Why is Japan free of the populism roiling other countries?

Even as a wave of right-wing populism is sweeping Europe, the United States, India, and parts of Southeast Asia, Japan has so far appeared to be immune. There are no Japanese demagogues, like Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, or Rodrigo Duterte, who have exploited pent-up resentments against cultural or political elites. Why?
Perhaps the closest Japan has come was the former mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, who first made his name as a television personality and then disgraced himself in recent years by commending the use of wartime sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army. His ultra-nationalist views and loathing of liberal media were a familiar version of right-wing populism. But he never managed to break into national politics.
Hashimoto now gives Prime Minister Shinzo Abe free advice on tightening national-security laws. And therein lies one explanation for the apparent lack of right-wing populism in Japan. No one could be more identified with the political elite than Abe, the grandson of a wartime cabinet minister and later prime minister, and son of a foreign minister. And yet, he shares right-wing populists’ hostility to liberal academics, journalists, and intellectuals.
Postwar Japanese democracy was influenced in the 1950 and 1960s by an intellectual elite that consciously sought to distance Japan from its wartime nationalism. Abe and his allies are trying to quash that influence. His efforts to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution, restore pride in its wartime record, and discredit “elitist” mainstream media, such as the left-of-center newspaper Asahi Shimbun, have earned him the praise of Donald Trump’s former strategist, Stephen Bannon, who called Abe a “Trump before Trump.” In some ways, Bannon was right to think so. In November 2016, Abe told Trump: “I’ve been successful in taming the Asahi Shimbun. I hope you will likewise be successful in taming The New York Times.” Even as a joke between two supposedly democratic leaders, this was disgraceful. So one might say that elements of right-wing populism are at the heart of the Japanese government, embodied by a scion of one of the country’s most elite families. This paradox, however, is not the only explanation for the absence of a Japanese Le Pen, Modi, or Wilders. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left) walks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (right) in Davao City on January 13, 2017. Photo: AFP / Ted Aljibe
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left) walks with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (right) in Davao City on January 13, 2017. Photo: AFP / Ted Aljibe
For demagogues to be able to stir up popular resentments against foreigners, cosmopolitans, intellectuals, and liberals, there must be wide and obvious financial, cultural, and educational disparities. This was the case in Japan in the mid-1930s, when military hotheads staged a failed coup aimed at bankers, businessmen, and politicians who in their view were corrupting the Japanese polity.
Hashimoto now gives Prime Minister Shinzo Abe free advice on tightening national-security laws. And therein lies one explanation for the apparent lack of right-wing populism in Japan. No one could be more identified with the political elite than Abe, the grandson of a wartime cabinet minister and later prime minister, and son of a foreign minister. And yet, he shares right-wing populists’ hostility to liberal academics, journalists, and intellectuals.
The coup was supported by soldiers who had often grown up in poor rural areas. Their sisters sometimes had to be sold to big city brothels for their families to survive. The Westernized cosmopolitan urban elites were the enemy. And public opinion was largely on the side of the rebels.
Source : Asia Times