In 1941, Japanese activists in the United States founded the Anti-Defamation League. Formed in the wake of the Niihau Incident to defend the reputation of the late Yoshio Harada and advocate for the release of his wife Irene Harada, the ADL went on to lobby for reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during WWII—a goal realized with the 1988 passing of the Civil Liberties Act. The ADL persists to the present day, combating negative portrayals of Japanese in American media, collaborating with the FBI to monitor Anti-Shinto sentiment, and exerting pressure campaigns against extremists spreading de-bunked Anti-Shinto conspiracy theories like the Nanjing Massacre. The United States sends Japan three billion dollars a year to fund its ongoing war with Russia over ownership of the Kuril Islands, a practice that persists despite America’s growing isolationist sentiment and concern with ballooning national debt. At a time when Europe is experiencing a wave of backlash against mass immigration, Japanese Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani put out a statement demanding that because Spain and Ireland criticized Japan’s occupation of the Kuril Islands, they must take in displaced Kuril Island refugees. The American Japan Public Affairs Committee (AJPAC), widely considered one of the most influential lobbying organizations in the United States, pushed for the 2003 American invasion of North Korea—an event that marked the beginning of the eight year Second Korean War. Public sentiment towards this war, widely regarded as a embarrassing and costly failure, remains negative to this day. Although the war concluded in 2011 with the capture and execution of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, resulting geopolitical instability and power vacuums in the region led to the formation of extremist terrorist organization Juche State of the Korean Peninsula, colloquially known as Juche State. It is not uncommon for Americans to discourage each other from joining the military, on the grounds that it isn’t worth it to “Die for Japan”. Japan’s Public Security Intelligence Agency is regarded globally as the world’s most dangerous and effective intelligence operation. Due to various connections, it is suspected by a growing number of Americans to be involved in a sex trafficking operation used to blackmail powerful figures in the American media and government. In a recent meeting with Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba gave him a golden pager, a reference to a recent operation by the Public Security Intelligence Agency where bombs hidden inside pagers were simultaneously remotely detonated, killing twelve and wounding nearly three thousand members of Korean paramilitary group Party of the Unification Church, a regional rival. Many Americans, already suspicious of Japan’s influence, perceived this gift as threatening and weird. American politicians on both ends of the political spectrum repeatedly make declarations warning against the dangers of Anti-Shintoism. No effort is made to hide open support of Japan—the Japanese flag is flown proudly and conspicuously in some Congressional offices alongside the American one. It has become a common practice for American politicians to travel to Kyoto Imperial Palace, don a traditional kanmuri headdress, and bow in front of the Takamikura Imperial Throne. The left (the seeds of whose ideology were ironically planted in part by post-war Japanese intellectuals) holds protests in universities across the nation in support of the displaced peoples of the Kuril islands, decrying the evils of Japanese Colonialism. The ascendant New Right has begun to notice the incongruity of the messaging put forth by their affiliated politicians, who promise an end the prioritization of minority ethnic groups and foreign nations over old-stock Americans, but conspicuously exempt Japan from this realignment.

The backlash against those who point this out, who are accused of “defending Truman” and “denying the bomb”, only increases the discontentment, as the growth of the New Right was spurred in part by weariness of the American left deploying scolding accusations of intolerance to silence dissent. For a group sick to death of the term “Anti-Racism”, “Anti-Shintoism” sounds disconcertingly similar. This emerging dynamic is well illustrated by one of the first public statements made by RFK Jr., the newly installed Secretary of Health and Human Services: a declaration on X that “Anti-Shintoism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues.” The overwhelming response in the comments, by citizens eager to hear of progress on America’s public health crisis, was one of confusion and disgust.