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Although no radical right party actually won a seat in Japanese national and local assemblies until 2012, radical right parties and movements have had a noteworthy place in postwar Japan. Moreover, new radical right movements have been growing in the last decade. While Japan’s old radical right is authoritarian, anti-communist, and nationalist, the new radical right is uniquely characterized by its xenophobia. Keeping the rise of the new radical right in mind, Japan seems to be opening a Pandora’s box of radical right politics—much the same as European countries. In this paper, we will examine the characteristics of Japan’s radical right, comparing the different support bases of the old and new radical right politicians. Analyzing survey data from research we conducted in 2007, we found that nationalism was their most strongly correlated characteristic, while xenophobia had no significant role in steering the politics of the old radical right. That xenophobia is such a prominent feature of Japan’s new radical right suggests that this political preference is aligning with its West European counterparts.

Since the late 1980s, the Latin American population in Japan has rapidly increased to nearly 400,000 in 2007, despite the long-term recession in the late 1990s. They were given privileged visa status as descendents of Japanese nationals and incorporated into the upper end of loosely structured secondary labour market. It was these Latin Americans, however, who were hit by far the hardest by the recent economic crisis in Japan. About half of Latin American workers are said to have lost their jobs from September 2008 to March 2009, while the unemployment rate in Japan was below 5% in the same period. In this paper, I will consider the causes of mass unemployment of Japanese-Latin Americans by analyzing the labour market of and integration policies toward them based on my fieldwork and survey research in Japan, Brazil and Argentina since 1997. The constant increase of Latin Americans in Japan was enabled by the changing mode of their incorporation into the Japanese labour market: they were getting incorporated as the more flexible workforce adjusted to a “just-in-time” labour delivery system brokered by labour contractors, which led them extremely precarious conditions. In addition, the lack of economic integration policies kept Latin American workers marginalized in the labour market. In Japan, it was not national but local governments that promptly responded to the increasing number of migrants. However, their integration policies solely paid attention to cultural differences between Japanese and foreign nationals. In fact, Japanese government did not provide such programs as vocational and language trainings necessary for upward mobility, ignoring the fact that migrants are socio-economic minorities. The absence of policy response, as well as the deterioration of working conditions of Latin American workers, lies behind the sudden mass unemployment of Latin American workers during the economic crisis.

This paper seeks to explain the sudden rise and success of Japan's xenophobic far right movements in the late 2000s. While older far right groups were royalists and anti-communists indifferent to immigration issues, new right extremists specialize in attacking Korean and Chinese migrants with strong xenophobic sentiments. Although far right movements accuse Koreans and Chinese of enjoying ‘special privileges,’ such accusations are ungrounded in reality. Yet far right movements have succeeded in recruiting many young supporters. Why is this the case? Based on in-depth interviews with new right activists, I aim to clarify what is behind the hate against Koreans and Chinese, focusing on the influence of East Asian geopolitical predicaments. I argue that the new xenophobic right is generated by entrenched cold war sentiments and the lack of reconciliation between Japan and other East Asian countries. The data reveal that new far right activists were first fascinated by historical revisionism that justifies Japan's imperialism and/or outrages against the abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korea. They believe Japanese sovereignty is threatened by both South Korean and Chinese protests against Japan's revisionism and the North Korean abductions. Far right activists then began to identify the Korean and Chinese governments with Korean and Chinese migrants, thereby regarding them as ‘enemies within’ who engage in subversive activities.

Although Japan is a highly industrialized country, it still lacks any significant green parties. This apparent Japanese exceptionalism in terms of green parties cannot be clarified by such conventional explanations as its electoral institutions, party competition, and degree of post−materialism. This paper will instead utilize the German−developed framework of social−milieu studies to explain this phenomenon. It focuses on green parties’ potential support bases, paying attention to the characteristics of green milieu parties. German milieu studies have found that alternative or techno milieus with high educational and occupational qualifications and left−libertarian value orientations have supported the German Green Party. Our data show that an ironist milieu can be regarded as a potential basis of support for Japanese green parties, as Japanese ironist are more leftist toward political and economic issues and more liberal in their cultural attitudes. However, German alternatives tend to be active, while Japanese ironists tend to be passive and disinclined to participate in various groups or to associate with others. Such passivity inclines them to retreat into their private lives without expressing their left− libertarian value orientation in the political arena. Our findings therefore suggest that a milieu exists that could potentially support Japanese green parties, but that these parties have been failing to gain support from it because of its members’ passivity and apolitical behavior.