Southpaw

Against Japanism

Added 2025-09-30 01:54:44 +0000 UTC

As a Korean radical, I am regularly horrified by the persistence of Japanism—a fandom for Japan shaped by colonialism and soft power—among Western-educated people. By "Western-educated," I not only include non-white people, but also Asians from countries colonized by Japan. This fascination runs rampant not only in mainstream culture but also in progressive and even radical spaces. What saddens me most is that the people most often influenced by the "Cool Japan" initiative—which whitewashes Japanese crimes against humanity—are not the stereotypical white conservative "weeb," but people whose own histories were scarred by colonialism. For that reason, I wish everyone I knew would listen to even a few episodes of Against Japanism and confront the Japanese colonizer in their head.

Against Japanism is a podcast hosted by a Japanese radical that, in their own words, "destabilizes Japanese history from the Left." It explores concepts like Japanism itself, as well as the state-sponsored "Cool Japan" initiative. If Orientalism explains why Westerners imagine villains as people and places "east" of the West, Japanism explains the flipside: why Japan gets the pass, why even the Left exempts Japan from critique, and why this blind spot is one more extension of colonial violence.

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