Category: Japan
Japan’s beautiful love affair with America
For a brief moment, X stopped reading like a machine built to aggravate, divide, and degrade the people using it. Instead of the usual sludge of foreign bots and demoralizing propaganda, American users found themselves, thanks to a new auto-translation feature, staring at something unexpected: a flood of posts from Japan celebrating the United States. Monster trucks, backyard barbecue, Old West revolvers, bluegrass music, country songs, and all the rowdy symbols of American life that our own elites often treat as embarrassing were suddenly being admired from abroad.
It reminded Americans that our culture is not only real, but vivid enough that another people can see its beauty even when we have been taught to sneer at it ourselves. If Americans and Japanese are to continue to enjoy our distinct cultures, we must fight to maintain the true diversity that makes a civilization worth preserving.
Status in the U.S. and many other Western nations is acquired by looking down on the folkways of the average American.
Most Americans know that there is a strong current of appreciation for Japanese culture in the U.S. Americans eat Japanese food, watch anime, read manga, practice karate, and revere samurai movies. While we were once in a brutal war, Americans have come to respect the noble and beautiful traditions of the Japanese. What many Americans did not know is that the Japanese also have a robust subculture of appreciation for American culture.
Americans are constantly told that they have no culture, or that what they do have is shallow, vulgar, and unworthy of defense. In much of elite life, status comes from mocking the tastes and traditions of ordinary Americans. Status in the U.S. and many other Western nations is acquired by looking down on the folkways of the average American.
It is not just that the Japanese love American culture, but that they seem to focus specifically on rural Southern and Western archetypes. Banjos playing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” barbeques grilling comically large steaks, monster trucks crushing everything below them. The Japanese love and celebrate everything that American elites have trained the population at large to sneer at.
Recently, many people have been asking the question “What is an American?” But the Japanese seem to know right away. There is no confusion, no debate. The answer is obvious and plays itself out in the memes, re-enactments, and celebrations the Japanese enjoy while honoring American culture. Sometimes another people can identify your defining traits more clearly than you can, especially after your own institutions have spent years trying to dissolve them.
In a period when many people in the United States feel estranged from their own inheritance, it was oddly heartening to see ourselves reflected in a nation we admire. If the Japanese know who Americans are, then the least we can do is be proud to act like the Americans the Japanese love.
This sudden outburst of cultural appreciation also puts to bed the idea that Americans are xenophobes who hate other countries. Japan’s love for the U.S. is reciprocated with great fervor by Americans. But why are Americans so willing to appreciate and embrace the Japanese while being dismissive of so many other countries? The answer is simple: The Japanese are worthy of admiration. Not all cultures are equal, and the Japanese have emerged from the devastation of war to rebuild a high-trust society on a foundation of rich history and honorable conduct. It turns out that Americans don’t hate other cultures; they simply save their appreciation for those that deserve it.
The social media cultural exchange also highlighted the importance of real diversity and the need to protect distinct cultures. Both the Americans and Japanese hold reciprocal appreciation for each other’s civilizations and want to see them continue into the future. Americans want our grandchildren to be able to visit Japan in 100 years and experience what we celebrate now, and the Japanese feel the same about the U.S. An island called Japan that had the same borders and topography but was filled with Indians, Palestinians, and Somalians would not be the same. If the island chain of Japan were full of Haitians, it would not be Japan; it would be Haiti with some cherry blossoms.
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That is the point that modern ideology cannot admit. A nation is not just a market, a legal zone, or a patch of land inside a set of borders. It is the Japanese people, their way of life, and the culture they create that define the nation. Japan has been better than most modern nations in protecting its identity, but the country is under immense pressure to open its borders. Like much of the modern world, Japan is experiencing a massive decline in birth rates and is struggling to care for its elderly population while replacing its workforce. After dabbling in increased immigration to bolster its workforce, the nation has elected a right-wing government to reimpose restrictions. A civilization can survive low birth rates for a time; it cannot survive replacement.
Americans are beginning to understand the same truth about themselves. If Japan would cease to be Japan after demographic replacement, then the United States would cease to be the United States under the same conditions. America is a real, distinct culture with traditions, folkways, and history that are worthy of pride. America is not just an economy or an administrative zone attached to a flag. We need to stop being shamed into rejecting our culture or treating it as the banal background for a global empire. Japan is beautiful because the Japanese have built a civilization worth preserving. America is beautiful because Americans built a distinct culture worth preserving. That culture deserves more than ironic detachment or ritual embarrassment. It deserves loyalty. The Japanese, in their odd and affectionate way, reminded Americans of something many had forgotten: This country is real, its inheritance is beautiful, and it is worth preserving.
A Righteous Man in Japan
In the early 1940s, in the middle of World War II, a young Jewish student was arrested for wearing tefillin, phylacteries traditionally placed on the arm and head during prayer, on the rooftop of a store. This was somewhat of a surprise, for he was neither in Berlin nor Warsaw, but rather Kobe, Japan. Thousands of European Jews had obtained visas through the heroic kindness of Chiune Sugihara, vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania, who risked his life to provide safe passage out of the reach of the Nazis and into Japanese territory. Included among these survivors were many students and teachers of the renowned Mirrer Yeshiva.
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The Foreign Policy Winners and Losers of 2025
The first year of the second Donald Trump presidential term has been a carnival of outrages and delights. Historians will struggle to make sense of the whirlwind of activity around the Oval Office, but some big events are already clear. The year has had some big winners, including:
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Taking the fentanyl challenge: Whacked-out American junkies now big in Japan
The United States’ fentanyl crisis is being mocked on the other side of the planet.
Videos with millions of views show Japanese content creators mimicking a bizarre and all-too-common sight in cities like San Francisco and New York: half-conscious drug addicts bent over sharply at the waist but somehow still standing.
‘Japanese social media influencers are going viral for mocking America’s fentanyl addicts.’
Typically from the effects of heroin or fentanyl, this telltale folded posture has become known as the “fenty fold.”
“Japanese social media influencers are going viral for mocking America’s fentanyl addicts who are often seen hunched over and flailing on the streets,” one user wrote on X. An attached video that showed a young woman in Okinawa, Japan, hunched over has received more than 2.5 million views.
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Know when to fold ’em
On TikTok, similar videos have captions like “Bringing American culture to Japan” and show participants folding over in locations typical of American drug addicts, like a subway station. One such video has garnered over 1.2 million views.
Other videos take place in parking garages, city centers, and public parking lots. Most of the viral content uses a Japanese song labeled “Anime Girl,” although the song is actually a combination of the songs titled “Don’t Forget Me” by Schinya and “Sparkle” by Radwimps.
Cleaning up
Drug seizures have increased under the Trump administration, resulting in a slight increase from FY2024 versus FY2025.
However, if FY2026 continues on trend, there will be a significant jump in the amount of annual drugs seized (measured in pounds), according to CBP statistics.
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Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
For example, in October 2025, approximately 51,500 pounds of drugs were seized by the federal government. In October 2024, that number was 40,700 and just 37,400 in October 2023 under President Biden.
Overdoses down
Fentanyl, however, represents one of the least confiscated drug types in terms of weight, likely due to its potency. Marijuana, methamphetamines, and cocaine are the most seized by weight, in that order.
At the same time, overdose deaths have significantly dropped in the United States between April 2024 and April 2025. There was a 24.5% decrease during that time period, the CDC reported. The number of overdoses peaked around August 2023 but have since been declining.
Some of the biggest decreases in overdoses have come in states like Louisiana, New Hampshire, New York, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
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As Europe Steps Back, Asia Steps Up
The Trump administration has once again horrified European public opinion. The National Security Strategy was released with little fanfare in the United States but landed like a bomb across the Atlantic. Lines like, “Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize … cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” reveal both the impatience a faction in the Trump administration feels toward Europe and its inability to win the internal debate.
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Courage Under Fire
First came the water pouring down the slopes of Japan’s Mount Fuji on October 19, 1979. Then on top of the torrents came the fire that killed 13 U.S. Marines and burned dozens more. Though investigators afterward may not have consulted the Bible, they ended up attributing the unusual mix of elements involved to the same force that, per the Book of Exodus, enveloped ancient Egypt in hail and fire. “It was an act of God,” investigators concluded.
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