Against Japanism

• Happyend w/ Neo Sora

  This episode contains spoilers of Happyend.Neo Sora joins the show to discuss filmmaking and radical politics.Neo is a Japanese-American filmmaker and Palestine solidarity activist based in Tokyo. His latest film Happyend was premiered at last year's Venice International Film Festive and Toronto International Film Festival, and is currently showing in theaters across Japan (The film is expected to hit theatres outside of Japan in 2025. Look out for screenings in your area such as this one in Amsterdam).However, unlike most of the popular Japanese content circulating outside of Japan, such as the Attack on Titan manga & anime series discussed in the previous episode, the politics of Happyend is revolutionary and pro-people.The film's plot revolves around the personal friendship between two characters Koh and Yuta who struggle over their differences on how they view the world around them, as well as their collective struggle with their schoolmates against the Repressive and Ideological States Apparatuses of Japanese imperialism represented by their school, police, and digital surveillance.In this episode, we discuss Neo's politicization in the 2010s following the Triple Disaster of March 11, 2011 and how his political development is tied to his artistic development as a filmmaker. We discuss his cinematic influence and the history of radical cinema in Japan and beyond, and the importance of seishun eiga (films involving youth and secondary school students) to the narrative arc of Happyend and its possibility as a conveyer of radical politics, and much much more!Intro: Cielo by Huma HumaMidtro 1: HAPPYEND Theme (Opening) by Lia Ouyang RusliMidtro 2: LOVE Theme Phone Piano Sketch by Lia Ouyang RusliOutro: The Eat Shit Song by Okabayashi Nobuyasu (The video is a different but better version with English subtitles)Support the show

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• Attack on Titan: An Imperialist Propaganda w/ Kazuma Hashimoto

  This episode contains spoilers of the Attack on Titan series.Kazuma Hashimoto returns to the show to discuss Attack on Titan, a popular manga and anime series created by Hajime Isayama.This is the first installment of a mini-series on art and politics, where we will critically analyze the role of art in promoting Japanese imperialism and how we can revolutionize art in service of the people.Kazuma is a media critic, translator, and journalist. He authored many articles including “Attack on Titan Couldn’t Escape Controversy in the End: Looking at the Legacy the Manga Leaves Behind” published by Polygon in 2021.The Attack on Titan franchise received critical attention for tweets posted by a now private Twitter account that allegedly belonged to Isayama, which glorified Japanese imperialism and the colonization of Korea prior to the end of WWII. While Isayama’s association with the Twitter account is not empirically proven, he has expressed admiration for historical figures and events in his blog that indicates his conservative political leanings.In this episode, however, rather than focusing on Isayama’s own political views, we focus primarily on the form and content of the franchise itself, and how they function as a conveyor of bourgeois ideology.  We talk about how the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre reinforces the social anxiety caused by the crisis of capitalism and the role of music in the emotional appeal of the series. We dissect the reactionary narrative of the series, specifically its colonial and pro-war messaging, as well as a pessimistic view of humanity it puts forward. We discuss what it means to consume this content during Japan’s turn to re-militarization and complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and how film and arts can either reproduce the bourgeois ideology or challenge it by appropriating these art forms for the liberation of the working class and oppressed peoples.We recorded this interview in December 2023 shortly after the conclusion of the anime series, but what this franchise represents and stands for remains relevant to this day and the franchise itself is not going away as the final episode is getting a theatrical release this November.Intro: Cielo by Huma HumaOutro: 歴史 history by Danny Jin (The video includes an English translation of the lyrics in the description)Support the show

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• Vietnamese Migrant Workers and the Legacy of "Technical Internship" Program w/ Le Phuong Anh

  Maya 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 in December 2022. According to Japan’s Ministry of Labour, as of 2023, Vietnamese workers constituted 25% of all migrant workforce in Japan totaling two million, the highest number on record. They constitute 51.8% of a group of migrants working under a visa called the Technical Internship program. Anh specifically highlights the experience of so-called “Technical Interns' ' who are misleadingly categorized as “interns,' ' but in practice are imported and exploited as the source of cheap labour. We also discuss the plight of Vietnamese international students who are in a relatively less precarious position than the technical interns, but still experience downward class mobility due to indebtedness and having to cover the cost of living and tuition fees for profit driven private language schools. We discuss the intersection between migrant and reproductive justice issues through the case of Le Thi Tuy Lin, a Vietnamese woman and technical intern who was criminalized and acquitted for abandoning her stillborn twins, and other topics as such as the media’s role in enabling anti-migrant, anti-Vietnamese racism, and the root cause of forced labour migration. We conclude our discussion by talking about how migrants and their supporters are fighting back against migrant exploitation and Japan’s unjust migration policies.UPDATE: In February, the Japanese government announced it is ending the Technical Internship program and replacing it with a new program whereby workers will be conditionally allowed to switch jobs after two years of their arrival. Under the new program, workers will be allowed to apply for Specified Skill Workers (SSW) Type 1 Visa, which allows workers to stay in Japan for five years, and SSW Type 2  Visa, which allows workers to stay in Japan indefinitely and bring their families.  This is an important victory and a product of tireless campaigning and mobilizing that migrant rights organizations undertook to bring light to this issue and fight for migrant justice. However, the fight is not over yet and it’s too early to tell if the announced change will actually be codified into law and protect the workers from abuse within the two years they will not be allowed to change their employers. Furthermore, the Japanese government is currently proposing a bill to make it easier to revoke permanent residency of migrants if they fail to pay taxes and social insurance security premiums, or become convicted of a crime for up to one year of imprisonment. This would effectively render permanent residency meaningless. More importantly, as long as Japan remains capitalist and an imperialist nation complicit in the underdevelopment of colonial and semi-colonial nations through the World Bank, IMF, and the US-led wars as we’re currently witnessing in Palestine, there will always be migrants and refugees coming to Japan, and capitalists seeking super-profit though the exploitation of cheap migrant labour. In other words, unless imperialism as the root cause of forced migration is addressed, there will never be genuine migrant justice in the Global North.Intro: Cielo by Huma HumaOutro: ImmiGang II by Moment Joon Support the show

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  1:27:40
• Multipolarity or Anti-Imperialism? w/ Politics in Command

  Kota 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-Marxist theoretical assumptions made by Ben Norton, one of the most vocal advocates of multipolarity, which posit the nation, not the working class, as the subject of anti-imperialism.  We discuss Norton’s assertion that China is still a socialist country and the assumption that socialism equals the development of productive forces and state ownership of the economy. We discuss how, beneath the veneer of optimism supposedly heralded by the rise of China and Russia, the discourse of multipolarity is deeply pessimistic, as it tacitly accepts that there are no truly revolutionary alternatives to capitalism. We conclude our discussion by talking about what a principled anti-revisionism would look like in practice, and what we can learn from revolutionary movements that are continuing to struggle in spite of the intensifying inter-imperialist competition. Sources:World military spending reaches all-time high of $2.24 trillion - Al Jazeera (April 24, 2023)Multipolarism is not Anti-Imperialism! - The Revolutionary Communists, Norway (RK)The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: MontageFascism and Eurasianism as Blowback - Grant Scott Fellows Fanshen: Class, Women's Liberation, and Crit-Self-Crit - Politics in CommandChina: From Commune to Capitalism - Politics in Command ft. Zhun Xu The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 - William HintonRethinking Socialism: What is Socialist Transition?  - Deng-Yuan Hsu and Pao-Yu Ching Intro: Cielo by Huma HumaMidtro: Mount Tai by Space BabyOutro: ibeinthecar by Space BabySupport the show

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• Danchi, Social Reproduction, and the Politics of Urban Development w/ Marxist Disco

  Felix 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 as the site of social reproduction and revolutionary class struggle.  In the first segment of this interview, we discuss the proposed redevelopment of Jingu Gaien as an entry point to the history of capitalist urban development in post-WWII Japan. A seemingly unlikely alliance of environmentalists, conservative politicians, and urban planners has coalesced in opposition to the project. However, the middle class leadership of the opposition movement has focused primarily on the cutting down of ginkgo trees and the aesthetic of urban redevelopment, rather than a systematic critique of capitalist urbanization as a form of class warfare against poor, working class, and unhoused residents of Tokyo such as shown in the removal of a tent city in Miyashita Park in Shibuya.In the second segment of this interview, we zoom in on the question of social reproduction and the class character of urban development in postwar Japan through the history of public housing projects known as Danchi.  We discuss the peasant resistance to the construction of danchis in the 50s, their role in the reproduction of the white colour work force and the gendered division of labour during the 60s & 70s, and the mystification of the middle class as an ideal subject of the Japanese nation, as well as how the demographic change in recent decades has made danchis a symbol of social decay and a target of far right attacks. We rely extensively on journalist Yasuda Koichi’s book “Danchi to Imin (Danchi and Immigrants)” for this segment, as well as other materials sourced by Felix in his research project. In the third segment, we discuss how the depopulation of the Japanese countryside and the collapse of housing prices there have led to the “I Turn” phenomena of urban-to-rural migration, aided by an idealization of the countryside as the repository of authentic Japaneseness by young middle class Japanese urbanites and Western Japanophiles alike, as well as the effect of imperialism on the changing class composition of the Japanese agriculture.We conclude our discussion by talking about the limits and the possibilities of anti-capitalist struggles and urban-based social movements in Japan and beyond.Read the full episode description here. Intro: Cielo by Huma HumaOutro: E.N.T by Green KidsSupport the show

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