At the moment I begin to write this, I have very little energy to properly convey what happened today, but I did not think I would ever meet someone who was socially liberal, but culturally imperialist. *
* In this post, I’m using this term similarly to “royalist,” though of course I am very well aware of the difference.
I must now take the deepest breath I’m physically capable of, find the energy to talk about this, and then try to convey it as best as I can.

The Story
This requires a bit of background.
I’m absolutely not an expert in the history of Japan. I know that Japan is a very old country, if you consider a country as something that can exist prior to its modern constitution that it’s currently governed by. If that’s the case, there are quite a many “very old country” in the world, however.
But if you consider a country instead as something that exists through the lineage of a single bloodline, Japan could be considered over a thousand years old. Where it gets really tricky is the line between mythology and history. If you’re curious, that’s somewhere between the years 400 and 600. Mythologically, you can go back a thousand years more to find Japan’s legendary “first” Emperor.
To be sure, history begins when it is recorded. Before then, it’s really hard to discern fact from fiction.

Dr. Jones
Archeology is the search for fact, not truth.


Japan is many things. It is an archipelago, a region, a country, an empire, a government, a history, a mythology, a people, even a religion. Some of these things are quite difficult to isolate from the context of the rest, because many people consider them to be inextricable.
I won’t fault you if you don’t know about the Shintō religion, because it exists almost exclusively within the islands of Japan. Shintō is Japan’s native religion. It’s polytheistic, meaning there are many kami (sacred beings). And it’s old, from the same time as that fuzzy line I mentioned earlier between mythology and history, where religion often lies.
To put it plainly, the primary deity in Shintō is the sun kami, Amaterasu. And she is believed to be the ancestress of the imperial bloodline that exists to this day. That’s just one part of this that I’ll get back to in a minute.
Again, I can’t expect people to know this, but the ancestors of people who now make up more than 97% of the population of Japan are not native to the archipelago. These islands were native to Jōmon people for 10,000 years, including Ainu people in modern-day Hokkaido. Migrants from the Korean peninsula and South Pacific (collectively known as Yayoi people) came to the region sometime around …2000 years ago. They both assimilated and overwhelmed the native population.
What’s important is that 2000 years ago, migrants inhabited the archipelago, and a few hundred years later, a mythology existed to explain why one of them was now in charge of it: They were a descendant of the goddess of the sun.

Let me take a break for a moment to say that I grew up Catholic, but I am atheistic now. The thing is, I grew up on stories about something that happened 2000 years ago, where a direct descendant of a god supposedly appointed someone to take over after them, with successors all the way to the present day Pope. I don’t believe in these stories anymore, but the New Testament was written 50–100 years after historical Jesus walked the earth.

Now, back to Japan. The legendary first Emperor was only first recorded over 1300 years after he supposedly existed. These “records” were commissioned by the state around the year 700 and are cleverly written to transition from myth to actual recorded history to legitimize the Emperor. These stories became the basis for Shintō faith.
These records are as old today as the stories they told then. They were written 1300 years ago, telling stories of events that happened 1300 years prior.
But even if the legendary first Emperor actually existed over 2000 years ago, Japan was far from a unified country that resembled anything like it does today. Before the Edo period, which began less than 500 years ago, a lot of people were fighting for control. Even by that time, the Emperor was not in control. The shogunate was. The Emperor has almost always been a symbolic role.
As a point of fact, no Japanese Emperor ever had complete control over the entire archipelago now known as “Japan.”
But here’s where it gets interesting (to me). Japan formally became a unified country in the late 1800s. Government officials were elected by those who were allowed to vote (only about 2% of the population). And it was this newly-formed government that said, basically, “Believe whatever you want, but Shintō is real, and the Emperor is a living kami.” Not just a descendent. A divine being, worthy of worship.
That was just 135 years ago. To put this in context, this is when Nintendo, Coca-Cola, and Michelin were founded.
Also at this time, the new, unified Japanese government colonized Ainu Moshiri, renamed it to Hokkaido, and the Ainu people who once lived there were forced to assimilate. Now, almost no one knows if they’re native Ainu anymore.
Japan has a new constitution now, somewhat awkwardly written by Americans for reasons you can surely figure out. But you know how it goes… wherever you are in the world, you know that some people still pine for the good old days.

The Conversation
Today, I talked with a Japanese person who seemed very progressive. Outwardly liberal. That’s quite uncommon in Japan. At one point I ask about Harry Potter. She says she likes it. I follow up about J.K. Rowling. She says Rowling “doesn’t understand LGBTQ people, especially transgender people,” and declares herself as an ally to trans people. To me, you can’t have it both ways, but I let that one go for now, and we move onto other topics.
“I like Japan,” she says, but continues, saying that Japan—at times—can be unfriendly to foreigners. I remark about the “black sound trucks” that park outside train stations yelling things about gaikokujin (foreigners) as I walk by, trying to ignore them. If you don’t know, those are the right-wing ultranationalists. You know, the fash.
She says those people think the Emperor is a god.
Given the audience of this conversation, I say something that didn’t seem controversial, “Yeah, I know. Well, maybe there shouldn’t be an emperor.” How wrong I was.
She tells me the Emperor is a symbol of Japan, and that’s why he’s important. That Japan is a 2000-year-old country.
I mention that Japan only recently unified as a country, like many other modern countries in the world (Italy) which were previously multiple kingdoms. I don’t really want to argue about this, but—
She insists it’s not at all like European countries, and that there’s always been only “one government” in Japan.
One more very deep breath, folks.

The Recap
I want you to recall everything I said above. Japan is not a 2000-year-old country; its government is younger than America’s. Its people are not native to these islands despite making up the overwhelming modern majority. No Emperor has ever controlled the archipelago. The Shintō religion is based on the nation’s mythological origin story with shrines across the country. And some people believe the Emperor is a direct descendent of a deity.
Even for people who know he holds no political power, who don’t believe he is a deity or a descendent of a deity, he is the the head of the Japanese state and the head of the Shintō religion. He is intrinsically part of the culture.
Because the culture is all of this. The archipelago, the region, the country, the empire, the government, the history, the mythology, the people, and the religion are woven together.
The story of Japan is much bigger than its verifiable history, which makes it difficult to separate fact from legend.

The Gossip
If you’re not interested in the gossipy part of this story, you can depart now. But if you need to hear the dramatic ending to the conversation with this person, proceed.
After she says there’s always been “one government” for Japan, I thought about all the conflict to gain control over the archipelago, indigenous Jōmon people, and Ainu people in modern-day Hokkido, so I say something like, “Sure, if you ignore Ainu people,” where “you” meant “people who would make that argument,” not thinking she was quite literally making that argument.
This was understandably misinterpreted. She immediately insists that she was talking about Japanese history which is different from Ainu history. I am then bombarded with information about how Ainu and Okinawan people have their own cultures and only recently became part of Japan (which is kinda the entire thing I was getting at).
So I apologize, and attempt to clarify what I meant. She shoots back saying she knows more about Japanese history than I do. I think that’s likely true. For what it’s worth though, everything I wrote above was what I knew then (though I checked everything again for this post), which I think is more than most non-Japanese people know, unless you’ve seen this outstanding video from Bill Wurtz.
I ask about the possibility of a misunderstanding. When the answer was no, I left it at that and unmatched.
Yes, this was a Bumble conversation. We were pleasantly, actively chatting for four continuous hours prior to this. It occupied nearly my entire day, and I really wish it hadn’t.
I never considered the possibility that someone could be socially liberal, but culturally imperialist.

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