Yoroku: Can Japan dodge ‘woke-unwoke’ divisions seen in Europe, US?

Are you “woke” or “anti-woke”? For those unfamiliar with the term, it generally describes the liberal-conservative split in the political landscape of the United States.

“Wokeness” was originally used by Black Americans to mean “awake” in the sense of “socially conscious.” It caught on during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that began in the 2010s to describe the stance of opposing racism and valuing social justice. However, it began to be used negatively by conservatives as an attack on liberals, painting them as overbearing people pushing their own values on others.

The terms have echoed in non-English-speaking countries such as Germany and France. This summer, it was reported that the German team for the European football championship was criticized by their country’s far right for being “too woke.” The line of reasoning was that there are a lot of immigrant soccer players and diversity is being over-emphasized.

In the eastern Germany state of Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won state assembly elections, gaining popularity by espousing the expulsion of immigrants and refugees. One supporter who was reported to have been involved in neo-Nazi activities said in a post on social media that they “oppose the woke elite.” Some in the party’s upper echelons have been criticized for glorifying the Nazis. And yet, the party captured over a third of the vote. What is going on in Germany, where Nazism has been strictly prohibited since the end of World War II?

All this is not unrelated to the global political trend of increasingly divided values. Protecting the rights of minorities such as immigrants and refugees was originally a universal position, but in places with many immigrants, such as Europe and the United States, an increasing number of people oppose this, claiming that the rights of the majority are not being protected. Japan is no exception. Is the wisdom of engaging in debate without falling into divisiveness a lost art?

(“Yoroku” is a front-page column in the Mainichi Shimbun.)