Japan has long been regarded as an outlier in comparative studies of populism, distinguished by political stability, Liberal Democratic Party dominance, and limited immigration. In this thought-provoking lecture, Professor Axel Berkofsky challenged that conventional wisdom, arguing that Japan has entered its own delayed populist moment. Examining the rise of the Sanseito party, demographic decline, labor shortages, identity politics, and the evolution of conservative nationalism, he demonstrated how structural economic pressures and political discourse are reshaping Japanese democracy. The lecture also assessed the resilience of EU–Japan relations, highlighting the enduring importance of the Economic Partnership Agreement despite growing geopolitical uncertainty. Combining comparative politics with international political economy, Professor Berkofsky offered a nuanced framework for understanding populism beyond its traditional European context.
Reported by ECPS Staff
While much scholarly and policy attention has focused on the rise of populism across Europe and North America, Japan has long appeared to constitute a notable exception to this global political trend. For decades, the country’s remarkable political stability, the electoral dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and its comparatively homogeneous social structure appeared to insulate it from the anti-establishment movements that transformed politics elsewhere. Yet recent developments suggest that this exceptionalism may no longer hold. The emergence of overtly populist and anti-immigration political actors, coupled with growing public anxiety over demographic decline, economic stagnation, inflation, and national identity, indicates that Japan is increasingly experiencing many of the political tensions reshaping advanced democracies more broadly.
Against this backdrop, the eighth lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, held under the overarching theme "Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition," explored the evolving relationship between domestic political transformation and international economic cooperation through the lens of EU–Japan relations and populism. Delivered by Professor Axel Berkofsky, Full Professor at the University of Pavia and Co-Head of the Asia Centre at the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), the lecture combined comparative politics, international political economy, and East Asian studies to examine whether Japan is witnessing the emergence of its own variant of populism and how these developments may shape one of the European Union’s most important strategic partnerships in Asia.
The session was introduced by Dr. Sébastien Goulard, Manager of Cooperans and an expert on EU–Asia connectivity projects, who situated the lecture within the broader comparative study of populism. He observed that while populism has become a defining feature of European politics over the past three decades—manifesting itself through movements ranging from Brexit in the United Kingdom to the electoral successes of radical-right and radical-left parties across the continent—its development in Asia has followed a more uneven trajectory. Dr. Goulard briefly pointed to examples such as Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in the Philippines before posing the central question that would animate the lecture: Does Japan, long regarded as politically exceptional, now face its own populist moment? Equally important, he asked whether any rise of Japanese populism could affect the EU–Japan partnership, particularly given that many populist movements elsewhere have been deeply skeptical of international trade agreements and economic integration. His framing effectively connected domestic political developments in Japan to broader debates surrounding globalization, regional cooperation, and the future of liberal international order.
Professor Berkofsky started his lecture by underscoring that Japan has long represented something of a puzzle within comparative studies of populism. While right-wing populist movements expanded across much of Europe during the 1990s and 2000s, and Donald Trump’s election transformed American politics, Japan appeared remarkably resistant to similar developments. Unlike many Western democracies, where established party systems fragmented under the pressure of anti-establishment mobilization, Japanese politics continued to be dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose uninterrupted rule—interrupted only briefly on two occasions since 1955—provided an extraordinary degree of institutional continuity. This prolonged political stability, Professor Berkofsky suggested, delayed rather than prevented the emergence of populist politics.
