While I was in Japan I got my hands on a Japanese history textbook.
But this isn't an ordinary Japanese textbook.
It's a very political one, and if you look inside you'll see a version of history that
is very different from the one the world knows.
An example is the Nanking Massacre, the 1938 event in which Japanese troops murdered tens
of thousands of Chinese civilians.
To the world this this massacre is considered one of the most infamous war crimes commited
by the Japanese during their takeover of Asia, but in this textbook it basically gets no attention
It's referred to as the "Nanking Incident" and the only attention it gets in this book
is basically disputing the facts.
There's no mention of the hundreds of thousands of Korean women who were forcibly brought
over to serve in brothels on the front lines of the Japanese wars.
They're these comfort women that are a huge part of Japanese history,
but they don't show up in this book.
When I was in Tokyo for a Borders story, I actually visited the people who publish and
write this book.
It's this group of old Japanese men who are part of this lobbying society that basically
try to push a different historical narrative into Japanese schools,
and they've been quite successful.
This textbook publishing society is one of many expressions of a rising Nationalism in Japan
This is Makoto Sakurai.
He's the public face for the Japan First Party.
This group launched just a month after another rightwing faction across the Pacific Ocean
took power of the White House, proclaiming a like-minded message.
"America First! America First!"
Within the first five minutes of Sakurai, and even through a translator, I could tell
that this guy would get along great with Donald Trump.
Sakurai's Japan First Party hasn't won any elections yet, but other Nationalists in Japan
have, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2012.
He has surrounded himself with advisers and ministers from some of these fringe groups,
who are now influencing policy.
Up until now these guys, and yes most of them are guys, have been known for driving around
in their decked out vans preaching the restoration of Japan's pre-World War II greatness.
Their agenda is similar to nationalist movements in other countries: they want to restore strong
military, they call for the deportation of Koreans and limitation to the little immigration
that Japan even has.
I chased after these guys and filmed them for an afternoon, watching them spar with
the Tokyo police.
This yearning for a return to some ill-defined golden age is the basis of many far right
Nationalist movements around the globe
The main historical fixation of these Nationalists is the 1860's, when Japan underwent a massive
transformation, giving the Emperor lots of power which he used to rapidly educate the
people, grow the economy, and develop a massive military.
Japan became an economic and military powerhouse in just a few years and over the following
decades, they did what powerful countries did back then: they started expanding, committing
horrific atrocities like mass genocide in the process.
By the mid-1900s, this aggressive expansion brought Japan into a natural alignment with
Hitler's Germany, who was doing the same thing in Europe.
And then, at the height of the Japanese empire...
The bomb was exploded above the city and in the towering mushroom, Japan could read its doom
The U.S. and Allied powers won the war.
They came in, dismantled Japan's military, and wrote them a new constitution that ensured
they'd never get so powerful again.
To the Nationalists, this was the moment that everything was lost.
Japan was brought to its knees, stripped of the pride and national values thousands of
years in the making, emasculated by these western powers who were now occupying their country
In Tokyo there's this huge controversial shrine called Yasukuni.
It's where all the people who died in the wars under the emperor are memorialized, including
all those who died in World War II.
After Japan lost the war, a huge trial was held.
Thousands were convicted of war crimes and thrown into jail and even some were hanged.
And what's tricky about this very beautiful shrine that I'm walking through, is that over
a thousand of those war criminals are enshrined here, and are prayed to every day.
But a lot of Japanese people have a different narrative about what happened after the war.
According to this narrative, the tribunals after World War II were not an impartial exercise
in justice, but rather an emotional backlash against the atrocities that had just occurred
during the war.
So, the fact that they're here in Yasukuni doesn't bug a lot of these people.
In fact, they revere them and they worship them for their sacrifice to the emperor.
All of the symbolism and the memorials point to a glorification of the imperial period,
not necessarily an apology for it.
The shrine is at the symbolic heart of the Nationalist narrative, censoring any mention
of atrocities and glorifying the imperial age as worthy of restoration.
Upon leaving the shrine, I come across a rightwing group that was visiting the shrine to pay
tribute to the spirits.
So it's tempting to draw parallels with what's happening in Japan with Nationalism and what
we see happening in the U.S. and Europe, with figures like Donald Trump.
But while that parallel works for a little bit, it breaks down really quickly, and the
differentiating factor that is the most important for understanding the difference is a word
that we've heard a lot lately.
"Populism"
Many of these movements in the U.S. and in Europe have been led by outsiders, populists
who want to dismantle the establishment.
in Japan that's not the case; people like Shinzo Abe are
through and through establishment politicians.
There isn't a disruptive figure who's coming in from the outside and winning elections.
While the rise of rightwing nationalism is similar between Japan and the United States
and the West, it's still fundamentally quite different and it appears that the rise of
a Japanese Donald Trump is still a ways off.