The landslide victory by the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6 seems to have shocked many in Europe, even though it had been somewhat anticipated.
By contrast, related coverage in Japan was primarily factual, without conveying the same level of “shock” seen in the West. At the very least, there is little sense of crisis that such a phenomenon might occur in Japan anytime soon.
There is, however, no guarantee how long such optimism will last. The trends of nationalism, “America First” or “Europe First” attitudes, and xenophobic and discriminatory populism in Western countries over more than a decade are by no means temporary phenomena. Right-wing populism — which has served as an outlet for the frustration and anger of the “forgotten people” resulting from the widening income gap caused by the IT revolution and neoliberal capitalism of the 1990s — has real potential to become a political trend in Japan as well, a country that has experienced its own “Lost Three Decades.”
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