User:LuckyintheRye/sandbox/japanesenationalism

postwar Japanese Nationalism

In February 1946, General Douglas MacArthur was set the task of drafting a model constitution to serve as a guide for the Japanese people. The U.S. intention was to ensure that the sources of Japanese militarism were rooted out through fundamental reforms of the Japanese government, society, and economic structure. Perhaps the most lasting effect that came out of this constitution is Article 9 that reads:


 * "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as another war potential, will never be maintained. The right to belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

With the renunciation of war and military power, Japan looked to the United States for security. As the Cold War began, the United States fostered a closer relationship with Japan due to the latter's strategic location in respect to the USSR. Japan became, as stated by the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the United States. Ensuing from this close relationship with the United States, Japan hoped that in time their country would become the "third leg in a triangle involving two superpowers." 'While the mainstream Japanese politics maintained a pro-American attitude because Japan's global business and US military presence for security, scholars noted that the nationalist other'' during post-war Japan was the United States. The nationalist other after the war was the United States as both the left pacifist nationalists resisted the United States military presence, and the conservative nationalists opposed the imposed military limitation by the United States. China has substituted the United states as the nationalist other in contemporary Japanese politics .'''

In academics, some scholars argue that postwar Japanese intellects and politicians constructed the mono-ethnic identity through public discourses and education. Japanese elites' tendency towards homogeneity and ethnic nationalism is from their desire to differentiate postwar Japanese identity from pre-war imperialist identity and multi-ethnic identity that include formerly colonized ethnic groups.

Since the 1960s, economic growth in the Japanese miracle periods started to mitigate public distrust towards the central government. Japanese economic progress after World War II undermined the appeal of pre-war militarist nationalism, showing a path to prosperity was possible without colonies. The 1970s witnessed Japan's adoption of three fundamental tenets that would seek to define and direct Japanese internationalism, all concerning the need for Japanese initiatives in fostering a liberal internationalism. Some criticism points out that politicians in the 1970s selectively remembered the past, preferring narratives of Japan as atomic weapon victim to consciously and uncousicouly alienate Japan from its undesired aggressive past. Some scholars note the apolitical nature of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1970 Osaka World Exposition, which allow politicians to forge Japan as peaceful and internationalist for a unified national identity. The rather implicit elite advocacy of conservative nationalism has become more salient since the 1990s, where regional competitions from Asian tigers, and later China, created economic anxieties which reflected in political divisions. Many scholars have pointed out that the liberal internationalism has started to turn into conservative revisionist nationalism since the 1990s. The clashes of nationalism and the contemporary rise of ultra-nationalism, accompanied by military expansions and historical revisionism, are the hot topics of current academic discussions on post-war Japanese nationalism. The illiberal turn of nationalism started with new right-wing movements that created history textbooks from revisionist perspectives, which denies Japanese imperialist atrocities, including 'comfort women' issues and Nanjing Massacre. Their emergences can be seen as a direct discontent towards pacifists' low posture to former colonized countries but also motivated by economic anxiety in globalization. Although right-wing movements surfaced in the 1990s, the Japanese public still remain largely pacific. Since the 2000s, xenophobic online posts and nationalist claims against foreigners, mostly Chinese and Koreans, have risen due to anxieties over economic growth, regional competition, and globalization. Prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe's visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine has created huge controversies and received international backlashes. Japanese top political leaders have started to adopt more explicit conservatism nationalist stances and expansionist military ambitions. Abe tended to use ambiguous terms to describe his national agenda on controversial issues such as history education and intentionally avoided backlash from the public to equate him as an imperial leader. In order to justify military expansions, Abe framed his security agenda as proactive pacifism, enabling Japan to exercise collective self-defence. Japan's remilitarization is mostly due to security concerns of North Korea's nuclear weapon program and China's rise in the East, as well as aligning with the US's aim to create alliances to contain China's global rise and deter North Korea's nuclear threat. Both the Obama administration and the Trump administration encouraged Japan's rearmament. Trump openly called for rapid Japanese rearmament, more due to discontent that the US support Japan while Japan does not have to do anything in return, less on prudence. Some scholars argue that the resurgence of ultra-nationalist tendency as solely an elite-driven process as the public remains pacifist, and overall public support is not required for politicians to achieve a nationalist agenda because of the low voter turnout.