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Are there any blogs or forums or other sources for reading about the Japanese right wing perspective on current events in English? The fall of the yen is striking. The last time I was in Japan in 2022 the country was really starting to show its age- visibly falling behind South Korea in technology and superficial "newness." I haven't been to China but I suspect that even Chinese society is beginning to surpass the vibrancy of Japanese society at least in the sense that the Chinese have seen an explosion of wealth and modernization in the past 50 years while Japan has stagnated since the late 80s. Is the right wing in Japan irritated by American influence in their country and the kneecapping of Japanese financial success by the plaza accord? Is allowing remilitarization of Japan really all that wise on the part of the US when Japan could conceivably become anti-American at some point in the near future (I am no expert on geopolitics in any way so feel free to tell me this is ridiculous and an anti-US Japan would be completely suicidal- though from what I understand Japan has shown suicidal tendencies in the past.) 150 yen to the USD is extremely alarming and I don't see how they aren't going to suffer from terrible inflation if they have to buy oil in USD.
Strange things have happened in world history but I'd bet against this. Japan is fixated upon China, not America. China threatens their lines of communication to the rest of Eurasia, China hates them for a bunch of reasons and the feeling is mutual. It makes sense to work with the US to counter China, that's what they've been doing. I think they would much rather have some dumb GI's rape the occasional Okinawan rather than give China the opportunity to dish out their revenge fantasies for Nanjing.
Japan is old, they have insufficient agriculture, resources and energy to fight wars with great powers, let alone the US. Despite large rice subsidies and import tariffs they're at about 40-50% on domestic calories. There's a very strong pacifistic element in their society that's slowly being eroded by the China threat. They're reliant on a lot of US military technology. Maybe China trounces the US so severely they decide to change camps and cut a deal for better treatment but that's very, very unlikely. At that point, we have much bigger problems to worry about.
But isn't the economic stagnation humiliating to the Japanese? Watching China and South Korea grow in leaps and bounds in the past few decades while their own country ages and declines has to be embarrassing and I can see them easily taking out their aggression on western allies as much as their dreaded local neighbors. I wasn't really imagining a situation where Japan would ally with China but rather one where China's influence in the region increases so much that Japan begins to get irked and go hari kari on both China and their western allies.
Maybe that would be the isolationist/ethnonationalist wing of Japan's desire but probably is unlikely to occur outside of some neo imperial revival and the realistic situation is more likely to be further stagnation/decline in the arms of western allies in an attempt to stave off the Chinese threat like you said.
The phenomenon you describe is pretty illegible to the salaryman on the street, at least if you're suggesting--as you seem to be--that the Japanese look at China and Korea and think "Wow they're advancing but we're old" and are therefore "embarrassed."
While I can't speak for Japan or Japanese, let me do so anyway. Chinese are largely seen as uncouth, unprincipled vulgarians who scrawl graffiti on venerated shrines and stab honest citizenry for baubles and wristwatches. Koreans get more slack for being somewhat more represented by pop culture (music, dramas, etc.) but there are certainly anti-Korean elements here as well.
Never underestimate the ability of superficial prejudice to cloud the big picture.
Yes, the Japanese perspective on the Chinese and Koreans is poor which is why it would be all the more irritating to see their rise while your own society stagnates. Imagine if the Swiss economy had been stagnating for the past 40 years, the value of the Swiss Franc falling to 1/3 of its former power against the USD and conditions stagnating so much that Switzerland became a viable manufacturing base of low cost workers (all of which describe Japan today) while, let's say, Greece grew to be the second largest economy in the world exporting high tech electronics and a good portion of the world's pop culture during the same time period. (Messy metaphor trying to tie together China and South Korea but you see where I'm going.) Surely the Swiss would be embarrassed on some level to be falling behind the historically dysfunctional country of Greece and begin to regret their situation or rethink foreign alliances at some point, no?
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