Paper short abstract:

The rise of the far-right movements has become a major concern in Japan. Analysing the life-story interview with a far-right activist, the current study psychosocially explores the role of ‘nation’ in one's investment in the far-right discourse.

Paper long abstract:

The rise of the far-right movements has become a major concern in Japan since the mid-2000s. Xenophobia in Japan is characterised by the correlation between international conflicts between Japan and its neighbouring countries and the rise of xenophobic discourse (Higuchi, 2014). Not much is known as to how some individuals relate themselves to conflicts between nation-states to the extent that they join in xenophobic movements. The current study explores this issue using psychosocial analysis as devised by Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson (2000). Through examining the life-story interview of a Japanese far-right activist, the present study investigates how personal experiences, international relations, and racism are connected in one’s mind. Discussing why racism is prevalent while ‘race’ is a concept void of substantial meanings, Rustin (2000) argues that ‘race’ works as an empty category: one can project a wide range of fear and anxiety to racial others precisely because of the emptiness of the concept. The current study argues that ‘nation’, on the other hand, works as a half-full, half-empty category. While an individual can project their fear and anxiety to national others, their choice of enemies and how they legitimise antipathy can be also influenced by phenomena associated with their nation, such as history, conflicts with neighbouring countries, or status in the international sphere. The analysis reveals how the childhood trauma of the activist made him attracted to the worldview of Japan being surrounded by enemies, and how these have changed according to the transition of the domestic conditions and international environments of Japan since the 1990s. Due to the everydayness of nationalism in contemporary society, an individual can easily invest themselves in the nationalist discourse and project uncontainable negative feelings onto ‘national enemies’. Such an attitude can be even legitimised as being ‘authentic’, which is one of the key norms of populocracy (Fieschi, 2019).