Against Japanism
31 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsThis podcast seeks to challenge the commonly held assumptions about Japan as harmonious, homogeneous, and traditional by recasting its history as a history of conflict and change, as the history of class struggles, from anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and intersectional perspectives.
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Episodes
Vietnamese Migrant Workers and the Legacy of "Technical Internship" Program w/ Le Phuong Anh
March 05, 2024 22:00 - 1 hour - 60.3 MBMaya and Kota sit down with Le Phuong Anh to talk about the struggle of Vietnamese migrant workers and international students in Japan. Anh is a PhD student at the graduate school of Asia Pacific Studies at Waseda University, whose research interest is in Migration Studies and international student mobility, as well as Vietnamese middle skill migrant workers in Japan. She is the co-author of Against the ‘Japanese Dream’: Vietnamese Student Workers in Japan published in Asian Labour Review ...
Multipolarity or Anti-Imperialism? w/ Politics in Command
September 13, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 64 MBKota sits down with J from Politics in Command to discuss "multipolarity," a discourse which sees the existence of multiple superpowers as a positive development from the unipolar world dominated by the United States. We ask whether the politics of multipolarity is genuinely anti-imperialist or revisionist, an abandonment of revolutionary principles for reformism and class collaborationism. We critically analyze the overlaps between the reactionary ideology of Aleksandr Dugin and pseudo-...
Danchi, Social Reproduction, and the Politics of Urban Development w/ Marxist Disco
August 23, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 80.8 MBFelix a.k.a. Marxist Disco joins the show to discuss the wave of urban redevelopment happening in Japan right now. There are more than 200 buildings planned just in the Tokyo area including Japan’s tallest skyscraper on record, despite the chronic recession and stagnant growth rate the country has been experiencing since the 1990s. To make sense of this contradiction, we critically engage with Marxist geographer David Harvey’s work, particularly his theory of "spatial fix," and of the urban...
The Takarazuka Revue and Capitalist Urban Development w/ The BeruBara Tag Boom
June 28, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBAlex from the BeruBara Tag Boom joins the show to discuss the history and politics of an all-women musical theater based in Western Japan known as the Takarazuka Revue. We discuss the class politics of the Takarazuka Revue, particularly its ties to an Osaka-based private railway corporation called the Hankyu Corporation (now a subsidiary of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group), the development of railway infrastructure and the suburbanization of Osaka in the early twentieth century that created ...
The History of Japanese Fascism: Part 1 w/ The Minyan
June 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 59.6 MBKota sits down with Talia and Prez from the Minyan to answer the question: Was pre-WWII Japan fascist? This is the first installment of a multi-part series on the origins, political economy, and culture of Japanese fascism. Outro: Warszawianka in Japanese (ワルシャワ労働者の歌） Support the show
The People vs. G7 w/ Migrante Japan
May 17, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 50 MBRoger Raymundo, a member of Migrante Japan and co-host of Radyo Migrante re-joins the show to discuss the imperialist agenda of the upcoming G7 summit in Hiroshima, how it affects the workers, peasants, and migrants from the Global South, and other related topics such as the US-led militarization of the Asia-Pacific region and Japan's "Official Security Assistance" to the Philippines. We also discuss the latest amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would make it easie...
Caste Oppression and the Buraku Liberation Movement w/ Buraku Stories
April 25, 2023 16:00 - 1 hour - 50.3 MBNiki from Buraku Stories joins the show to discuss the history of the struggle of a discriminated outcaste people in Japan known as Burakumin. The term “Burakumin” originated in the early twentieth century, “Buraku” meaning “village” or “hamlet,” and “min” meaning people. However, the oppression against the Burakumin people originates from the pre-capitalist status hierarchy consolidated during the Tokugawa or Edo Period between the seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries known as Shinōk...
Nikkei Organizing w/ Miya Sommers, J Town Action & Solidarity, and Nikkei Uprising
January 10, 2023 20:00 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBKota joins an online forum “Nikkei Organizing: A Community Discussion on Organizing Strategy and Developing Revolutionary Movements” held via Zoom on November 13, 2022. The event was hosted and moderated by Miya Sommers from Nikkei Resisters as part of her Master’s thesis project, and joined by representatives of two other US-based organizations: Zen and Henry from J-Town Action and Solidarity, and Anne and Cori from Nikkei Uprising. The event was also inspired by James Boggs' 1974 speech...
Anti-Obituary: Abe Shinzo w/ Deprogramming Imperialism
September 24, 2022 16:00 - 1 hour - 66.1 MBAlisa and Hye Sung from Deprogramming Imperialism join the show to discuss Abe's legacy and his ties to the Unification Church, and review everything that's transpired since his assassination by Yamagami Tetsuya in July before the unpopular state funeral this Tuesday on September 27, 2022. We discuss the UC's activities in Japan, Korea, Philippines, Nepal, Soviet Union, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Kenya, as well as its syncretic religious fascism, fetishization of the bourgeois family, and r...
The Agrarian Question and Class Contradictions in Okinawa w/ Wendy Matsumura
August 15, 2022 17:00 - 2 hours - 118 MBWendy Matsumura, a historian and the author of The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labour, and Theorizations of Community joins the show to discuss the history of Okinawa through a historical materialist perspective. We focus primarily on the history of agrarian class struggles in pre-WWII Okinawa, and how the perception of Okinawa as a culturally distinct space and exotic hinterland is closely tied to the uneven development of capitalism in Japan through the colonization of...
The Agrarian Question and Class Contradictions in Okinawa w/ Wendy Matsumura
August 15, 2022 17:00 - 2 hours - 118 MBWendy Matsumura, a historian and the author of The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labour, and Theorizations of Community joins the show to discuss the history of Okinawa through a historical materialist perspective. We focus primarily on the history of agrarian class struggles in pre-WWII Okinawa, and how the perception of Okinawa as a culturally distinct space and exotic hinterland is closely tied to the uneven development of capitalism in Japan through the colonization of...
The Anti-Vietnam War Movement and the Red Army Faction w/ Alex Finn Macartney
July 09, 2022 00:00 - 1 hour - 67.8 MBAlex Finn Marcartney joins Kota to talk about the history of the anti-Vietnam War movement in Japan and the legacy of the Red Army Faction or the Sekigun-ha, the mother organization of the Japanese Red Army and the United Red Army we previously discussed in this podcast. In this episode, we discuss... 1) Japan’s role in the Vietnam War and the significance of Okinawa as a “keystone” for the US-Japanese imperialism in the Cold War as 2022 marks the 50th year since its so-called “reversion”...
Mlitant Labour Unionism and State Repression in Kansai w/ David McNeil
May 27, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 47.4 MBDavid McNeil joins Kota to discuss militant labour unionism and state repression in the Kansai region of southwestern Japan. We specifically discuss the struggle of truck drivers who work for small-to-medium ready-mix concrete companies, and whose job is to take dry concrete, water it, and deliver the wet concrete to various construction sites managed by large construction companies. They are organized by the Kansai Regional Ready-Mix Branch known as Kan’nama Shibu or Kan’nama, which is pa...
Mlitant Labour Unionism and State Repression in Kansai w/ David McNeil
May 27, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 47.4 MBDavid McNeil joins Kota to discuss militant labour unionism and state repression in the Kansai region of southwestern Japan. We specifically discuss the struggle of truck drivers who work for small-to-medium ready-mix concrete companies, and whose job is to take dry concrete, water it, and deliver the wet concrete to various construction sites managed by large construction companies. They are organized by the Kansai Regional Ready-Mix Branch known as Kan’nama Shibu or Kan’nama, which is pa...
The History of Revolutionary Feminism and Women's Liberation Movement in Japan w/ Setsu Shigematsu
May 20, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 79.2 MBSetsu Shigematsu joins Kota to discuss the history of revolutionary feminism and women's liberation movement in Japan. We first discuss the history of feminists in pre-WWII Japan such as Kanno Sugako & Kaneko Fumiko who critiqued the family system and its link with the emperor system, as well as the reality of Japanese imperialism today, its oppression of non-Japanese women and its relation with US imperialism. We then discuss the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s known as Ūman Ribu...
Revolution Goes East: The Impact of the Russian Revolution in Japan w/ Tatiana Linkhoeva
March 09, 2022 21:00 - 1 hour - 74.4 MBTatiana Linkhoeva joins the show to discuss her book Revolution Goes East: Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism. Some members of the Japanese ruling class reacted to the Russian Revolution with skepticism and hostility, culminating in the Siberian Expedition. Others saw opportunities in recognizing the Soviet Union and pursuing diplomatic relations, partly influenced by the popularity of Russian literature at the time and by the notion that the revolution will modernize Russia. However, as ...
On Intermediary Exploitation w/ Ken Kawashima [Patreon Preview]
February 15, 2022 17:00 - 8 minutes - 6.23 MBIn this preview of a patron-exclusive episode, Ken Kawashima discusses intermediary exploitation (中間搾取, chūkan sakushu) as a form of capitalist exploitation that indirectly exploits the labour power of workers through various intermediaries such as sub-contractors, labour brokers, and temp agencies who pinch a portion of the workers' wage as fees for finding work, providing housing, tools, and other "services." This form of exploitation has served as a control mechanism to discipline a ma...
The History of Filipino Migration to Japan w/ Migrante Japan
February 11, 2022 20:00 - 1 hour - 78.4 MBKota is joined by Roger Raymundo of Migrante Japan, a regional chapter of Migrante International, a global alliance of grassroots migrant organizations of overseas Filipinos and their families. We begin our conversation with Roger’s own story of migration from the Philippines to Japan, and how the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII affected his life, as well as the semi-colonization and semi-feudalization of the Philippines by imperialist countries such as Japan as the root ...
The History of Filipino Migration to Japan w/ Migrante Japan
February 11, 2022 20:00 - 1 hour - 78.4 MBKota is joined by Roger Raymundo of Migrante Japan, a regional chapter of Migrante International, a global alliance of grassroots migrant organizations of overseas Filipinos and their families. We begin our conversation with Roger’s own story of migration from the Philippines to Japan, and how the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII affected his life, as well as the semi-colonization and semi-feudalization of the Philippines by imperialist countries such as Japan as the root ...
The Proletarian Gamble: Uno Kōzō's Theory of Crisis & Korean Workers in Interwar Japan w/ Ken Kawashima
January 21, 2022 05:00 - 2 hours - 100 MBKota is joined by Ken Kawashima, author of The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan and translator of Theory of Crisis by Japanese Marxist economist Uno Kōzō. We begin the interview by discussing Uno’s methodology in analyzing capitalism called Sandankairon, or three-steps theory. The first step involves elucidating the fundamental principles of capitalism. The second step involves tracing the historical development of capitalism in stages. The third step is the conjectural...
Ghost in the Machine: The Emperor System & Anti-Revolutionary Thought Policing in Interwar Japan w/ Max Ward
November 10, 2021 00:00 - 2 hours - 93.2 MBKota sits down with Max Ward to discuss his book about the Japanese state’s effort to suppress revolutionary movements and ideologically convert their participants through the Peace Preservation Law in the 1920s & 30s. We begin our interview by discussing the elusive concept of “Kokutai” (national polity or national essence) through a metaphor of Ghost in the Machine, the ideology of imperial sovereignty that animated the Japanese state and its application of the PPL. While the law was in...
Solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance w/ May Shigenobu
September 02, 2021 05:00 - 2 hours - 102 MBKota sits down with a Palestinian-Japanese journalist Shigenobu May to talk about Palestine. May is the daughter of Shigenobu Fusako, a former member of the Japanese Red Army and a political prisoner in Japan. She is currently based in Lebanon, and since Lebanon is a country underdeveloped by imperialism, the availability of electricity and internet connectivity are very limited. As a result, I interviewed her on two separate occasions and combined them into one episode. In the first seg...
Women in the Japanese New Left w/ Chelsea Szendi Schieder
July 13, 2021 02:00 - 1 hour - 73.7 MBKota is joined by Chelsea Szendi Schieder to discuss her latest book Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left. Women in the Japanese New Left played a vital role in building up the militant student movement against Japan’s new capitalist education system and its complicity with the US imperialist aggression in Southeast Asia. However, the gender dynamic and patriarchal tendencies within the movement undermined their effort and led to the movement’s demise. This weakness ...
The History of Marxism in Japan w/ Gavin Walker - Part 2
May 05, 2021 00:00 - 55 minutes - 38.1 MBAgainst Japanism presents Part 2 of an interview with Dr. Gavin Walker about the history of Marxism in Japan, focusing on the postwar period starting in the late 1940s. First, we discuss the reason behind the Japanese Communist Party’s re-emergence as a mass party in the immediate postwar period. As mentioned in Part 1, in the 1920s and 30s, the JCP was a member of the Communist International or the Comintern (also known as the Third International) headquartered in the Soviet Union. Throu...
The History of Marxism in Japan w/ Gavin Walker - Part 1
April 20, 2021 22:00 - 1 hour - 49.4 MBIn this two part series, Kota sits down with Gavin Walker to discuss the history of Marxism in Japan. Instead of simply narrating the facts of this history chronologically, we focus on particular theoretical and political questions that animated the Japanese communist movement before and after the Second World War. We begin our conversation by discussing what the history of Marxism in Japan tells us about “Japan” as represented by the Eurocentric and Orientalist conception of the world, a...
A Fundraising Appeal from Pato-chan
April 17, 2021 20:00 - 19 minutes - 13.7 MBThis mini-episode features a message from Pat (also known as Pato-chan), a trans woman from the Philippines and a former migrant detainee living in Japan, who is raising funds to support herself during her "provisional release" (Karihoumen in Japanese) which prohibits her from working and accessing healthcare. Donate here or here. Sign this petition to defeat the "Immigration Law Revision Bill." CW: Transphobia, racism, death, suicide Pat came to Japan in January 2015. Although she beca...
A Fundraising Appeal from Pato-chan
April 17, 2021 20:00 - 19 minutes - 13.7 MBThis mini-episode features a message from Pat (also known as Pato-chan), a trans woman from the Philippines and a former migrant detainee living in Japan, who is raising funds to support herself during her "provisional release" (Karihoumen in Japanese) which prohibits her from working and accessing healthcare. Donate here or here. Sign this petition to defeat the "Immigration Law Revision Bill." CW: Transphobia, racism, death, suicide Pat came to Japan in January 2015. Although she beca...
Translating the Japanese Ideology: The Anti-Fascist Philosophy of Tosaka Jun w/ Robert Stolz - Part 2
April 12, 2021 00:00 - 47 minutes - 33 MBIn the second part of an interview with Robert Stolz, we continue our conversation about the affinity between fascism and liberalism, as well as the difference between idealist and materialist philosophies theorized by Tosaka Jun in his book The Japanese Ideology from 1935. According to Tosaka, idealist philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Fredrich Nietzsche, and Nishida Kitaro adapt a metaphysical worldview and see history as characterized by stasis and equilibrium where no change, diff...
Translating the Japanese Ideology: The Anti-Fascist Philosophy of Tosaka Jun w/ Robert Stolz - Part 1
April 03, 2021 22:00 - 1 hour - 42.4 MBIn this two part series, Kota is joined by Robert Stolz to discuss the anti-fascist philosophy of Tosaka Jun, a Marxist philosopher and cultural critic active during the 1930s. Tosaka is often associated with the Kyoto School, a group of academics who studied together at Kyoto Imperial University, led by his academic advisor Nishida Kitaro, influenced by German idealist philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Some Kyoto School philosophers such as Nishida himself and Mi...
Orientalism and Reactionary Ideologies in Video Games w/ Kazuma Hashimoto and Andrew Kiya
March 23, 2021 23:00 - 51 minutes - 35.1 MBKota is joined by Kazuma Hashimoto and Andrew Kiya to discuss the Ghost of Tsushima, its fetishization of the samurai through a misinterpretation of Kurosawa Akira's films, Cyberpunk 2077, how Orientalism and the idealization of Japan in these games (re-packaged and exported abroad through the Japanese state's "Cool Japan" initiative) enable the far right pro-imperialist politics both in ideology and practice. We specifically discuss the recent attempt by the Japanese far right to shut dow...
Introduction to the Against Japanism Podcast
March 21, 2021 05:00 - 24 minutes - 16.8 MBWarm and militant greetings! I'm your host Kota and welcome to the Against Japanism Podcast: Destabilizing Japanese History from the Left! In this introductory episode, I discuss the goals of this podcast and the principles behind it, and preview the upcoming episodes that I have already recorded and will be published here very soon. To sum up, this podcast is a study of Japanese history through the lens of dialectical and historical materialism, a history characterized by conflict and c...