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?').
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