The rise of pop nationalism in the land of wa

Word of the day, mot du jour, kyō no ryūkōgo (今日の流行語), would appear to be 日本人ファースト. This past week, the phrase has been buzzing in the media — mainstream and social — with all the subtlety and charm of the seasonal cicada on hormonal overload as Japan heads into its July upper-house elections. As the term has been trending on X-Twitter, non-Japanese friends have been posting their alarm on Facebook. 

日本人ファースト— Nihonjin First, or, to render it with its full cultural friction intact, Japanese People First, is a dully clichéd nationalist appeal: prioritise the welfare of Japanese citizens, defend national identity, and resist the perceived encroachment of foreign influence. The kind of slogan that arrives with depressing predictability alongside increasing demographic anxiety and economic uncertainty. And the form and origins of the phrase 日本人ファースト tell a similarly dispiriting story.

The slogan combines Japanese and English: 日本人 (Nihonjin) for ‘Japanese people’ and ファースト, the English word ‘first’, rendered in katakana — the script used for foreign loanwords. So we get a rallying cry for national identity expressed partly in imported phonetics. Loanwords are not unusual in Japanese, where these katakana terms are ubiquitous — but in this context, the irony is hard to ignore: a slogan about defending Japanese purity framed using foreign vocabulary. It’s a bit like putting tomato ketchup on sushi.

That irony deepens when we trace the origin of the slogan itself. ‘[My Country] First’ rhetoric is not native to Japan. It follows a lineage that begins with America First, which emerged in US political discourse in the early 20th century. Most famously, it was the name of a prominent isolationist movement during the 1940s, associated with figures like Charles Lindbergh, and more recently revived by Donald Trump as a (mis)guiding principle of his presidency. In Britain, Britain First was used by fascist leader Oswald Mosley in the 1930s and is now the name of a far-right, anti-Muslim political group.

Now, in 2025, Japan’s nationalist fringe is adopting the same slogan format. It’s being used most prominently by Sanseitō (参政党), a relatively new party with a growing following. Sanseitō combines hardline nationalism, anti-globalist rhetoric, and an emphasis on traditional Japanese values. Their platform includes opposition to foreign land ownership, reductions in immigration, and calls to restore Japan’s cultural and political autonomy.

Sanseitō has positioned itself as a populist alternative to Japan’s mainstream parties, often using social media and YouTube to reach voters disillusioned with the political establishment. Their 日本人ファースト slogan is being used to frame policy proposals focused on protecting pensions, improving food security, and shielding Japan’s domestic economy from external pressures. The messaging is clear: Japan must look inward, shuck off pernicious foreign influences, and reclaim its purity to survive.

Or become GREAT again.

While nationalist sentiment has always been part of Japan’s political DNA, what we are seeing now is something more virulent: a well-adapted mind-virus, long incubated on the margins, now finding a new host in younger generations. This isn’t your grandfather’s post-war conservatism. It’s nationalism in a new costume for a new audience — tech-savvy, meme-literate, historically clueless, and politically illiterate. 

The language may be Japanese, but the attitude is globally synchronised.

This development is not unique to Japan. The slogan fits within a broader international trend — a surge in right-wing populism that prioritises national identity, turns immigration and diversity into  political weapons, and rejects global institutions. In the United States, this trend is shaped by figures like Steve Bannon, who has worked to foster international ties between far-right movements. In the UK, Reform UK, formerly led by Nigel Farage, campaigns on an anti-immigration, anti-net-zero platform. In Germany, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) has grown in strength on a similar message. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally continues to position itself as defender of the French people against the ‘globalist elite’. Italy, Hungary, Poland, India — each has its own version of this narrative.

Japan has, until recently, been something of an outlier. While ultranationalist groups have always existed on the margins, the political mainstream largely avoided adopting this kind of populist language. Even now, mainstream parties like the LDP tend to couch nationalist policies in more technocratic or paternalistic terms. But the conditions that have fuelled far-right movements elsewhere — stagnant wages, narrowing life chances, the nagging sense that the powers that be regard you as a goggle-eyed minion — exist here too. It may have taken longer, but the arrival of overt ‘First’ language in Japanese politics is no surprise.

There’s also an irony in how this kind of nationalism is developing in a country that already has strong anti-immigration policies, a deeply embedded monocultural identity, and where the foreign population remains small by international standards. Japan does not need to close the gates — it never really opened them. 

This tension between surface-level harmony and underlying exclusion has had national exposure before, as the corpse in the cupboard sheds its head with an audible thump: in 2015, Ayako Sono, a conservative columnist and novelist, used her Sankei Shimbun column to argue that foreign residents in Japan should be housed in racially segregated zones — explicitly endorsing an apartheid-style arrangement. The Sankei put this on the front page. The fact that such views were given prominent space in a mainstream national newspaper speaks volumes about the kinds of ideas that remain within the bounds of public discourse.

This may also be a reflection of Japan’s internal contradictions. The country places a high value on wa (和) — social harmony — and prides itself on politeness and cohesion. But this can also mask more exclusionary tendencies. Foreign residents often face discrimination in housing, employment, and legal protections. It’s only in recent years that people started sitting next to non-Japanese on public transport. Rhetoric like Nihonjin First brings those tendencies to the surface. It gives them a slogan.

And perhaps the final irony is this: for a country so invested in its own cultural uniqueness, the most prominent new nationalist slogan is borrowed almost entirely from abroad. It has been translated, transliterated, and rebranded — but its DNA remains foreign.

It’s an irony as succulent as fine sushi: Japan’s emboldened nationalism isn’t just couched in imported terms — it’s part of, and enabled by, a global trend. The rhetoric may arrive dressed in katakana, but the DNA belongs to an international mind-virus.

And while it’s tempting to dismiss Sanseitō as a fringe party with limited reach, we’ve seen this story before. 日本人ファースト might be last to the international ‘Us First’ party — but it’s rubbing double chins with Farage and Bannon at the bar.