Welcome to the party Japan! You’re gonna regret this in about 4-6 months after it’s to late…
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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japan is fucked up
For those who don't know who the fuck she is, she is a ultranationalist conservative that worships Hitler.
I only read to the point of personality cult and it was obvious.
also backed by russia i believe, the political party is funded at least, its not surprising.
Do you have anything showing this backing by Russia? I'm curious at what the connection would be.
Not really, she is in the main party and she is antichina and wants to spend more on military defense.
Jesus wept, you'd think you could count on the Japanese to be wary of Russia
Hmm, I just realized that I (an American living in New Zealand) have no idea what Japanese politics are like. To Wikipedia!
Takaichi has been described as holding hard-line conservative and Japanese nationalist views,
uh oh
citing former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model and deeply influential on her personal political beliefs.
Uh oh
Like Thatcher, she is called the "Iron Lady".
Uh Oh
Takaichi is a member of Nippon Kaigi, a far-right ultraconservative organisation
UH OH
that argues for a reinterpretation of Japanese history
RED ALERT
amongst ultranationalist lines.
WELP
Eh, I guess it had to happen to Japan someday. It's happened everywhere else. Here's hoping it doesn't last long and the damage is minimal.
TBF fascism never really stopped in Japan. The American occupation was so clueless it changed very little of what Japan was before; the elites just kind of divided into nominal parties.
That's disappointing, but good to know. Thanks.
Yes, it is. America really biffed it, and the nuking a couple cities thing wasn't great either.
Now, that's not to say Japanese democracy is fake. The elections are real, and AFAIK the parties have gradually taken on real ideological differences. It does help explain why they're broadly racist, still not sorry about WWII and have a lot of regional vote buying with projects, though.
Edit: Not great women's rights either, ironically.
America really biffed it,
Pretty decent summary of American history, that. With few exceptions.
Here's another fact you may not want to know (the reptile in the image is Sanae.)
The context in Japanese:https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/10/21/hitlersenkyo_n_6019042.html
Oh!
Cool!
😬
shes the japanese margeret thatcher, doing her duty for "empress and empire of the rising sun"
Hey look at it this way, we may finally get our mechs out of this.
I mean, they may be the last thing you see, but at least we may see them.
Said to be a former heavy metal drummer.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=WvfplA3a02g
I do have to say that 80s Japan included some edgy subcultures involving Nazi fetishization.
Maybe Japan gets a situation like NZ where the conservitve parties and "the right" like National and Act would probably be left of the USA Democrats on the political spectrum. I can hope right?
Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse but... here we are. I blame the murdoch media
Unfortunately not. Japan has been very far-right (bordering on jingoistic) for a long time now. The country’s external facade is all cute anime characters and zany fashion… But that was an intentional rebrand (heavily subsidized by the country’s propaganda department) in the wake of WW2 to distance itself from the atrocities they had committed. But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic. And it has only shifted farther right with recent elections.
And after the war USA nudged Japan right with anything they could think of for good measure, to shape it in their own image.
But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic.
Yeah, they also get the Mainland Chinese wolf-warriors frothing in the mouth who would love turning Yasukuni Shrine into a mountain of matchsticks.
To be fair, that is almost exactly why I moved here. Luxon seems like a somewhat worthless lump, but his most extreme position appears to be a bit further left than Elizabeth Warren. And it's not impossible that he won't survive the year in his role.
Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse
Absolutely agree. I hate that my first reaction to every conversation has to be "...but are they a fascist?"
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Enjoy your flavor of authoritarian rule with an ultra nationalist regime Japan. Hope voting for a personality was worth it. Pray you'll have elections come next time cause they're going to be "fraudulent" with a need to be "reformed"
I'm also expecting the Japanese animation studios are going to be more muzzled with their content and LGBTQ if any will be shown now
I may be overreacting, but as an American, everything I said has happened here
you're not.
She wasn't gambling. This wasn't a huge risk. Big news outlets have become dinosaurs struggling to understand a new world. Her team calculated this win using modern viral social media strategies and polling metrics. It's not just gEnZ that is swayed by social media. Wake up NBCeeple; the Trump virus hath spread.
Currently, in Japan, it is a major issue that her party’s video has been viewed 160 million times on YouTube. Of course, the majority of those views are thought to have been for advertising purposes.
She is a far-right politician who advocates “countermeasures against foreigners,” but she paid a large sum of money to Google, a foreign tech giant, to win the election.
At the very least, online election advertising will likely be an issue for discussion in the upcoming Diet session.
Voters: Living expenses are too high, yen is weak and imports are expensive, we are suffering
Also voters: Let's make the status quo stronger
yep. this why I need help emigrating.
she's the anti-status quo candidate. it's just she will move the country even move to the right.
By making it more corrupt and less affordable. All these fascists are the same
Anti-status quo in rhetoric doesn't mean they are in reality.
Cancelling my vacation to Japan.
I'll go somewhere that's not run by fascists instead.
I mean it's not a bad place fot sightseeing but...it fucking sucks to be Japanese
That pool seems to be shrinking rapidly these days...
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we're all so fucked. ppl are morons.
Not all Japanese are, as there's still a vocal anti-war/anti-nuclear movement, and likewise there are very small progressive groups.
But then the real problem is just how supposedly apolitical some of the younger generations are there.
yeah, but I am not stupid enough to stay. As soon as I can afford it, I am out.
reptile brains arent evolved for the power of algorithm propaganda. yes we are fucked by the right, but its only temporary until clinate change decimates everything.
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Takaichi is known for favouring proactive government spending. She supports heavy government investment in critical strategic sectors in what she refers to as "crisis management investment". These include artificial intelligence, semiconductors, nuclear fusion, biotechnology, and defence.
Her other policies aside, the economic one looks like a winner.
I’m sure the shareholders will be happy.
Yeah, you're probably right. Just looked at unionization rate and it's around 16%. Workers won't see much from this investment.
Funny exerpt from wiki:
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. Occupation authorities initially encouraged the formation of independent unions, but reversed course as part of broader anti-Communist measures.
The cold war era propaganda and policies have really fucked everything up. There's a straight line between them and today's Republican/MAGA party that runs right through Reagan's economic policies. MAGA sits at the crossroads of that and the festering racism that was never dealt with following the civil war. Unfortunately America's world police mentality (and CIA fuckery, another result of the cold war) has spread those policies and attitudes to a bunch of other countries (who all for some strange reason have a dominant conservative media company owned by Rupert Murdoch, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence right?).
Japan has struggled with horrendous xenophobia for pretty much their entire history so this isn't really surprising even if it is disappointing. Unfortunately we're seeing a rise in far right parties around the globe and there are depressingly few liberal governments left. If this keeps up it's not going to take much to ignite WW3 with all these nationalists taking control.
Completely agree. A lot of countries were on some path or another of dealing with liberal capitalism's collapse that gave us The Great Depression. The propaganda you mention steered these changes right back to the right - towards oligarch class dominance over working people, like it used to be before the depression. Unsurprisingly we find ourselves in a situation very reminiscent to the pre-depression environment.
Terrible but expected news.
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