How Japan's right-wing forces infiltrate culture, manipulate public perception

TOKYO, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- The second season of the Japanese TV drama "Vivant" has recently stirred up huge controversy for its distorted portrayal of China and for stoking hostility toward the country.

While a number of Japanese public figures have sharply criticized the show, senior government officials, including Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, have openly said they "hope to watch it" or "like it."

In recent years, Japan has seen a steady rightward shift in both its politics and society, driven by right-wing conservative forces. Right-wing ideologies are also increasingly finding their way into cultural works, including TV dramas, literature, anime, and manga.

Such content can subtly shape public perceptions in Japan, making people more receptive to revisionist views of history and military buildup policies.

STOKING ANTI-CHINA SENTIMENT

In recent years, the Japanese government has become increasingly open about its confrontational stance toward China, and has cast China as "an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge."

At the same time, Japanese cultural works have frequently featured content that vilifies China and plays up the so-called "China threat."

"Vivant," the Tokyo Broadcasting System Television drama at the center of the current controversy, features a fictional Chinese secret organization and depicts its members brutally torturing Japan Self-Defense Forces intelligence personnel.

The manga "Aircraft Carrier Ibuki" explicitly sets its story against the backdrop of a military conflict between China and Japan over Diaoyu Dao and its affiliated islands, with China cast as the side that "provoked the dispute."

Some analysts argue that once a negative image of China becomes entrenched in the minds of ordinary Japanese people, they are more likely to accept the government's military expansion as a defensive measure Japan "has no choice" but to take.

Atsushi Koketsu, professor emeritus at Yamaguchi University, said that years of anti-China propaganda by right-wing forces have fueled considerable anti-China sentiment in Japanese society.

RECASTING AGGRESSION AS TRAGEDY

In recent years, a number of Japanese films and books have focused on the "special attack units," Japanese military units that carried out suicide attacks in the final stage of World War II using bomb-laden planes, small submarines, and other craft.

Both the international community and many conscientious voices in Japan have long regarded the organizing of these suicide missions as a crime that reflected Japanese militarism's disregard for human life.

Yet some of these works frame the missions through the tragic fates of individuals, obscuring both the war of aggression that gave rise to them and the Japanese military's responsibility. Some even recast the missions as tales of heroism.

Take "The Eternal Zero," a film released in 2013 that portrays a Japanese Zero fighter pilot as a tragic figure who cherishes his family but is forced into a special attack mission and ultimately dies a "heroic death."

Similarly, the 2023 film "Till We Meet Again on the Lily Hill" tells the story of a present-day high school girl who travels back in time to 1945 and falls in love with a young pilot about to be sent on a deadly mission. It recasts death in the war of aggression as a romantic tragedy.

Japanese writer Akihiko Reizei, among others, has pointed out that the special attack missions should be subject to reflection and criticism, yet these works center their narratives on the personal fates of the unit members, evoking grief and sympathy among viewers and even turning that sympathy into admiration.

Ritsu Yonekura, a professor at Nihon University's College of Law, said in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun that the narrative of suffering accounted for an overwhelming majority of themes found in war-related TV programs. In such a context, he added, Japan's invasion, atrocities, colonial rule, and other forms of "aggression" have completely receded into the background.

NORMALIZING MILITARIZATION THROUGH ENTERTAINMENT

Japan's constitution stipulates that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." The constitutionality of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) has long been a subject of debate, and the Japanese public has traditionally been wary of efforts to strengthen the country's military capabilities.

In recent years, however, a growing number of anime and TV dramas have incorporated SDF elements into their storylines, with some even working closely with the SDF during production.

In the anime series "Gate," an SDF unit that travels through a portal to a parallel world is portrayed as a powerful fighting force capable of protecting civilians and maintaining order. In 2015, the SDF's Tokyo Provincial Cooperation Office even collaborated with the anime's production team to create recruitment posters.

In "Vivant," SDF intelligence operatives who spy on foreign countries are likewise glorified as a force for justice.

Sabine Frühstück, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has conducted extensive research on Japanese culture, has noted that the SDF utilizes, appropriates, and manipulates popular culture to glamorize its image. It has also, she added, symbolically "disarmed" itself by normalizing and domesticating the military.

USING AI TO AMPLIFY RIGHT-WING NARRATIVES

With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), new forms of creative content, including AI-generated short dramas, have emerged. Some Japanese creators have begun incorporating right-wing ideologies into such productions.

One example is an AI-generated short drama titled "New Battleship Yamato 2030." The main Japanese government figures in the production closely resemble officials in the current administration, while the security narrative they promote mirrors the government's position, portraying Japan as facing "serious security threats" from neighboring countries.

Meanwhile, media outlets and opposition figures advocating pacifism are depicted as villains who disregard Japan's national security. The drama endorses the concept of a "survival-threatening situation" and incorporates scenarios involving a "Taiwan contingency" and maritime confrontation between China and Japan. It also features Takaichi's erroneous remarks on China's Taiwan, while portraying the dispatch of SDF vessels to Taiwan as a "humanitarian mission."

Beyond entertainment, AI-generated content promoting right-wing ideologies and fabricating negative information about China has also proliferated online.

In May last year, for example, a video claiming to show a large Chinese cruise ship dumping huge quantities of wastewater into the sea circulated widely on Japanese social media. The footage was later confirmed to be AI-generated disinformation.

Last year, Japan's major crowdsourcing platform CrowdWorks was found to have carried paid recruitment listings seeking creators to produce anti-China videos. In April this year, the Asahi Shimbun followed up with an investigation revealing details of how clients on the platform hired people to use AI technology to create videos disparaging China and distorting history. According to the newspaper, some clients even provided detailed instruction manuals to streamline production.

Koketsu expressed deep concern over these forms of cultural manipulation. He noted that Japan had historically used cultural and artistic works to disparage other countries and peoples, ultimately leading the Japanese public to embrace a path toward war.

Tomoyoshi Kimura, a veteran Japanese journalist and former NHK anchor, pointed out that postwar Japanese society had failed to fully reckon with its responsibility for the war of aggression. Today, similar xenophobic sentiments and tendencies toward militarization are resurfacing.

Without a clear-eyed examination of historical lessons and vigilance against troubling trends in public discourse, Japan and its people could once again be led down an extremely dangerous path, he warned.