Matthew Heidenreich

Japan is often regarded by scholarship as an example of what a healthy East Asian liberal democracy ought to look like. Despite its reputation for pacifism and liberal democracy, Japan has demonstrated a remarkable shift in political culture in the last decade, as successive governments have embraced decidedly nationalist policy choices. As the Abe Administration continues to push ahead with its plan for Constitutional Revision, a goal long advocated for by nationalist groups, Japan seems poised to enter a period of renewed nationalist discourses and policymaking. Existing scholarship presents these shifting political trends as having been facilitated by the political elite, and many scholars argue that elite driven, or top-down nationalism, is the driving force of political change in the modern Japanese political system. This paper challenges these assertions, instead arguing that resurgent nationalism in Japanese politics can be traced to the grassroots of society. Through a study...

While much of the existing academic scholarship on Japan-Korea relations has focused on the ongoing political and historical disputes related to World War II, this paper analyzes the experience of ethnic Koreans living in Japan on a microeconomic and sociological level. Zainichi Koreans and the ongoing structural societal and economic challenges they face in Japanese society are analyzed from a historical perspective throughout this paper. Through a comparative historical analysis of the experience of Koreans from the point when Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910 until liberalizing reforms of the twenty-first century, this paper shows that the social rights, civil rights, and economic opportunities of Zainichi Koreans have remained fluid throughout much of the twentieth century. While the challenges faced by Japan's Korean population have marginally improved since liberalizing reforms in the 1990s, this paper demonstrates that ongoing scapegoating on the part of politicians and negative public perceptions of Zainichi Koreans continue to pose challenges to Japan's sizeable Korean minority population.

Japan is often regarded by scholarship as an example of what a healthy East Asian liberal democracy ought to look like. Despite its reputation for pacifism and liberal democracy, Japan has demonstrated a remarkable shift in political culture in the last decade, as successive governments have embraced decidedly nationalist policy choices. As the Abe Administration continues to push ahead with its plan for Constitutional Revision, a goal long advocated for by nationalist groups, Japan seems poised to enter a period of renewed nationalist discourses and policymaking. Existing scholarship presents these shifting political trends as having been facilitated by the political elite, and many scholars argue that elite-driven, or top-down nationalism, is the driving force of political change in the modern Japanese political system. This paper challenges these assertions, instead arguing that resurgent nationalism in Japanese politics can be traced to the grassroots of society, within groups and organizations funded and run by private citizens with political interests. Through a study of two non-government organizations, Nippon Kaigi and Jinja Honchō , this paper clearly demonstrates the critical impact that grassroots organizing through non-government organizations has had on driving nationalist policymaking at the national level. The political success of these lobbying groups has been clearly evidenced in their presence at the highest level of Japanese government, as well as the remarkable similarities between their organizational goals and the political goals of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. This paper demonstrates that the relationship between grassroots nationalist organizations and the Japanese government is one of influence and pressure, rather than a coincidental alignment of political ideals.

A preliminary study of the reemergence of nationalist discourses under the Abe Administration in contemporary Japan. This paper provides a brief survey of the history of Japanese nationalism, and looks at the emergence of Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference) as evidence of nationalist discourses returning to mainstream political life.