing. She still wants to increase foreign labor in this country. But they don't call it immigration. They've never used the I word.

[B]

What do they call it?

[A]

They call it talent. They call it skilled workers. They have a variety of different euphemisms. Yeah, yeah, but they, they absolutely. Once again, when she became prime minister, her administration said we do not have an immigration policy. I mean seisaku, we don't have this policy. But they're accepting more workers for industries that need workers. And the labor shortage is huge in Japan.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't they almost have to. Right. Based on the declining age of the Japanese populace and the no births, don't they have to have or does people not agree?

[A]

You're sounding like a globalist. I mean people. The thing is, Japanese people don't want more immigrants. Really. They, they don't want their country to change in general. I don't think, of course the easy solution to the economy is, you know, rapidly increase the number of foreigners by millions to fill the labor shortage. But the LDP has been doing it more gradually. It's still though at a level that it's caused online a whole bunch of influencers and social media people to get rich, just constantly spreading anger and panic about immigrants. There's a town in Saitama called Kawaguchi where there's several hundred Kurdish people who live there. And the right wing media and right wing influencers have wildly inflated the threat of these Kurdish migrants. Some of them are applying for asylum. I think they might be eventually rejected and sent back to their, to Turkey. But the Turkish government of course is happy to say yes, people who are applying for asylum in Japan are the bad kind of Turkish people who are against our government. And so, so they, the Japanese right wing people cite Turkey saying, yeah, they think they're like terrorists.

[C]

Everything I hear about the Kurds, they just have it so rough.

[A]

They have it.

[C]

Every bit of news about the Kurds is just them getting treated like shit.

[A]

Yeah. And. And they do a lot of jobs the Japanese don't want to do, like taking down houses. I think in one of your older episodes, you talked about how, you know, in Japan, a house is built for one generation and then it's torn down and rebuilt. Well, who tears down these houses? Japanese people don't want to do that job. It's rough. It doesn't pay very well. A lot of these immigrants have founded companies where they do that. They bring in trucks and they take away the bits of houses and stuff. So in the construction industry, you have immigrants, and that's one place they're visible. But there are also some cases of very sketchy ways that they put, like, construction materials on the back of a truck that get filmed and go on TikTok and go viral. And they're like, look at these. This is definitely a Kurdish person driving this. I can tell by the way.

[B]

By the way they're driving.

[A]

Jesus. But I saw a Japanese guy driving a pretty sketchy van yesterday, too, with lots of stuff piled up on the.

[B]

No, you're wrong.

[C]

I didn't see it or know about this problem until. Until right now, but I'm pretty sure that was occurring.

[B]

I'm pretty sure.

[A]

Or a secret Korean, as they. As they say, maybe.

[C]

Maybe half and half.

[A]

Actually, in Japan, if somebody gets arrested for a heinous crime and they're on the news, people online will inevitably say, are you sure that's really a Japanese person? Maybe they're a Korean who's taken a Japanese name. You know, they're secretly Korean. Right. And within the yakuza, you know, this is actually a truth that a lot of members of the Yakuza were of Korean background because they were kind of excluded from everyday society. And that's one of the areas, you know, pachinko parlors and yakuza. But I mean, in general, most people who commit crime in Japan are Japanese just by odds of odds. But they don't want to believe that some criminals are Japanese.

[D]

I want to just like, kind of reiterate something you said or re. Ask it, because what you're describing sounds exactly like what is going on in America and all over the world, which is that there's, you know, everybody generally feels upset. And then countries are pointing to immigration and saying, this is the problem. Right. And then in America, as we've talked About a lot this year that has resulted in not only the election of Trump, but then the actual action of, you know, much more activity at the border. These, you know, ICE going around doing crazy deportations all over the place. And that's been a huge source of strife, internal discussion, conflict, all that. And then that sounds different from what you're describing, which is the same kind of rhetoric led to Takaichi being elected. But it's not result like they're not going in unmarked vans with masks and pulling Kurdish people off the street. It doesn't sound like. So I'm curious, like why do you think that is divergent of the same type of dialogue but maybe the government isn't actually changing the policy around it.

[A]

Well, I think that the real globalism that's happening here is the globalization of anti immigrant like theories and ideas. Right. So a lot of what you hear from Sanseto or far right people in Japan is just imported from America or the UK or Europe. What they say about immigrants over there, they'll often even use videos from America and Europe and say this, this could be the future of Japan. Look at this. And so like immigrants are. Most immigrants in Japan are not visibly that different from Japanese people because they're Korean or Chinese. And so that also creates the secret Korean theories and stuff. But you don't have a huge immigration issue yet here. But they have created it in the minds of people to feel like this country's been invaded by immigrants. And partly it's also because there's just so many tourists out there that that's what they see. Tourists who don't know the rules, can't speak Japanese, carrying around big suitcases. Yeah, yeah. That guy trying to jog down that he's not supposed to jog down the.

[B]

Wrong lane in the pool.

[A]

Yeah, I mean you're the reason why I'm going to be put in a camp. No, but.

[D]

We think it's the same guy.

[B]

Aiden, have you seen this man poster? But they're hunting down white guys.

[A]

But yeah, I mean it's, it's like Japan doesn't really have that much of an illegal immigration problem. The number, if you look at the stats, actually the, the number of illegal, illegally residing foreigners in Japan which they know exactly the number because they don't have a border. That's porous. Right. It's people who overstay their visas or disappear from their job job areas and it's about 70,000 and it's actually going down because the yen is weaker. So it's not beneficial so, yeah, so, so like a lot of these people, they're like from Southeast Asia, like Vietnamese who are working on a farm and then they decide to run off and work somewhere else for slightly more money. But the number of them is very small and they're not in places where the, you know, the immigration authorities would know to get them easily. It's not like America where you just roll up at a Home Depot and then just. Or any restaurant just like try to raid their kitchen. So there isn't like the level of undocumented people in Japan. But in Takaichi's campaign, the LDP's campaign, they've talked about the need for zero illegal foreigners. Zero illegal foreigners, this big slogan. But I mean, the number of foreigners that are illegal in Japan is pretty much zero, statistically speaking.

[C]

Is there any? Because my reaction to this as an outsider is this is insane. Like, to even, to give any credence to blaming problems on a portion of the population that is so remarkably small is so obviously wrong. Is there any reaction in the other direction in discussion or the political realm of this, this mentality is ridiculous and we need to change. Or is it just falling? Or is it just passiveness and people falling further to the right?

[A]

I think that the Japanese left, they do talk about it. They, they care about the rights of immigrants, but they're just politically weak. And the voters don't really pay much attention to the left wing parties. Like the Communist Party is a thing here. You can search on YouTube. I took Hassan Piker to the Communist Party headquarters here in Tokyo for a tour. And the communists are all about like, you know, we gotta stop these racist lies. Racism is bad. And when you see like anti racism protesters show up at far right speeches and stuff, those are usually like the small percentage of Japanese who either vote for the socialist or the Communist party. And the Communist Party in Japan is not really that communist. I mean, yes, they love Marx and stuff, but they just don't have any political power. And actually the Communist committee member who gave us a tour who could speak English, he told us that young people in Japan, they actually, some of them think that the Communist Party is conservative because it's just a name that's so old to them. It's like mentioning some old YouTuber that.

[B]

Kids these days, PewDiePie.

[C]

Yeah, it's like Seanan heard about that guy.

[A]

It just sounds old and crusty.

[B]

Cod reacts, right? Wait, there was a phrase you said like 10 minutes ago that stuck with me and I wanted to ask you about. You talked about Because I've heard this from other people, talk about Japan generally or in the minds of people not changing. Like, it's very static in a lot of ways. But from what you're describing, it sounds like at least in recent years or post Covid, has that been changing? Is this like an actual period where you feel like the decades of similarness is changing or is this part of the same? Is this more of the like, is there. Yeah. In your opinion?

[C]

I guess, like, my assumption would be under, like in the wake of COVID your currency's declining, like there. My. I have a feeling that pressures on people economically would push people to become more politically active or involved or ask for change in a way they haven't before.

[A]

I think that it has made people unhappy, just in general unhappy with the government. They don't know what is the problem. But if you're a young person, if you're my age or your age or the age of your viewers in Japan, you look ahead to the future of Japan and you see a dark abyss, which is the country will be overwhelmingly elderly and you will be one of the few taxpayers who has to pay for this healthcare system that is very generous to everybody in the country. And you don't want to pay taxes, you don't want to. And you see the defense budget's going to go up, you know that somebody's going to have to pay for that too. You see your currency getting weaker, the prices are going up, your salary is not going up. A lot of people in Japan, I've been here 20 years, you know, for 20 years, people were okay with just having the same salary every year for 20 years because prices never changed.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And now they are all changing and it sucks. And people want the government to do something about it. So I think the reason why the LDP has been losing in recent elections is just because people are fed up and they just want to vote for something that's not the ldp. And the LDP has had scandals. Yes, the Abe assassination, Unification Church scandal was a big one, but maybe bigger than that was a slush fund scandal where they were. Where members of the party would have fundraising parties and they wouldn't fully report the income from them. And then they would use the money that like from that unreported funds for God knows what. They. But those who got caught doing it, they just blamed their low level staff and the staff went to prison. But that's a beast. This is, this is how almost all political scandals end in Japan is with like some low level Person taking the fall and.

[D]

Or their translator. Translator was doing it.

[A]

Like they wrote the laws about political funding in a way so that, that you have to prove that the person was directly knowledgeable of that what they were doing was illegal. So they could just say, I didn't know it was illegal like my staff guy said it was okay. And so I did it. And so seeing this kind of money being used is something that makes voters also unhappy. Like, look at these politicians. They're paid so much and they're still not even reporting things. If I didn't pay my taxes, the government would come after me. If I, if I stole money from my company at work, I'd be fired immediately.

[B]

It's wild that you say that though. But then tell me that Takeichi has 80% approval of young people and is popular with old people. And she's ldp and she's.

[A]

And her cabinet has people who are in both scandals. So how did that happen?

[C]

How does this political miracle happen?

[B]

I don't. I'm trying to.

[A]

I think the political apathy of voters has meant that they just think having an outsider like Takaichi, who's not really an outsider, I mean, she is an outsider in that she's not from a political family and she's not from a super rich family that, you know, she had to work her way through college and all this stuff. She's a woman in a male dominated party.

[B]

All about work.

[A]

Right?

[B]

That's her whole thing.

[A]

Yeah, she, I think she said the other day, she sleeps two hours a night. Do you want somebody to be running a country if they sleep two hours a night? I hope she was lying fall asleep on the nuke.

[B]

But.

[A]

But the previous prime minister was infamously always exhausted because he only had like only four or five hours of sleep a night as prime minister. But she's basically saying, like, I can do too. Like, look at that weakling. I'm so strong. And people are like, wow, she's so hard working and she's smiling all the time. The Japanese politicians don't smile. The guys don't smile that much. And maybe she feels pressure as a woman to smile or else people will think she's angry. Right. There's also that kind of gender bias there. But when she's with Trump smiling so much, a lot of young people are like saying, wow, she seems so much friendlier than the previous prime ministers and she seems to be pulling off diplomacy so much better. She's hugging people, she's holding hands with people and stuff. And the previous prime minister seems like the kid in high school who sits in the corner, who doesn't talk to anybody. And they have all these memes of him just at conferences, looking at his phone while other leaders are talking to each other.

[B]

That's so funny, because we would. On the American side, you would never hear that about Sheba. I mean, if you heard about him at all, you would never know that he was a shot. That's just a funny thing that goes viral in each country.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, he will be forgotten in two years, basically, in the whole world. Sadly, I don't think there was anything wrong with him. I think he was actually a very good human being. And maybe if he had been given a chance to reform the party, he could have, but he didn't. He wasn't a boss of a faction. He didn't have the institutional support to actually reform the ldp. So he ended up basically giving the scandal politicians a slap on the wrist. Like he. What. What he should have done was kick them out of the party and then run alternative LDP candidates with the backing of the local LDP parties. But instead he said, you have to run as an independent in the next election, but we're not even going to run anybody against you, and the local LDP volunteers will help you anyway. And so that didn't look good to voters, especially when the Communist Party's newspaper reported that party funds were actually being sent to those local party offices to help with. So just in name only, they were independent. Yeah. And some of them won. And then they got invited back into the party immediately. They said, oh, the voters decided that they're okay and we don't need to pursue this scandal anymore. And most voters were not okay with that. And right now, Takaichi is having several of the most dirty of these people in important posts in the government. And I don't think voters have caught on yet. Or maybe they just don't care anymore. They're just caught up in the good vibes in the media. And like, they talk in the media, they're like, wow, did you see she had this pen, this pink pen. This is the pen that Takaichi was using on her first day in office. It's a jetstream and it was pink. And on TV news, they're like, this pen is now going viral. People are buying it. And look at the handbag she had. And she was asked about her clothing, and she said, she doesn't buy new clothing. This is a jacket from 15 years ago. And people are like, wow, she's so thrifty. And she has this cool pen and like. And like, that's like the level of news reporting that's been going on forever.

[B]

The vibes are great.

[A]

I was right.

[B]

She's winning me over.

[C]

Yeah, it's all vibes at the end.

[B]

It's all vibes.

[D]

That's what's so strange to me is that it's vibes and that you're saying not much is fundamentally changing underneath it, you know, and again, you compare that to what's going on in American politics where a whole lot has changed. You know, this year it's really been, you know, different from. From previous administrations, from previous years. And it's so interesting to hear, like, how much the population seems to respond to just vibes being different, same people underneath, same policies. But we're. Yeah, it's fascinating.

[A]

Yeah. And another thing, though, is that the. The Internet right wing is a. Is a big thing in Japan. The Twitter is a space that for years, even before Elon, was dominated by, like, viral right wing accounts that share sometimes interesting stuff, sometimes racist stuff, sometimes super right wing stuff. And so these accounts have millions of followers and they go viral all the time. And they love Takaichi. And so you see positive posts about Takaichi going viral all the time now on Twitter. So if you're not even a political person, these are going to show up on your timeline. And for example, the other day, one of her ministers was being questioned by the opposition, and he started basically stammering. He couldn't name exactly what their policy was. So Takaichi is like, sit down, I'll explain it. And she went up and explained it and they shared this, like, look at how awesome she is. But I mean, she's the one who appointed this dude to be in charge of that policy. But they spun it into like, whoa, the girl boss takes over from this, like, idiot. Like, she is the greatest prime minister ever. But.

[B]

Okay, so I want to ask, is part of this, in your estimation, a honeymoon period? She's new, right? Most politicians like this get 100 days, 200 days of grace where it's like, the vibes are more important. And then if prices keep going, you know, if the things that caused her to ride this wave are still there, do you expect as well?

[D]

Just curious what you think will actually.

[A]

Happen once we threw the first month. I mean, it's hard to predict, but in the past, there always was a sort of honeymoon period. The Japanese prime ministers would get that. They would start off with like, over 50% approval rating or when in the 2000s, the LDP lost and the Democratic Party of Japan took over, they had basically Takaichi level support in their first few months. And then they just dropped the ball and everything, and they fell into the 20s and got wrecked by Abe in an election a couple of years later. But the thing is, she doesn't have the key to solve this problem. Right. The prices are not going to go down. There's no magic wand to wave here. Like, it's a very complicated problem and she is going to pay more for defense. And you can't just print money if you want the yen. Well, yeah. I mean, she is.

[C]

If there's this one thing I know this country loves doing.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, they can print money. Yes, they can. But then the yen will become even weaker and the prices will go up for everything also. So, I mean, Japan imports its energy and imports most of its food. The rice is more expensive now, too. So the rice grown in Japan is double the price it used to be. And there are a lot of people who would eat rice every day. So can I ask about that?

[C]

Hold that thought. I heard that's because the foreigners do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I wanted to ask is like. So I heard the rice thing was a big issue in this last election. Everyone was talking about the rice, and I heard there was this viral thing that. Or some politicians said that the reason it's so expensive is the foreigners are coming here and eating all the rice. And I've seen Doug pound a lot of rice.

[D]

No, there was truth. I was. I was reading that article in this onigiri shop as I just like bags.

[C]

And bags, like an anime.

[D]

I literally. There's been. Okay, embarrassingly, there's been multiple stores I've been to where I order, and then they come back and they say, like, this set already has these items. And I'll be like, oh. Which is like, I'm a glutton, basically.

[B]

And they write it in the newspaper.

[D]

Right. I mean. But then I follow up and I was like, of all the food I've eaten in Japan, this is my favorite in Japanese. And then they're very happy, hopefully. Maybe they actually go to the kitchen. They're like, he's foreigners.

[A]

I mean, you're giving business to restaurants. I mean, yes, tourists are eating rice. Yeah, they're eating rice. People are eating rice. But I think that the core problem of the rice price increase was not tourists eating rice. But I think a year or two ago, the government made this big announcement that. But by the way, there's like a Slightly increased chance that sometime this year there could be the big one, the big earthquake. And as a precaution, these are the things you should have in your house to keep. And then like one of those was like a month supply of rice. And so on that brief time at the beginning of summer, everybody went out and bought all the rice in the. In the supermarkets. And then the market has never recovered since. So they drove up the prices with this. And the rice farmers don't want to sell it for cheaper anymore because they like the prices the way they are now. But there's not a shortage of rice anymore. But technically. But the thing is, the government for many decades has seen that the population is declining and has planned by letting farmers know, don't grow too much rice because you're going to grow so much, it's going to be too cheap. So they have like a whole chart they have laid out. And then that one year where it suddenly the demand spiked over what it was supposed to be, and they haven't recovered from that. And they're trying to make the rice farmers grow more. But you know, it takes a full year to get your crops out. And people don't want to buy American rice because it sucks. And so, or at least they say it tastes worse, even if it is a Japanese.

[B]

Everyone say, that's what I've heard. I don't know. I'm not. I can't figure it out.

[A]

But it all tastes the same to me.

[B]

I don't want to taste the difference.

[C]

My dumb American mouth cannot taste the.

[A]

Difference in the rice. I've been here for 20 years and I sadly cannot tell the difference between premium rice and the cheapo rice.

[B]

People would kill you for this.

[A]

It's not in my DNA. I know I don't have the Yamato blood.

[B]

Can I ask you brought some props about some parts of Japan you wanted to tell us about. I would really love to hear about this.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. So these are little mascot characters. You might wonder what they are mascot characters of. This is Erika Chang, and this is Erio Kun, her boyfriend. And they are mascot characters of the Northern Territories. The Northern Territories or the southern. Kuril Islands are four islands that the Soviet Union occupied after World War II that were settled by Japanese people and Ainu people and the Soviets, they deported all the Japanese and then had Russian White Russian settlers come in and occupy the former houses of Japanese people. And getting back these four islands has been a big goal of all the Japanese governments ever since. At one point, there was almost a chance that they might get two of the four back, but it's become such an issue that there is like a cabinet post dedicated to territorial disputes where they are in charge of reminding the public about the northern territories. So they have these cute. I forget what breed of penguin like thing they are, but they have mascot characters. They have a website with a quiz where you can take quizzes about, like, the kinds of seafood that are there. And they have an isekai anime that they made about the northern territories. It's on YouTube for free. It doesn't have subtitles, sadly. But it's about a girl who, I think she gets in an accident and then she wakes up and she's in like 1940s Japan on these islands. And the Russians come in and they're like, her dog barks at them to save her from the Russians attacking her and maybe assaulting her or something like that. And the Russians loot their homes and take their valuables. And in the end, they get on their boats and they're going away and they have to leave their dogs behind. And the dogs run to the shore and are swimming after their boats, swimming after their boats. And off into the distance, they see their dogs just going away and maybe dying.

[B]

You want to be like Fury. The point of the anime is to make you furious.

[C]

The isekai. At any point in the isekai, do they go to the. The like the. You said the 1940s, right? Does it go to, like, any other parts of Asia during that time?

[A]

No, no, no, we don't. We never ask what's happening in other parts of Asia.

[C]

It's really just about those islands.

[A]

But actually, it may not be an isekai, because when she wakes up, it turns out that she was inside of her grandmother's body temporarily. And her grandmother was like, she had a thing. And they immediately knew, oh, that was me in you back then, living for that period. So isekai technically means another world. So it's actually the same world. I see. Yeah, it's like a body swap kind of historical body swap drama. It's a new genre anime.

[D]

What do you think the odds are that Russia at some point says they will defend the islands and Takeshi threatens to behead them?

[A]

Well, I mean, chain going, right.

[D]

I mean, it does sound somewhat similar of, you know, islands that were part of the nation at one point and now they're both claiming ownership.

[A]

Well, with territorial disputes, what really matters is who controls the islands. Right. So Russia always talks about how they will defend the islands to the death. And you know this is Russian territory. We will never give it up to the evil Japanese and so on. They, they never technically signed the. The treaty ending World War II. The Russians walked out of the San Francisco Treaty. So the islands are kind of part of the reason why they have never resolved fully like a full treaty, although they have resumed diplomatic relations and so on. They didn't have a war ending treaty in the way that the other allies did with Japan.

[C]

So if I go there right now, I'm gonna be. I'm going to hang out with a bunch of like Russian guys.

[A]

Well, if you get on a boat and you head that way, you're gonna get shot.

[C]

Okay, okay.

[A]

The Russians shoot at boats that enter the.

[D]

What is that? Pull it up. What are the name of the islands?

[B]

Can I see what they look like?

[A]

Japan. Northern Territory will give you a website.

[B]

There's a great Russian cartoon about this where they raise some dogs.

[A]

Oh, that's beautiful. On the map it's showing like they have a museum. But yeah, the Northern Territories website will have.

[C]

And I'm sorry, because there's two mascots. Does Japan only want two of the islands back or they want all of them?

[A]

They have four, technically. They have one bird for each island and I don't have the full set, unfortunately. I only think they made these two because these are the main ones. But they have bird buddies that represent the smaller islands. But they're named Eddie because I think it's Eddie Futo is one of the islands. But yeah, they, they want all four back. The islands are. Because they were not really developed in the other way Japan is. They have some of the most pristine nature compared to other parts of Japan and they do have a limited number of Russian settlers. But yeah, it's just an issue that the Japanese politicians talk about. But they're never going to resolve it because Putin will never give up the territory. But Takechi will never say she'll cut off Putin's head either because never say never.

[B]

We're in a strange town.

[D]

He's been.

[C]

No, well, no, no. He's been known to hold his ground, I suppose.

[D]

Is Takaichi. Are these islands in more of the discussion right now in the same way that immigration is, even though probably nothing will change?

[A]

No, the islands are rarely in the discussion. But there is a day in February every year where they have a national Remembrance Day where the government might buy TV commercials to remind people or hold a speech contest for junior high school students to give speeches about, like how we should get back the islands. And recently they've been adding in. You know, it's just like Ukraine, like Russia stole land and that. That makes it more sympathetic. I think there's a lot more anti Russian feeling in Japan now because of Ukraine. In my own anecdotal experience in classes, students seem much more interested in histories of war and stuff like that because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, because war was. Seemed so distant to them. And it is distant, but Russia is also Japan's neighbor too. So, yeah, the Russia, scary bad. China, scary bad. North Korea scary bad. These are all like, you know, big issues for Japan. Like, I mean, North Korea shooting missiles into the. The. The ocean near Japan like once a week. I think they did it last week. But luckily we have a defense Minister who can protect Japan, and that is Koizumi Shinjiro, who is the son of a former prime minister. Until he became defense minister, he was widely considered just a handsome guy.

[C]

He's handsome.

[A]

He's. He's married to a TV melody, and they were like a celebrity couple, but on the Japanese Internet, he's basically considered a huge idiot because he says things that are just redundant. Like in the past, he has his very serious, handsome face. And then he just says something that just sounds like he's repeating the same thing twice. And so he had this huge reputation of just being like an airheaded son of a respected prime minister who only got elected because he.

[C]

I thought you were gonna say airheaded son of a bitch.

[A]

No.

[C]

You really don't like him.

[D]

I was like, God damn, I must have missed this. He's the son of a former prime minister.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Okay. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. And in the recent leadership election, basically almost every candidate running against Takechi was the son of a politician or the son of a government bureaucrat. So in Japan, that's why she look.

[B]

I mean, she looks like not the Nepo baby of all the.

[A]

She's a rare non Nepo baby politician to become a leader of Japan. And not only that, she's a woman, and that's an enormous achievement. But, you know, the Nepo baby here, you know, he has fans and he has this signature jacket. It's a jacket from his hometown of Yokosuka. There's a photo of him and Pete Hegseth wearing matching jackets. He gave one to the American war Secretary when he visited Japan. Yeah, there's the photo. So it looks pretty cool. Hegseth even shared it on his Twitter, so he. He clearly liked it. And Koizumi, despite a reputation for being an airhead, he went to Columbia University for graduate School, probably from his connections, but he can speak fluent English. He worked at csis, so he's got the connections with, you know, the defense people in Washington, you know, because CSIS is where all the, you know, big defense people go. So in reality, he actually is maybe a good choice to be defense minister. I was going to say this, this.

[D]

Feels like the perfect fit for the current American administration.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Good looking. You know, you talk a lot on tv. You present a cool jacket. The jacket, you know, seems like Trump loves Takahashi. Like for better or for worse. It certainly seems like they know how to make the American government happy.

[A]

They, they've had a game plan since Prime Minister Abe was in office and handled Trump. And that is, you know, never publicly disagree with Trump. When you meet him, bring lots of good news to tell him about Japan investing in America. They'll tell him all these numbers. You know, the Japanese Prime Minister doesn't decide when car companies build factories in America, but they will announce it to Trump. Like, we're helping you in America. We're investing in your country. Like, we created thousands of jobs here, here and here. And Trump will be like, awesome, cool. And it's all on one page with little pictures and stuff. So he, and then because he's a.

[D]

Big gifts guy, Shinzo Abe's golf ball.

[A]

Gold golf ball too.

[B]

Oh, damn.

[A]

Yeah. So the Shinzo Abe golf thing was another part of this diplomacy. Like be super nice to Trump, constantly flatter him, say how awesome he is.

[C]

I can, I hate how other countries talk about our country right now because it's so, it's usually so true. But it makes me so sad. Like it's, it's like I'm listening to you explain the Japanese government treating our, our president like a child. Like, here's the coloring book he has to fill out. Here's the pictures we show him, here's the investment, here's the numbers we make up that we can't actually commit to.

[B]

Number of gold golf clubs received. Trump won Biden zero.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. That shows Biden wasn't respected. Around the.

[D]

I went to, I met my friend's 4 year old daughter and he was like, just, I mean, no pressure, but if you bring a gift, like she opens up a lot easier or you.

[B]

Know, you go to a friend's house.

[D]

You'Re like, hey, here's this treat my cat loves. Give her this churro tube and then she's going to really open up.

[B]

It sounds like a cat, right?

[A]

Yeah. I have a story related to this one time, a very, very Famous professor at a major Western university, one of the most renowned experts on Japan US Relations. I met him because he liked my Twitter posts and he wanted to meet me when he came to Tokyo. And he. He's like, jeff, have you watched South Park? And I'm like, what? Yeah, it's pretty good show sometimes. And he's like, well, you know that, that Pokemon episode, I don't know if you guys have seen it.

[B]

20 years ago.

[A]

Yeah, it's long time ago. Old, old school, South Park. And he said, Abe is just like the Japanese guy to Randy Marsh, you know, oh, you have such a huge. So big. You're American penis. And, like, and I'm shocked hearing this from, like, a guy who's like 30 years older than me and, like, one of the most famous professors. And I'm like, whoa. So that's what they're thinking about Abe in other academic institutions when they see him talking to Trump. There's also a famous viral moment where they were playing golf and Abe fell backwards into a sand trap. And Trump just kept on walking and didn't even notice. And Abe scrambles out of the sand to get back. Sir, sir. Yes. Your golfing is so great. But in Japan, though, there's this perception that Abe was like a diplomatic genius and he saved Japan from the wrath of Trump. And so they want to repeat Abe's playbook.

[B]

That's her whole thing, right? Not just with Trump, with everything. She's like an Abe. We're going to run that back.

[A]

And they want to see Abe as a great prime minister who never did anything wrong.

[C]

But I don't understand. Abe wasn't well liked, right? In the wake of that scandal, in the wake of his lack of success or the economic position of the country. Now people don't like Abe, but she's trying to replicate it. Maybe this is just asking the same question from earlier, but I really don't understand why that's such an attractive model to chase.

[A]

I think younger.

[B]

Did you see her pen? Did you see her pen or.

[C]

No, hold on, hold on. I did forget about the pen.

[A]

Yeah, I did forget about the pen. This is a pen. That's the first sentence in every English textbook in Japan. But the. The thing about Abe is, you're right, he wasn't loved. He had, like, you know, under 50% approval rating for sometimes over 50% approval rating. But there were people who absolutely loved him. And then there were people on the left who thought he was like, Hitler 2.0, you know, trying to turn Japan to fascism, like Just exaggerating every bad thing he did. And he did some bad things. There were scandals and stuff, but he was a competent Prime Minister and he didn't do anything terrible. And he shared the historical views of Japan's right wing people who think that the war wasn't so bad. But he didn't officially reverse the apologies. And same with Takaichi, she hasn't reversed the apologies, but they still are like, yeah, but you know, she knows the truth. Just like she just has to say it for herself.

[C]

Can I get a bit of the right wing logic behind that? Like, so they want to revoke the apologies for World War II actions taken during World War II.

[A]

They think that the apologies were overblown. Like, you know, Japan fought that war in self defense. Even the invasion of China was like, you know, classic self defense move. There's a guy, the former chief of staff of Japan's Air Force, he wrote an essay arguing that secret Chinese communist spies orchestrated the incident that caused Japanese and Chinese to exchange fire and result in the whole full scale invasion of China. And he won a prize from the owner of or somebody who's family that owns the APA Hotels chain. APA Hotels is a chain that many of your viewers will stay at. If you stay there, it's a very affordable small hotel room and you get free right wing literature in English that will tell you why Japan was not bad in World War II and why it was actually Ludwig's House when you stayed there. It is like Ludwig's House. Oh, he has a Minecraft.

[C]

If you go, there's a little brochure in the guest room at Ludwig's House and it's a crazy read.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, they think a lot of the atrocities are just fabrications. Chinese people lying. They think that the Americans forced Japan into Pearl harbor by cutting off Japan's oil and arming China. So they think the war crimes trials after the war were just unfair victors Justice. So that shrine, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, that is like a place where the spirits of all the war dead, including the 14 war leaders who were executed in the war crimes trials, is like a political flashpoint for diplomatic things. So if Takaichi, she's visited it all the time in the past when she wasn't Prime Minister. But right now she's kind of holding her cards and it's not clear if she'll visit or not. But if she doesn't, her supporters will still be like, yeah, but she visited all those times in the past and she still believes These things. So she still respects these. But the emperor and the emperor's family has never gone to that shrine. Ever since they enshrined the war criminals in the 1970s, they just stopped going completely. And so the position of a more moderate conservative in Japan is that I will visit Yas Kuni when it is made to be like a shrine that the emperor can visit. And that, that sounds cooler than. I think the wartime leaders are the worst bad guys ever. And that's why I'm not visiting. And there's a lot of problems with those war crimes trials. If you read about them, I mean, they were very problematic. I'm not saying that they were not guilty, but it was very arbitrary about who got blamed for what.

[C]

Look, we dropped two atomic bombs. There's not like a clean bill of health.

[A]

Right. I'm reminded. And every time Japan is playing in an international sports game against America, I'm reminded on Twitter of those bombs by people leaving responses, oh, yeah, people do.

[C]

Whip that one out. People do drive a little too liberally. I would say will too.

[A]

Yeah. I think one of the big shocks to Japanese students when I teach them about the politics of war memory is that in America there are a lot of people who are like, hell yeah, the bombs were good and we, you know, we should have dropped them. And like, why would America ever apologize for that? And Japanese, actually, they didn't. A lot of them don't know that. There's Americans who have this like, gung ho. Really? Gung ho view. Yeah. I show them videos about it and they're like, wow, I can't believe, like there's a video of an. A bomb scientist who meets a Japanese TV channel, takes him to meet elderly bomb survivors who ask him for an apology and he's like, why don't you apologize for Pearl Harbor? And they start crying like these like 80 year olds start crying. And he's just like, he's like, remember Pearl Harbor? I had a friend who died at Pearl harbor, like, those bombs are the best thing. And they asked him, like, there's an internal flame in Hiroshima, like that will go like it's. They say they'll turn it off when a bombs are removed. Like nuclear weapons are gone from this world. And they ask him, like, do you think this will ever be turned off? And he's like, I think the world will run out of gas first.

[B]

Guys are real big nuclear fan.

[A]

Well, he was a nuclear scientist, so it was his job.

[D]

Yeah, but I didn't know we'd go in this direction. But now I'm curious because I have to ask. So obviously the bombs is a very contentious topic and the argument for it beyond just some guy going gung ho Pearl Harbor. I think the let's say more sophisticated argument would be Japan was not willing to surrender in this war. They were basically saying we would have to do a land invasion. This would have taken tens of millions of lives on both sides. And the bomb was the way to escalate it to the point that Japan was forced to give up and that was the better of two horrific outcomes. That is the argument on the American side. Is that taught to Japanese people? Is that considered like how does.

[A]

I don't think that it's taught in that level of detail to Japanese. I mean in America we learn it in that way and that's the way they teach it. When you take a tour of the Smithsonian or the one in Virginia that has the atomic bomb, airplane at it, they'll tell you this saved millions of lives by dropping these bombs. But there is a whole, I mean what ifs in history are impossible. You can't prove a counterfactual. But there are all kinds of arguments to be made that Japan was at the point of giving up or they were willing to accept the Potsdam Declaration, which is the unconditional surrender terms that we gave them on the condition that the Emperor be not abolished, that the monarchy would still exist. And there were back channel communications that eventually led the Japanese to believe that the Emperor would be kept. And that really contributed to their decision to surrender. And the Soviet invasion of China, of Manchuria, was also as big, maybe even bigger than the atomic bombs. To the Japanese side, from their perspective, their whole game plan was Russia is still neutral. They have a treaty that promises not to attack us that we signed with them in I think 1940. So this non aggression pact allows us to use Russia, who are friends with those other countries, to negotiate an end to the war. But then Russia broke this treaty. The treacherous Russians broke the treaty. And that's another part of like the anti.

[B]

And they got the islands right.

[A]

Yeah. So like they had a treaty. They promised not to like for at least one or two more years. There was a non aggression pact and the Russians, the Japanese respected that pact. When Hitler invaded Russia, they ultimately had a debate about whether they were going to attack Russia. And they said no, we have this treaty. And also the southward advance is more important. I'm getting off topic, but anyway, yeah, but like the A bombs there's all kinds of arguments to be made and I think A lot of Japanese believe that maybe the war could have ended without the bombs. And they certainly think that the bombs are something that you shouldn't celebrate. You should think about the suffering. One of the biggest groups of people who died were. Were junior high school students because they were working in factories in the middle of the city. And so it's like a very tragic thing. Every Japanese school child tends to either watch movies that are graphic about Hiroshima and Nagasaki or visit the places as a school trip and see just the horror of it. And so they can't imagine the idea of like, people joking about the atomic bombs or like, like wearing atomic bomb T shirts and stuff like that. Like, that really offends them, like, greatly. Or like, if somebody says like on the Internet, as they often do, like two weren't enough or something like that, you know, like, that makes them very angry. And I remember I was interviewed by the media back when there was the Barbenheimer thing going on in America. And then like, Japanese people, some of them got offended by Barbenheimer because the official Warner Brothers Japan account, like, liked or retweeted some. Some comment about it. And then they're like, what the hell? Like, we're gonna boycott the Barbie movie now? Because you're saying that, like, the A bomb thing is funny because it was like a meme with like Barbie and an A bomb or something like that. And so that Warner Brothers Japan had to apologize. Actually, I think it was the US Account, Warner Brothers US account liked something. So Warner Brothers Japan had to say sorry, that wasn't us. Like, we are respectful of the bombs and like it's a tragedy and stuff. And so, like, it's. It's not a thing you joke about here, is it?

[D]

Gotta be incredibly weird to have America combining Barbie and pop in one of the greatest tragedies into this fun meme marketing. And you're just. You're sitting here on this other side.

[B]

Of the world had like a 911 movie mixed with an anime. That'd be incredibly strange.

[C]

An insane, strange thing that would unfortunately be really funny.

[B]

It does say that the box office of Oppenheimer in Japan was pretty big.

[A]

Like, they must have seen it. Yeah, there was this thing on the Internet, people claiming that it's never going to be released in Japan. But there are cinema fans here, okay? Lots of people who like films by famous directors. And they're not going to miss out on. I think it's. Nolan directed it right now. So they are going to want to see the next Christopher Nolan movie. And they don't care if it's about the atomic bomb or not. In the. And I was interviewed by some Japanese media at the time. I had luckily seen the film in America while visiting my parents. So I actually knew that the film is not at all celebrating the bombs in the slightest. Like he's torn morally over having created this thing. And so there is one scene where he is like, he's sort of going crazy while people around him are cheering after the bomb went off. But like, I think some Japanese person who saw the movie abroad misread that and said, like, there's a scene of people cheering. And then like people on the Internet were like, what? Cheering. The atomic bomb, that's gross. But when it came out, it did fine. It did fine. People went to see it. They saw. Even some atomic bomb survivors went to see it and they said, you know, this is a pretty good anti nuclear movie, I think, but it maybe they should have shown a little bit of Japan, you know.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Is there. Because in the last, you know, let's say 10 to 20 years in America.

[A]

Right.

[C]

I think you grow up in the US using the example of the atomic bombs with that narrative of justification which, you know, you can argue about the merits of. And I think we have a lot of things like that in American history where there are ways you're taught about how things unfolded in the past. And there has been a large, you know, educational or social movement that pushes against that and has people question the way we were taught. American history, Americans, America's place in the world. Is there any sort of movement like that within Japan, within academia in Japan? Because at the same time I'm hearing that, which I can fully understand people being upset at the idea of jokes about atomic bombs or justification for atomic bombs. You know, Japan is in their own way a, you know, a terrible perpetuator of. Of war crimes within World War II. As an example. Right. And you. The constant thing you hear as an American is Japan's denial of the gravity of those crimes or even the recognition of those crimes. So in the same way that the US is going through kind of a period of time where people are reconciling the things that our country has done in the past. Is there anything like that here?

[A]

Yes, actually, basically the genesis for the Shinzo Abe take kind of conservative nationalist movement took place in the 1990s as a backlash against the apologies that the Japanese government made at the time. And the Japanese government officially recognizes a whole list of these things happening. It's their official position. But there were politicians within the LDP who said we shouldn't have made this apology. Like the comfort women were not sex slaves. You know, the Nanking massacre is wildly exaggerated or didn't happen at all. And so these politicians, they looked at the education system, the post war education system in Japan. It teaches that the war was a war of aggression and it was bad and it caused suffering. And some of the textbooks mention atrocities, but it's a history textbook for entrance exams, so it's very boring. It's like memorize dates and names so you can fill out on a multiple choice. And so they don't really go into that much detail. But the right wing in Japan was like, why are they teaching woke history? Like in our school they didn't call it woke, they call it masochistic history. So like masochistic, you, you're, you're, you're inflicting pain on yourself so that you won't love your country. So I mean if now they've started using the word woke in katakana woku. Wait, really? I think somebody called me that on social media once. But yeah, but like it's. The American woke history thing started in Japan in the 1990s and it created a whole conservative movement to try different, change history to be more patriotic. Which means mention the good stuff, don't mention the bad stuff, or downplay the bad stuff or even justify the bad stuff as understandable based on what was happening at the time. And say that China and Korea are lying about history and so on and China and Korea, to be fair, are lying about history a lot. Everyone is right, but I mean they do exaggerate things. But many of these atrocities are very, very real and they happened. It's just that on the Korean side and the Chinese side, sometimes they give very high estimates that are higher than what most historians internationally would say is the actual number of certain things. And so this is what Japanese right wing people lock onto and say we have to correct the wrong history that's overseas. And, and just mentioning comfort women as sex slaves is already like something that would get them to go after a publishing company or any kind of like they went after, I think one of the major American textbook company for doing this. They had the embassy complain to them because they used the word sex slave for comfort women. This was under Abe as prime minister and I think Takaichi wants to continue this. They want countries to take down statues that are commemorating the comfort women and say that they were sex slaves on it. Because the Japanese side is that the military Wasn't directly involved. It was private brokers. There are a variety of circumstances. Slavery. Not technically slavery, but I mean, never.

[B]

Wanna be doing air quotes for slavery. It's not bad.

[A]

You're in a bad slave labor during the war. It's not slave labor. It's conscription. It's conscription. Okay. They were conscripted, not slavery. Like, that's their. Their. Their view on people who had to, you know, Koreans and Chinese who had to work in coal mines and stuff like that. They. They do not like the word slave for that. They want to use conscription. Conscripted laborers, which, I mean, what is.

[C]

Like, the sex slaves were bad and then Japan being like they were slaves.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they also point to, like, there's receipts that show that some of them did get paid a lot of money. And I guess there were some who were not slaves technically, and some of them maybe did volunteer, but I mean, a lot of them were tricked into it or they were, you know, circumstances of poverty.

[B]

I can't imagine. It was all about board.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Japan had a legalized system of prostitution back then where parents could basically loan their children to brothels, their daughters to brothels, if they were of a certain age, and then they would work to pay off, like, a debt that their family had. So if their family goes into debt, you know, okay, we got to sell our daughter. And the system was policed in a way that the licensing system, they would make sure that it was mostly just poor people who were kind of forced into it by economic means rather than, like, women from good families volunteering to become prostitutes. So, like, there's a lot of literature written about this. It's like a complicated system. But Japanese people who argue against the comfort women narrative is that it was within this legal system and it was above board, according to them. So, yeah, it's a whole can of worms, though.

[B]

Can I bring it back to modern day a bit? There's a question I wanted to ask. I think something that's always shocked me historically on a grand scale is like, how quickly we went From America drops two bombs on Japan to if you flash forward 50, 60 years, like in the 90s, America and Japan are probably two of the closest allies in the world. They're two deeply intertwined cultural and government native. It's like a crazy thing that this could have changed that way so quickly, like a generation is apart. And I wanted to hear about. Because you mentioned this recent thing with Takaychi and Trump getting closer, and there's a good sentiment there. But what Was the stance in Japan around, especially during the Sheba times, the, the surprise Trump tariffs? You know, there's a sense on the American side that we are alienating some allies, that we are pushing people away. What was that like on the Japan side?

[A]

Well, I mean, I'm sure it's different opinions on the Japan side. It's always, you know, Trump is sort of like a national emergency and we need to respond by trying to get him to like us as much as possible. So the tariffs, obviously nobody likes the tariffs, but they, they need to get a deal that is good enough that Japan is getting the lowest tariffs of anybody. But like, Trump is just seen as like, basically like a natural disaster that needs to be, that needs to be addressed. And if the Prime Minister screws up on their first meeting with Trump, then that is like, seen as like, oh.

[B]

It'S like their fault more than his, though.

[D]

Sim City. And then it's like an earthquake is entering your city. It's like a Trump has entered again.

[B]

The drop down menu, you pick like volcano.

[A]

Yeah. Like right before Ishiba was, when he became prime minister, the last guy, he hadn't met Trump yet for a few months. And everybody's like, why hasn't he met Trump? Is it because Trump doesn't like him? Does Trump know that like, Ishiba and Abe were like rivals who didn't like each other? I bet that's why. I bet that's he's gonna, when he sees Trump, he's gonna choke. He's gonna choke. Like, and then, and then Ishiba meets Trump and his like, game plan. He has the same interpreter that Abe used, the same guy that Trump knows. He calls him, I think the little prime minister or something like that. The same Japanese interpreter. And he just glazes Trump. He just like, you know, oh, you're great. You're amazing. I see you're making America great again. And I want to help you by having jobs and I am from a rural area that is struggling, just like Vice President Vance. And they're on, they just don't want a repeat of the Zelensky sofa incident. Right. So. Because that terrified, I think Japanese diplomats, like, oh, man, what if we have a situation where Trump just goes off the rails and just is like, why aren't you saying thank you to us? You're not dressed well enough. And like, of course the Japanese wear neckties. But I mean, still, that's crazy. Like the Zelensky thing I think was a big sign that Trump 2.0 is not the same as Trump 1.0. So you really have to praise him even more and present him with gifts and.

[B]

Yeah, I guess I want to understand why someone, like, take. Or this general attitude of, like, let's not get on America's bad side doesn't apply to an equally or near equally big economic giant like China. She seems more willing to be able to kind of piss off China with this Taiwan comment. And then, yet, like, what is the. Because I assume the trade between us and Japan and China and Japan are similar. I can't.

[A]

Yeah, it's a. It's a mix. Major trading partner for Japan. Japan gets, you know, stuff like rare earth metals from China and it. It needs the Chinese market. It needs Chinese tourists. So. But nationalistic Japanese. I was just, like, looking at some Twitter posts on the way over here. You know, people are like, next step, we should just break off all diplomatic relations with China. Hell yeah. Like, China, we hate China. Like, China's bad. Like, like they're the evil empire. And like, So, I mean, 70, 80% of Japanese have a negative view of China because China is, you know, an aggressive, undemocratic country that is doing bad things and is saying bad things about Japan while also telling Japan to apologize again for things Japan did 80 plus years ago and telling young people in Japan who have nothing to do with what happened 80 years ago to. To feel responsibility for that. And I think anybody in any country, no matter what their age, should know their country's history and know that their country has done bad things and good things in the past. But I just think that them seeing it coming from China, it feels like, why is this authoritarian state telling us that we're the bad ones for something that happened way before my. My grandparents were born for a lot of these students.

[D]

So I'm curious. It sounds that the average Japanese person has a much more positive view of America and the current global climate than China. And that's surprising given that, again, we've talked about this natural disaster of a leader that we have, and I've often wondered at how crappy it must feel in another part of the world to have America just swing wildly every four years with total unpredictability. And this is happening again. So is there more going on there besides that sort of history? Do you feel like that might change anytime soon? I guess I'm confused at how, even with Trump's attitude towards the rest of the world, that still we're seeing that much more positively.

[A]

Well, I think if you polled Japanese people about Trump himself, they would probably Have a negative view. I think 70% wanted Harris to win the election, but.

[D]

Interesting.

[A]

But, But Japan needs America. It needs it more than anything, really, if you are to continue the foreign policy track, which is not being absorbed as a satellite of China or becoming a pro China country. If it wants to be a part of the liberal democratic west and resist the rise of China, it can't do it without America's help. It needs it. It cannot defeat China militarily. It needs the Americans. It needs their bases. And so it is a huge crisis to have a president who talks about, you know, they're not spending enough. I don't think we should protect them, you know, like, or like abandoning Ukraine and stuff like that. That, that's like Japanese wonder. Well, you know, what if America has a president who just thinks like, who cares if somebody islands, small islands in Japan get invaded by China? Like, I'm not going to send our army and start World War III over that shit. I mean, so like, like Japanese have this anxiety about requiring American protection from China and it makes. And. But they still like America as a country. It's just the, the anxiety from a president who might not protect Japan is, is very real.

[B]

Makes sense.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, they love, they love LA, you know they love Ohtani. I know they love LA.

[B]

We know they love Otani. Ohtani murals, like 10ft from my building.

[C]

You go to Dodgers. I swear, if you go to a Dodgers game right now, like one in four people there is Japanese. It's crazy.

[A]

I went to a game in Baltimore a couple months ago to watch Ohtani and like, I mean, there was so many Japanese people there in Baltimore, like they must have flown in because there are not that many Japanese people in Maryland. But I mean, yeah, like, they were all sitting around my wife and all. I can hear lots of people speaking Japanese. And so like, I mean, a couple years ago I saw Ohtani in Philadelphia and tons of Japanese people came to that game. They're traveling across the country to see their national hero. I mean, everybody loves Ohtani. I was walking here and there was a stationary store that had a sign up that said special sale that because Ohtani won the MVP award.

[C]

The NL MVP sale.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

That's awesome. I was wondering with what we're talking about right now, what beyond little things, like people, there seems to be some anti immigrant or like racism within Japan in regards to Chinese tourists or Chinese people that have moved here. But what is the dislike of China like, grounded in, like, I know that a lot of countries around China, for instance, have territorial disputes, like a lot of Southeast Asian countries having difficulties in the South China Sea. So what is Japan's kind of geopolitical issue or fear with China? Is it that you're literally going to be attacked one day? Is it a security concern? Is it the actions that they've taken against the country?

[A]

Like, yes. I mean, they. They are afraid they will be attacked one day. And there is a set of islands or rocks, basically the Senkaku Islands that are controlled by Japan. They're uninhabited, and they're right near, sort of close to some outer lying islands of Japan that are populated and also some.

[B]

Oh, they're tiny.

[A]

Yeah, they're tiny, Tiny, tiny little things. They're kind of close to Taiwan, Okinawa and mainland China. And so Japan has controlled these since the 1890s, I believe. And China has been aggressively sending patrol boats to patrol its own territory. And the Japanese send their patrol boats to respond to the Chinese boats. And they just kind of go around each other saying, like, this is our territory. Get out of here now. This is our territory. Get out.

[B]

Bullhorns, right? These are the ones where they like, kind of nudge each other and have of the water cannons, or is that.

[A]

Thank God, not yet. Okay, that's what happened. The Philippines has reached that level of escalation, and Japan is actually helping the Philippines. They're building boats for the Philippine Coast Guard to use. So it's called, not oda, but it's osa, Official Security Assistance. So they're helping with those disputes as well. But these boats go back and forth, and this happens almost every day of the year. And Japanese fishing boats that go to that area will provoke even more Chinese boats to come out. And so the Japanese government tries to discourage fishermen from going there, even though it's Japanese territory. That also angers nationalists, like, what the hell, you can't fish. I mean, there were these guys connected to the YouTubers I wrote about where they. They caught fish there, and then they made a point of serving it as sushi to various LDP lawmakers in the National Diet building. And they also had a restaurant in Tokyo that collabed with them where you can go and have a special menu and have Senkaku island sushi. I didn't go because I think it was the pandemic at the time, and I was in a different area of Tokyo and it was pretty expensive, to be honest. But I would have wanted to, though. But, yeah, I mean, like, so these islands are a potential flashpoint for World War 3 because if China does try to get them, America is treaty bound to defend Japanese territory or territory administered by Japan. The security treaty says that. And Japan will expect America to back it up there. And Trump, I think the Trump administration has confirmed that they will. But you never know. I mean, the Trump administration changes its mind quite often. And also Taiwan, the Taiwan issue, if Taiwan is invaded and America responds, where do you think those American troops are going to be coming from? They're coming from Okinawa, they're coming from, you know, Yokosuka, and they're coming from, like, Atsugi and other bases in Japan. And so when the Chinese respond with missiles, they're going to be hitting Japan, you know, hitting Okinawa to get out, take out those Americans. Japanese people will die in such an exchange. It is very true that Japan would be probably dragged into a war over Taiwan if it happened. And this is the nightmare scenario that nobody wants that Takechi, you know, brought.

[B]

Up, said it out loud.

[A]

Yeah, Said the quiet part. I laugh out loud. And I mean, she's not wrong for saying that everybody knew that's what's going to happen. But it creates this issue where China needs to save face by doing something.

[D]

In response that has to be incredibly anxiety inducing. I just really hadn't thought about this, you know. Of course not. And, but man, if you're Japanese, like, it really must feel like this is an existential worry and threat.

[B]

Like, man, especially as China gets more and more powerful and throws around their weight more often.

[A]

And there's also the fear that China is rising, but it's also facing a demographic crisis of its own.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So it might feel like it needs to strike before it starts getting weaker. There are people who've written books and articles about this, you know, that the growing China thing, it's going to peak. And when it sees that it's stopped peaking, they're going to want to roll the dice on Taiwan or they'll never have a chance ever again. And that's a scary possibility. Hopefully it'll never happen. If it does, then I'm pretty sure this studio and myself will be obliterated by nuclear weapons or something.

[C]

Okay, you're gonna do eliminate stand first.

[D]

We have a bit of a curse.

[A]

These figures will be melted by the fire.

[C]

This is dark. I don't like this. I did want to come back to maybe potentially something fun to, to wind this episode down. Is that because you had brought up the topic of, you know, right wing YouTubers and specifically conspiracy theories? Because we had a lot of fun with our conspiracy theory episode one.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

We walked Through a lot of English, you know, English speaking, like primarily American conspiracy theories. And I wanted to know if you could drop some like, you know, Japanese Internet crazy conspiracy theories. What goes around?

[A]

Sure. Well, with the, with the right wing Sanseito party, one of their conspiracy theories is that you must eat organic rice. And it's because bread is a globalist scheme to cause cancer. Ever since the American occupation, the Americans have been importing grain and trying to make Japanese people eat like bread.

[C]

I didn't think you guys picked up on that. I know.

[A]

How did they find out?

[C]

How did you guys find out about that?

[B]

We kept this shit so secret.

[A]

Did you know that there was no cancer in Japan until after World War II? Did you know this, guys?

[B]

Yes, I saw the nuclear radiation. Think it was the bread.

[C]

It actually, it's so funny to be like, like fear, like fear mongering right wing guy and it's surge in cancer maybe. I don't know if that's actually real.

[A]

I mean like, it might be because people are living longer and medical systems are now dealing with cancer more, but, or actually no, it's the globalist.

[C]

The globalist bread.

[A]

Globalist bread. You know, they want us to eat this awful bread and food with additives in it and you know, you have to have an organic farm. Buy our special rice that's been blessed by a Shinto priest. It's twice as expensive as the more expensive rice, but you're gonna, you can get it through us and please buy our merch and you know, imagine Japanese.

[C]

Alex Jones, like, selling, selling special rice.

[B]

Stores like athletic greens of rice is pushing in this podcast. To be clear, it's not a conspiracy in that Americans do want everyone to eat more additives.

[A]

That's what he does. Yeah, yeah. RFK is right. No, Tylenol is bad. No, but, but like, it's like the bread thing is a thing. And also like, it used to be, like Japanese would claim that, you know, when they go to America, they can't eat the food because the Japanese body can't digest, you know, meat the way Americans do. I don't think there's much proof of that. But there's also like kind of spiritual beliefs about the uniqueness of Japanese, like, you know, and being closer to nature just because you're a Japanese person or like there was a, like a, a quack scientist guy who did experiments and he, he, he figured out that Japanese can sense nature better than Westerners do and they can, they can appreciate the sound of flowing water and other stuff more like, I'M terrible at it. And that's why Japanese language has so many onomatopoeias in it for, like, sound and stuff. But, like, let's see, Other conspiracy theories are. I think we kind of mentioned the secret Korean thing a little bit, but, like, yeah, they. They think that there are secret Koreans among us all over the place. Because, you know, they. If they just dress the same and speak native Japanese, then we don't know if somebody has Korean blood. And. And maybe sometimes if. If you go far enough to the scale of crazy, they'll have, like, a list of prime ministers, and they'll be like, this one was Korean. This is Korean. This one's Korean. This one's Korean. That one not Korean. This one Korean. This one Korean, this one Korean. And, like. Like, they. Some of them even think Abe was Korean, which is pretty crazy.

[B]

Crazy that 14 of the last 50 Japanese Prime Ministers were just crazy.

[A]

That's why the government has been so bad in apologizing. It's because Koreans are in control. And the reason why we have to pay our taxes is because the Ministry of Finance is controlled by secret Koreans who became Japanese citizens. And, dude, it's almost kind of comforting.

[B]

To know that people are crazy everywhere.

[A]

It is.

[C]

It is. I've been feeling this lately. I've been feeling this. This is like. It's just all the same shit, but just. But with different packaging. It has different flavor to it, but it's the same shit. And it's. In a way, it's kind of awesome. It's kind of awesome. It's kind of awesome.

[A]

I don't know about awesome.

[C]

No, because it's, like, proof that it's all dumb, for one. Like, it's proof that we just make up dumb shit to divide each other all the time. And. And that's, you know, in a weird way, that's comforting. It's like confirmation that it's all made up, you know, because we don't. In the US it's not secret Koreans. Right? It's somebody. It's some other ethnic group. It's some other, you know, type of people. And it. And it's just whoever you don't like everywhere becomes this thing. And it's proof that it doesn't have to be that way. That's the good thing I take away from it is, like, how it's proof that it is so inherently ridiculous that we all make up shit in the same stupid way.

[A]

Yeah. Like, a few months back, I was invited to brief some chiefs of staff of US Congress, people who were visiting Japan, and somehow we got to the topic of the bread conspiracy theory. But I basically told them, think of every conspiracy theory in America about Jews and just replace it with Koreans. And you're almost. Almost the same.

[C]

Yeah, I think, like, it's the underlying. Or not the underlying thing. The surface level issue is always bad. Like, this is not something that is good, that it proliferates. But I think it's just this idea that everybody has kind of the same problems everywhere, and we have to figure that we have to step up and figure them out together somehow and escape all this. Escape all the bullshit.

[A]

And I mean, while shows like this are good at, like, you know, talking about how these are bad things, the Internet is really causing conspiracy theories to just blow up to a level they could never have done before. I mean, it used to be just like fringe magazines and, you know, occasional TV show. But now, like, we live in a world where we're going to have to have more family members every year who are believing in conspiracy theories and people who are voting based on conspiracy theories and presidents who believe in conspiracy theories.

[C]

Going back to Thanksgiving. And I'm talking to my, like, a Canadian American dad, and he's like, it's actually the secret Koreans. One. One more thing to kind of close this out is naturally, when we look at other countries, we have this often these misunderstandings of, like, what's actually going on in these places. Is there one last. Like, this is common misunderstanding that you hear from Westerners about Japan that you'd like to speak on or correct or. Or is different from the way that Japanese people see it here?

[A]

Well, I. I think I would like to circle back to the idea of, like, Japan denying history and stuff like that, to say that in academia, in universities, in academic books, real history books, television documentaries, they show the real history, the ugly parts of history. They have documentaries like NHK made a documentary about Unit 731, the Biological Weapons unit. Then, you know, there are lots of books in Japanese by historians that go into the details of this stuff. And so not every person in Japan is like a history denier. Lots of people think the war was terrible and that it should never have happened and there should never, ever again be another war like this. And that's the very mainstream view in Japan and the denialist view, the one that, you know, of course, it's the thing I study, so I like to talk about it a lot. That is sort of a minority view in Japan. And not everybody is going to agree with what Takaichi says about the war, although they might think that, you know, it's been. We've apologized as a country officially so many times. There's no need for more apologies. But that's different from saying, like, actually, Japan was not the bad country in the war. So I think that you have to understand there's a lot of people in Japan who do lots of hard work writing excellent books, books that don't get translated into English often, unfortunately, where they have so much more detail than our English books have about the bad things that Japan and its government did and the military did during World War II. And those people are most of academia in Japan. It's only like fringe people who are denialists.

[B]

Jeffrey, this is absolutely incredible conversation.

[D]

This is exactly one of the types of conversations I was hoping we could have on this podcast to really hear about this very interesting perspective. So thank you very much.

[A]

I'm very happy to be on a format that doesn't shrink me into four minutes and force me to just say a sound bite.

[B]

That was a really cool conversation. I learned a lot.

[C]

Thank you so, so much.

[D]

Thanks so much, Jeffrey. Thanks anywhere. People should follow you.

[A]

Oh, so on Twitter, Mr. Jeff and then the letter U. That's Mr. Jeffu. You could say that's me on Twitter. On YouTube, I have a very small channel called Japan Matters that I haven't updated in like six months. But I maybe I'll make a video about politics soon on it. But it's only got like a thousand subs. But yo like and subscribe, everybody.

[C]

See you guys later.

[D]

Thanks, everybody.