Election Day

I sit at my desk in the staff room of the school where I teach English. The television covered in dust in the corner is turned on for the first time in two years. I didn’t think it worked. The teachers, the vice principal, and the principal all stand around it, commentating.

“Mr. Trump is going to win. What are we going to do?”

“This is bad.”

Trump is leading by an unrecoverable margin at this point, though the votes haven’t all been counted.

A student from the class where it has been decided that I will have lunch today comes to the staff room to fetch me. I run through the easy-to-answer questions.

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Yura.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m eight years old.”

Yura and I make it to her classroom and sit down, and after the usual hysteria that comes with sitting so close to a foreigner, the students and I with them give thanks for the food and tuck in.

I field questions for a few minutes, and then off wears the novelty of having a foreigner present, allowing these fourth grade elementary students to talk in Japanese casually among themselves.

“What are we going to do if Mr. Trump is elected?”

“It’s going to be so bad.”

Japanese public opinion is as diverse as Japanese demography

Kids are spies in their parents’ home. They repeat mum and dad’s opinion with the understanding of a parrot. Through them we hear the opinion of Joe and Jane Japanese – not that you don’t see that opinion repeated in print, on television, and from the mouths of your Japanese coworkers.

My little corner of Japan is a small one. One of my schools has nine kids in the fifth grade. It will merge with a slightly larger school in a few years. The Japanese with whom I associate are between the ages of 5 and 70; my good friend is the former head of research and development and current manager of a manufacturing plant for one of the biggest and most influential Japanese companies. Furthermore, being that the study of English in this part of the country (at least) is somewhat reserved for the elite, and being that one of my jobs is simply to engage these people in conversation, I have access to the opinions of the upper-middle class as well as the working class.

And one thing I learned is that that doesn’t mean much. Japanese public opinion is more or less consolidated across the economic and political spectrum on most issues (consider that the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party has held power almost uninterrupted since the 50s), and I’ve found that absolutely to be the case whenever the conversations turn to Donald Trump. Whether it is the vice principal, the students, the CEO, his wife, or their mailman, everyone can agree that Donald Trump is a cause for concern.

But why is that?

The threadbare Japanese case against Trump

In my experience, the most frequently cited of Trump’s apparent vices is his “bad mouth,” and that it makes him unfit for the office of the president of the US. It’s understandable for Japanese, I suppose. This is a country where nobody has ever spoken badly of anyone in public, unless it’s followed by canned laughter.

Trump’s frank and brazen words might rub against a population whose culture teaches them to avoid conflict at all costs. And when his words are turned into Japanese subtitles, and the humour and the sarcasm and the tone are lost, and that humourless non-rhetoric is read like a press release by people who have little to no understanding or interest in the issues that concern the US, then Trump would certainly appear to have a bad mouth.*

The second most cited reason to reject Trump in Japan is the rising threat posed by an undeterred China if the US reconsiders its current defence commitments. This fear will obviously cause Japan to amend its war renouncing, military-restricting constitution (constitutional amendment was on the card before Trump’s election; this fear provides a much needed boost in momentum). But more on that later.

The third most cited issue is Trump’s immigration policy. They say that his policies on deportations of illegal immigrants, strict limitations on refugees and immigrants from Islamic nations, and his proposal to erect a wall on the Mexican border are callous, uncaring, and reprehensible.

This to be said from within the confines of the exclusive club that Japan has always been inspires a comedic level of hypocrisy.

Japan is in crisis because the government refuses to supplement the current insufficient birth rate by increasing immigration. About 98% of the population is ancestrally Japanese.** Japan accepted 27 refugees and rejected the other 99% in 2015. Anyone who has tried to get a working visa in Japan understands how difficult the process is, how strict the vetting is, and how strictly the terms of the visa are enforced. That is how it is on a governmental level. That is not to mention the well-documented backwards way which ordinary Japanese citizens treat foreigners.

But all that is overkill.

“I think it’s a bit silly for Mr. Trump to say he will erect a wall on the US-Mexican border,” one of my students, a 60 year old business owner, tells me. “And I think it’s disturbing that such a large number of people support that idea.”

“I appreciate that you have such a compassionate heart, sir,” say I to him. “But I wonder if your heart would change if Japan were in a similar position. Suppose that Japan were not an island.”

And I notice a sudden change in his expression.

“Suppose Japan were connected to China.”

And I can see from his face that I don’t even need to finish my thought. He’ll support Trump’s wall from this day forth.

The actual issue

Interestingly, the criticism of Trump which is rarely brought up to me is his desire to renegotiate certain trade and defence arrangements. It is interesting because it seems to me that this is the one issue born by Trump that immediately concerns Japanese interests. Perhaps it is only rarely brought up because most Japanese, like most people, would rather take out their political adversary without having to mention reasons which could be interpreted and dismissed as selfish – hence Trump is bad for us all, not Trump is bad for me.

Now, that might be the reason of some, but I think that more likely it is the reason of the government and therefore the media. We know that Reporters Without Borders currently ranks Japan’s press freedom at 72nd in the world (one place below Tanzania). We know that Katsuto Momii, head of NHK (Japan’s BBC), said that NHK should follow the position of the government. (See here too.)

The government identifies Trump as a threat to Japanese interests. (Clinton, who is not seen as a threat, who represents the status-quo, who supports TPP, enjoyed great support from Prime Minister Abe, and thus the media, and thus the population.) Yet the media reports that Trump has a bad mouth and he hates minorities and refugees, that a Trump presidency means war with China and the Koreas. Thus the population, in spite of what you would assume to be intense cognitive dissonance, holds the opinions which I have introduced.

The future of Japanese relations with Donald Trump

I mentioned that constitutional amendment was on the card before Trump was elected.

The current government of Japan that is supported by a group (Nippon Kaigi) whose main objective unquestionably is to amend the constitution, particularly Article 9, the renunciation of war as a means of settling international disputes. Though the Liberal Democratic Party has managed to pass the proposed amendments through the Diet, constitutional amendment requires a simple majority in a national referendum. Polls suggest that though such a referendum would be close, the more likely outcome would be that the LDP and others in favour of constitutional amendment would fail to gain a simple majority, and designs for constitutional amendment would be trashed.

That, however, was before a Trump presidency.

Though the current government is against a Trump presidency because it means higher tariffs for exports to the US and an increase in defence costs, the government is also presented with an opportunity to rebrand their proposed constitutional amendments as necessary for national security in a new world where the Chinese monster grows larger, and the American protector falls back.

Do you expect the Japanese to sit defenceless surrounded by at least three vocally hostile neighbours?

Joe and Jane Japanese won’t have it; they and their kids have told me.

A Trump presidency has paved the way for constitutional amendment in Japan, and nationalism continues its worldwide resurgence.

Notes

* To be sure, there are people who listen to Trump in his native tongue and reach the same conclusion. It’s not the purpose of this article to defend or critique Trump’s communication skills. That’s been done on a million other blogs and websites.

** It may be argued that the statistics are flawed because censuses in Japan only only people to input their nationality. However I would argue that the reason for that is that it is taken for granted that a person whose nationality is Japanese is ancestrally Japanese too. The purpose of this census question is to determine the number of foreign nationals working in Japan.

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