Kristin Surak teaches sociology at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice (2013) and The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires (2023).
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan almost without a break since 1955, put up the second-worst result in its history last month. The party had to find a new parliamentary ally to stay in power at the head of a minority government.
If you can afford to pay, there are a growing number of states willing to sell their citizenship and the privileges it brings. The lucrative trade in “golden passports” exposes the dark side of capitalist globalization and its unequal valuation of human lives.
The major capitalist economies of Europe and North America have been experiencing low rates of economic growth and population increase. Japan has been in that position since the 1990s, and its experience offers some important clues about what the future holds.
Shinzō Abe became Japan’s longest serving prime minister thanks to the weakness of his political rivals. But Abe never realized his dream of rewriting the Japanese constitution to legitimize the nationalist militarism that was central to his worldview.
Shinzo Abe pledged to create a Japan in which “all women can shine.” But behind the glitter is a program that has little to offer working-class women.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe is pushing the country toward dangerous new militarization.
The nationalist pride and neoliberal economics peddled by Shinzō Abe promise only cheap escape from Japan’s problems.