Nissan Seminar: Culture Must Be Defended: Japanese Conservatism and International Relations (Dr Karin Narita, Sheffield)

Convener(s): Professor Hugh Whittaker and Professor Kristi Govella

Japan has long been known for its commitment to a pacifist foreign policy as stipulated in Article 9 of the post-World War II constitution. Despite some opposition, for much of Japan’s postwar history there has been a mainstream foreign policy consensus to maintain a security treaty with the United States and limit rearmament. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, there has been a concerted movement urging constitutional revision in order to legalize militarisation. This project has been driven by younger, more radical conservatives at odds with the moderate conservative establishment. This talk examines the rise of a hawkish foreign policy ideology, and its intellectual underpinnings  in the (re)emergence of a reactionary and culturally traditionalist conservatism which styled itself as the ‘New Right’ (Shin-Uyoku) at the height of Japan’s postwar economic power. It demonstrates that the arguments for state power, sovereignty, and rearmament are entrenched in a culturally particularistic logic, and identifies the alliances and divergence among varying ideological factions and their interlocutors that make up the politics of rearmament on the Japanese Right.

Karin Narita is a postdoctoral Research Associate in Japanese Politics and International Relations in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield. Her main research focus is the intellectual history of the Global Right, and she is particularly interested in right-wing ideologies in Japan and East Asia. She is a co-author of World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Former Prime Ministers in Japan: Power, Influence and the Role of Informal Politics (Bristol University Press, forthcoming 2025). Her research has also been published in the Journal of Political Ideologies, Millennium, and International Political Sociology. She previously taught political theory and international relations at Queen Mary University of London, where she received her Ph.D., and at King’s College London.