Netto-uyoku

Netto-uyoku or Net uyoku (ネット右翼, Japanese Internet rightists), often shortened to Netouyo (ネトウヨ), is the term used to refer to netizens who espouse right wing views on Japanese social media. The term is a combination of 'netto', which is a shortening of the Japanese for 'Internet', and 'uyoku', which means 'right wing'.

Netto-uyoku have been described as a "new breed of neo-nationalists who interact almost entirely within their own cyber community, shut off from the rest of society" by Japanese critic and writer Furuya Tsunehira. Furuya further expounds "the average age of Japan’s Internet right-wingers is around 40. Some 75% of them are male, " Furuya further observes that although active on the web, they lack institutional political representation offline, leading to a sense of frustration and a tendency to be more active online and to back the far-right elements of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, especially those under the administration of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Origins

Japan's "cyber nationalist phenomenon" can be traced back to 2002, the year Japan and South Korea jointly held the FIFA World Cup. Frustrations with the perceived unfair play of the South Korean team were ignored by mainstream Japanese media which largely kept an upbeat tone. This resulted in online bulletin boards and forums becoming popular outlets for these grievances. With the media avoiding coverage critical of the event or of the Koreans, the Internet was viewed as the sole medium free from the constraints of official policy or political correctness. This episode helped fuel the distrust of the mainstream media's coverage of South Korea and helped set the anti-Korean, anti–mainstream media tone that was to become a defining feature of Japan’s Internet right-wing community.

Another event that further emboldened the Netto-uyoku occurred in September 2002 when North Korea officially admitted to kidnapping Japanese citizens, a fact which it had long denied.

Views

Netto-uyoku generally express support for historically revisionist views that portray the former Empire of Japan in a positive light, juxtaposed with negative portrayals of North and South Korea (see anti-Korean sentiment), and China (see anti-Chinese sentiment). These negative portrayals are frequently framed in terms of unresolved political and territorial disputes between these countries, as well as controversies over the historiography of Imperial Japan.

Netto-uyoku also express criticism against domestic left-wing and centre-left parties, such as the Japanese Communist Party, Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the former Democratic Party of Japan, and the Japanese mainstream media, which they accuse of liberal bias. Netto-uyoku also tend to express hostility towards immigrants, especially those from countries that have diplomatic tensions with Japan.

Rise of Trumpism

The rise of Trumpism among the Netto-uyoku community has been observed since September 2020, two months prior to the 2020 United States presidential election. Some Japanese political commentators even theorized that Shinzo Abe's resignation as Prime Minister in September 2020 to be a juncture for Netto-uyoku to shift their central figure to Donald Trump as a "political upgrade" in promoting diplomatic policies which embody anti-Chinese sentiment. As such they began spreading Trump's conspiracy theories in an attempt to overturn the 2020 American presidential election.

See also

• 2channel
• Anti-Japan Tribalism
• Ethnic issues in Japan
• Japanese nationalism
• Manga Kenkanryu
• Neo Gōmanism Manifesto Special – On War
• Mass media in Japan
• Neo-nationalism
• Tokutei Asia
• Uyoku dantai
• Zaitokukai
• Gukppong (South Korea)
• Fenqing (China)
• Little Pink (China)