Resurgent Japanese Nationalism Is a Beautiful Thing, Admired
The Japanese Emperor Akihito has officially abdicated his throne as of today, I believe midnight tonight. As such he is the first Japanese emperor to abdicate in 200 years. His 30 year reign will be replaced by his son, Prince Naruhito, who will ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne on Wednesday ushering in a new era called Reiwa, which means the era of ‘beautiful harmony.’
And so, needless to say all day today the current emperor Akihito is performing a number of rituals, some public but most private, that involve properly abdicating the throne, announcing the abdication to the Shinto gods who guard and ultimately govern Japan in the traditionalist Japanese worldview.
This really marks the end of an era. This emperor was the son of Hirohito, the emperor at the center of World War II in the pacific, and he was seen as a symbol of Japan’s re-birth; he was the first in the royal family to marry a commoner, a merchant’s daughter, quite wealthy of course, but not of royal blood. The marriage was seen as a gesture of brining the imperial family closer to the wider Japanese population, sort of descending from their pervious divine position to now being one of the people. In fact, my mother-in-law attended the same school as the empress, she was just a year or so behind her, and was actually one of her acquaintances. So that is kind of a couple second or third degree of separation for me there.
What really intrigued me in all of this is the role of the Japanese Emperor in a resurgent nationalist conservativism that is just been sweeping Japan’s governing elite. Japan is interesting because there really is a revitalized nationalism and rightwing conservatism in Japan, but not a populism, so much. It is not what we are seeing here in the West where our governing elites are all a bunch of globalist aristocrats who govern for their own advantage and not the advantage of the citizens of a nation, and have provoked a massive backlash among populations who are reasserting their nation’s customs, culture, and traditions as mechanisms of resistance against globalization and its secular aristocracy.
That is not what is going on in Japan.
Instead, in Japan, the ruling class is currently experiencing what is really nothing short of an astounding renaissance or revitalization of conservative nationalist rightwing sentiments that is sort of trickling down to the wider population. Japan IS indeed one of the nations going through a major nationalist surge, but it is not so much from the bottom up, from the people to the ballot box, as it were. It is more top down starting from the nation’s leaders to the people.
FULL ARTICLE SOURCE
https://russia-insider.com/en/resurgent-japanese-nationalism-beautiful-thing-admired-nationalists-around-world/ri26940