This article originally appeared in the Japan Times.
By Stephen Nagy, April 23, 2026
A recent segment by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation characterizing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as “very hawkish” and a leader who wants to make it “easier to go to war” reflects a larger pattern. Across the global media landscape, Japan is often viewed through a distorted lens of far-right tendencies and hyperaggressiveness.
This mischaracterization is rooted in Japan’s wartime history, but also shaped by blatant ideological bias and propaganda — much of it emanating from Beijing — which overlooks Japan’s deep postwar tradition of democracy, pacifism and commitment to the rules-based international order.
The Takaichi government and Japanese society, of course, face real domestic and historical challenges, from demographic decline to pockets of historical revisionism among some conservative politicians. But dominant international narratives often bypass objective critique in favor of caricature.
This misportrayal operates on three levels: the strategic use of wartime tropes by rival states, ideological bias within Western journalism and what scholar John W. Dower describes as a longstanding tendency to exoticize and dehumanize the Japanese people.
The first — and most overtly hostile — level is strategic. Authoritarian regimes, particularly China and North Korea, systematically promote narratives that frame modern Japan as a resurgent imperial threat. This is not incidental; it is a feature of statecraft. Chinese military doctrine has long emphasized the importance of shaping the information environment. Through Communist Party organs such as the United Front Work Department, Beijing seeks to influence global media narratives, including by amplifying claims that Japan’s defensive policy adjustments amount to militarization. The aim is to weaken the U.S.-Japan alliance and sow distrust among Western publics and the Indo-Pacific.
This type of narrative weaponization is not unique to authoritarian states. During the intense economic competition of the late 1970s and 1980s, the United States engaged in similar behavior. As Japanese auto and semiconductor exports surged, American politicians and media outlets revived World War II-era imagery to cast Japan as a predatory economic rival. The spectacle of lawmakers smashing Toshiba products on the Capitol steps illustrated how quickly historical anxieties can be repurposed to manage contemporary tensions. Strategic misrepresentation, in other words, is a convenient tool across political systems.
The second level stems from ideological bias embedded in parts of Western media and academia. Many foreign correspondents covering Japan are trained in programs that emphasize critical theory frameworks, often prioritizing analyses of power, gender and postcolonialism over strategic and security studies. These perspectives can be valuable, but when they dominate, they risk narrowing the analytical lens.
As a result, coverage can overemphasize Japan’s social rigidities while underplaying its political stability, democratic resilience and contributions to regional security. When Japan takes steps to strengthen its defense posture in response to a nuclear-armed North Korea or a more assertive China, reporting is sometimes framed primarily through the lens of domestic nationalism rather than geopolitical necessity. This creates a disconnect between Japan’s largely defensive posture and the tone of international coverage, at times reinforcing the narratives advanced by foreign disinformation campaigns.
The third and perhaps most persistent level is cultural. For more than a century, Western portrayals of Japan have often relied on extremes, depicting the country as fundamentally “other.” Japan is alternately cast as hyperviolent or hyperpacifist, hyperefficient or stagnant, hypersexualized or socially withdrawn. These contradictory stereotypes flatten a complex society into a set of familiar tropes and obscure the lived reality of its people.
Dower’s scholarship traces the roots of this phenomenon. In “War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War” (1986), he documents how both the U.S. and Japan used racialized propaganda to dehumanize one another during World War II. In the Pulitzer-Prize winning “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II” (1999), he presents a far more nuanced account of Japan’s postwar reconstruction. And in “Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq” (2010), he shows how these cultural frameworks continue to shape modern perceptions of conflict. The enduring tendency to portray Japan as exotic or alien is a direct legacy of this history.
Addressing this multilayered problem requires a structural response.
First, at the strategic level, democratic governments and media watchdogs should invest in stronger defenses against disinformation. That includes tracking the origins and spread of “militarization” narratives and exposing how they move through global media ecosystems. Treating the information space as a core domain of national security — and responding quickly to false or misleading claims — can help blunt their impact.
Second, to mitigate ideological bias, universities and journalism programs should broaden their approaches to Asian studies. Integrating coursework in Indo-Pacific security, defense economics and international relations alongside existing theoretical frameworks would better equip future reporters. News organizations, in turn, should prioritize expertise in regional security when assigning coverage of Japan’s defense policies.
Finally, at the cultural level, Japan and its partners should expand efforts in public diplomacy that emphasize everyday life and shared human experiences. Supporting literature, documentary film and academic exchange can help move beyond the reductive “weird Japan” tropes of pop culture and foster a more grounded understanding of contemporary society.
Japan remains a cornerstone of democratic stability in the Indo-Pacific. It should not be viewed through the distorting lenses of propaganda, ideological bias or outdated cultural stereotypes. For too long, flawed narratives have shaped global perceptions. It is time for those perceptions to be guided instead by Japan’s record as a peaceful, democratic nation.
Stephen R. Nagy is a professor at the International Christian University, a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs.
