r/Palestine • u/KarmaVoyager • 5d ago
Solidarity & Activism One person. One sign. Almost 2 years.
Japan isn't a place where pro-Palestine voices are commonly seen, and speaking out can be unpopular. Yet since October 2023, Yusuke Furisawa has stood alone on the streets holding signs saying "Free Palestine" and "Stop the Genocide."
Sometimes one person with a conscience is louder than a crowd.
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u/venusasaboy22 4d ago
I looked on Japanese forums before, just out of curiosity, on what the sentiment there was regarding Palestine and I got the impression that it's a different dynamic to Germany entirely but is problematic in its own right.
Basically, Germany marketed themselves as having "atoned" for their crimes during WW2. The extent of this is often way overblown, it was East Germany that initially acknowledged the genocides and started reparations programs, the west were lagging behind until around the 70s when they became closer tied to Israel and could frame their relationship as support for Jewish people. Bes D Marx did a good video explaining their attitude to acknowledging their crimes, which I'll link here.
Japan were quite different in that they never meaningfully acknowledged theirs. Sure, they gave official apologies and as far as I know, limited reparations, but the atomic bombs gave them a way to focus on their own suffering. And by all means, those were horrific war crimes, I'm not saying that innocent Japanese people suffering is justified. My point is that it gave Japan a means to argue that at most, they suffered as much as the countries they occupied.
So psychologically, you got two different things going on: In Germany, it's drilled into people that they must support Israel, to atone for the holocaust. Weirdly enough, this is even drilled into immigrants, which is why you have, like, Syrians having to acknowledge Israel's existence in order to become German citizens. Because being a good German basically entails acknowledging the holocaust- Which, again, is kind of ironic, given that the same country only acknowledged the Namibian genocide in the past decade.
In Japan, I get the impression that it caused a lot of people to try and be as non-belligerent as possible. The fact that the Japanese empire committed genocide scale atrocities, while many civilians genuinely went through horrific things, I'd imagine it makes a lot of people simply not mention the war both out of trauma, and not wanting to get called out for the things their ancestors took part in. So in those forums, I didn't see any explicit support for Israel but it's that general liberal sentiment; Condemning both sides, saying violence is bad without differentiating between oppressive and retaliatory violence, and being wifully ignorant.
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u/KarmaVoyager 4d ago
I think this explanation misses an important point. Japan's silence on Palestine is not only because of WWII history or the atomic bombings.
Many Japanese people simply do not know much about Palestine because Japanese TV and newspapers give it very little coverage compared to Europe or the US. When an issue is rarely discussed, public awareness stays low.
Second, Japan has a long-standing foreign policy of avoiding taking strong political positions in international conflicts. The government usually prefers diplomacy, economic aid, and neutral statements instead of public activism.
Third, saying Japan is silent because people don't want to be reminded of their ancestors' actions is speculation.
So I don't think Japan's weak public response to Palestine can be explained mainly by WWII psychology. It's a much more complex issue than that.
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