Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Japan not woke
Why Japanese students aren’t woke
Why smash a system that works well?
One of the joys of living in Japan is the lack of wokeness. It is not that it doesn’t exist – there is a Tokyo Pride, the odd Gaza protest, and gender equality is increasingly discussed – it’s simply that the concept doesn’t quite translate. Like the strikes that only take place at the weekend so as not to inconvenience customers, woke protesters here are tiny in number, generally polite and devoid of the threatening aggressiveness of the West. And diversity isn’t really a thing. Maybe that’s another reason tourist numbers have exploded. You can get away from all that here…
The young in particular seem charmingly oblivious to the culture wars, and universities are generally safe spaces for the woke-phobic. This was brought home to me last week as I was teaching a high-level English class. The word woke came up in reference to an article (an interview with Jonathan Haidt in The Spectator). To my surprise, only one of the group had even heard of woke (he had lived in the US), and even he only had the vaguest idea (‘Isn’t it kind of negative?’).
So, I summoned up the magic of ChatGPT to create a picture (‘exaggerate a bit and make it humorous’ was my instruction). The result was glorious: a fearsome, green-haired, culture warrior in the Millie Tant from Viz mould, with loud hailer, piercings, pin badges and tattoos, full to the brim with wokist zeal. It was all there: ‘smash the patriarchy’, ‘eat the rich’, ‘DEI’, trans, ‘silence is violence’, save the planet, ‘no one is illegal’, ‘down with white supremacy’, and a novel slogan I love and have decided to adopt as my ironic personal motto: ‘hugs not swords’.
My Japanese students regarded all this with bemusement. They squinted to try to make sense of it, as you might with a challenging piece of modern art. The slogans clearly meant nothing, and the aggressive, denunciatory posture was incomprehensible to them. Why is she dressed like that? And what is she so angry about?
To understand why woke has not taken hold in Japan, it is necessary to understand that the Japanese still believe in unique cultural phenomena, of Japanese things and foreign things. Woke, when it is even recognized is considered a Western socio-political construct, and thus not applicable to Japan.
One of the joys of living in Japan is the lack of wokeness. It is not that it doesn’t exist – there is a Tokyo Pride, the odd Gaza protest, and gender equality is increasingly discussed – it’s simply that the concept doesn’t quite translate. Like the strikes that only take place at the weekend so as not to inconvenience customers, woke protesters here are tiny in number, generally polite and devoid of the threatening aggressiveness of the West. And diversity isn’t really a thing. Maybe that’s another reason tourist numbers have exploded. You can get away from all that here…
The young in particular seem charmingly oblivious to the culture wars, and universities are generally safe spaces for the woke-phobic. This was brought home to me last week as I was teaching a high-level English class. The word woke came up in reference to an article (an interview with Jonathan Haidt in The Spectator). To my surprise, only one of the group had even heard of woke (he had lived in the US), and even he only had the vaguest idea (‘Isn’t it kind of negative?’).
So, I summoned up the magic of ChatGPT to create a picture (‘exaggerate a bit and make it humorous’ was my instruction). The result was glorious: a fearsome, green-haired, culture warrior in the Millie Tant from Viz mould, with loud hailer, piercings, pin badges and tattoos, full to the brim with wokist zeal. It was all there: ‘smash the patriarchy’, ‘eat the rich’, ‘DEI’, trans, ‘silence is violence’, save the planet, ‘no one is illegal’, ‘down with white supremacy’, and a novel slogan I love and have decided to adopt as my ironic personal motto: ‘hugs not swords’.
My Japanese students regarded all this with bemusement. They squinted to try to make sense of it, as you might with a challenging piece of modern art. The slogans clearly meant nothing, and the aggressive, denunciatory posture was incomprehensible to them. Why is she dressed like that? And what is she so angry about?
To understand why woke has not taken hold in Japan, it is necessary to understand that the Japanese still believe in unique cultural phenomena, of Japanese things and foreign things. Woke, when it is even recognized is considered a Western socio-political construct, and thus not applicable to Japan.
One of the joys of living in Japan is the lack of wokeness. It is not that it doesn't exist – there is a Tokyo Pride, the odd Gaza protest, and gender equality is increasingly discussed – it's simply that the concept doesn't quite translate.
Like the strikes that only take place at the weekend so as not to inconvenience customers, woke protesters here are tiny in number, generally polite and devoid of the threatening aggressiveness of the West.
And diversity isn't really a thing. Maybe that's another reason tourist numbers have exploded. You can get away from all that here….
The young in particular seem charmingly oblivious to the culture wars, and universities are generally safe spaces for the woke-phobic. This was brought home to me last week as I was teaching a high-level English class.
The word woke came up in reference to an article (an interview with Jonathan Haidt in The Spectator). To my surprise, only one of the group had even heard of woke (he had lived in the US), and even he only had the vaguest idea ('Isn't it kind of negative?').
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Friday, June 19, 2026
Christians: Increasingly Squeezed Between Islamists and the Left
Europe’s Christians: Increasingly Squeezed Between Islamists and the Left
Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint-Omer, northern France, destroyed in an arson attack in 2024.
@InfosFrancaises on X, 2 September 2024
Jonathon Van Maren is a writer for europeanconservative.com based in Canada. He has written for First Things, National Review, The American Conservative, and his latest book is Prairie Lion: The Life & Times of Ted Byfield.
As demographic shifts accelerate and anti-Christian hostility mounts from both radical Islam and the secular left, the faith that is Europe’s soul faces an uncertain and darkening future.
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As riots triggered by migrant attacks convulse the UK, the debate over immigration in Europe is reaching a fever pitch. The same question is asked, time and again: If nobody voted for this, why does it keep on happening? In the past two years, migrant violence has been recorded—and in some cases triggered violent public backlash—in Germany (a toddler and man stabbed to death by an Afghan); Belfast (a man stabbed in the street by a Sudanese refugee); France (a deadly stabbing by an Algerian in Mulhouse); as well as Poland, Sweden, and Spain, among others.
By contrast, the steep rise in anti-Christian hate crimes, meticulously tracked by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, has gone largely unreported. In May alone, OIDAC Europe reported 37 hate crimes targeting “Christian places of worship, religious symbols, religious spaces, Christian institutions, and Christian individuals,” including:
- 13 arson-related attacks (the highest in 2026 thus far)
- 10 cases of vandalism
- 3 cases of deliberate “desecration”
- 3 cases of physical violence
- 3 thefts of religious objects
- 3 cases of “vandalism and violence”
- 1 case of incitement
- 1 case of disruption of worship
Some of the incidents are deeply disturbing. A Polish nun was attacked both physically and verbally at a bus stop, with the cross around her neck torn off. The windows of the Holy Spirit Church in Hanau, Germany were shattered after attackers fired steel balls through the window while hundreds of worshippers were inside. Two Catholic students in Austria were attacked and badly injured by “alleged left-wing extremists” in Innsbruck.
OIDAC Europe also noted that a “Christian-run café in Leipzig had to close after its operators reported 26 attacks over a period of two and a half years, including repeated vandalism, graffiti attacks, damage caused by butyric acid, and other forms of harassment.” The attacks were perpetrated “by individuals associated with the far-left extremist scene.” In Greece, a historic church bell tower was damaged by an attack from an assailant wielding a shotgun. Several churches in Poland were also vandalized, some with satanic symbols (another grim trend).
Germany had the highest number of anti-Christian hate incidents in May at 10; Italy and France had 8; Poland, 3; Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Greece, the UK, and Bosnia and Herzegovina each had one. “The figures presented in this report reflect only documented cases known to OIDAC Europe and therefore cannot capture the full extent of anti-Christian hostility in Europe,” the report noted. “Nevertheless, the incidents recorded during May 2026 point to a continuing pattern of attacks affecting Christian places of worship, religious symbols, and Christian organisations across a broad range of European countries.” There have been another five instances of vandalism and arson against churches since the report was published.
Europe’s Christians are increasingly squeezed between the pincers of Islamist incomers and home-grown leftist extremists. Finland’s Päivi Räsänen has faced 7 years of criminal prosecution for quoting and defending the Bible in public by anti-Christian LGBT activists and their judicial allies; on June 6, a Catholic prayer gathering in France was disrupted by two assailants screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and “F*** your mother, Christians!” Leftists and Islamists hate Christianity for entirely different reasons, but for reasons that seem as much spiritual as practical, they have frequently made common cause. “Queers for Palestine,” after all, has an active presence across Europe.
These attacks do not yet constitute full-scale persecution, but they may presage it. The riots in Belfast and elsewhere have prompted the question: What will Europe look like if the indigenous populations become minorities in their own homelands? There is another question worth asking, as well: What will happen to Europe’s Christians as they become an increasingly despised minority? Many nations—the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the UK, France—have already lost their Christian majorities. More will soon follow suit. We do not know for certain, but we do know this: Christianity is the soul of Europe, and a soulless continent is a dark place.
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