Japan’s Nationalism And Political Rightist

From the beginning of the 21st century, especially during the Koizumi and Abe administration, Japan’s political rightist becomes more serious:ban collective self-defense, revise peaceful constitution, deny and tamper the history of aggression, escalate the dispute with China over Diaoyu Islands and so on. Meanwhile, Japan’s nationalism has also turned to the right:liberal view of history is still popular, the desire to become the normal country is strong, the right-wing has become the core of the nationalism and so on; most contents of the rightist policies echo to nationalist, which is the background of the topic in this paper-relations between Japan’s nationalism and the political right-wing.To solve this problem, we must clarify these three questions:the concrete content of the nationalist, Japanese nationalism; political rightist, Japanese political rightist, as well as the relationship between nationalism and political trends. The first issue due to the diversity of the concept of nationalism is not easy to answer, so we adopt the most popular one---modernist school, nationalism comes into being with the birth of capitalist countries and it has political nature, with the purpose to preserve the legitimacy of the state rule; then we focus on the history of Japan’s nationalism. Japan’s nationalism appeared in the Meiji Restoration, is the kind of nationalism generated from outside stress, and it has two stages of development:the stage before the World War Ⅱ and the stage after the war. No matter which one, its core ---"nationalism" and "racial superiority" has not changed, but the "allegiance to the emperor" gradually fades, replaced by a commitment to break the shackles of the post-war system. So Japanese nationalist makes use of different political issues available at home and abroad to break through the post-war system, and pushes Japan to become a normal country.The experts have get consensus on the second issue:the political rightist refers to the phenomenon that the right-wing ideology is reflected in political decision-making, while the right-wing definitions have multiple perspectives. On the basis of a summary of the previous definition, we definite "right" from the perspective of "change" ---the "right" tends to keep the status quo or restore the previous situation. Meanwhile, left-wing is trying to change the current situation. Japan attempts to restore pre-war status as a "normal country", so its policies belong to the "right-wing politics." Japanese government attempts to revise its constitution, ban collective self-defense, and tamper the history of aggression, adopt policy of pro-America and anti-China and other aspects. All reflect the idea of nationalism, thus the relationship between the two is evident.The third issue is the core one of the article, in which the quantitative and case analysis method is introduced. Scholars tend to use qualitative analysis method to investigate the relations between nationalism and political trends or political decision-making. Of course the reason is that it is not easy to quantify the Nationalism, but the extent to which nationalism can influence political trend still rely on quantitative analysis. These data can show the density of Japanese nationalism, which can clear the extent to which Japanese nationalism turns to the right, and combined with the cases of Koizumi and Abe visiting the Yasukuni Shrine and banning collective self-defense. Political trends can also influence Japanese nationalism.So Japanese conservative nationalism is an important factor which results in the political right-wing, right-wing politics also push nationalism to the right.