安田浩一さん～日韓国交回復の記念碑撤去から考える、日本社会の排他的ナショナリズム【FrontLine Session】

Street Trucks in Kawaguchi and the Spread of Exclusionary Nationalism

Yasuda Koichi (安田浩一) had been reporting in Kawaguchi just the day before the broadcast. More than a dozen black-painted right-wing sound trucks had been pulling up outside the constituency office of a female city councillor who opposed discrimination against foreign residents and hate speech, day after day, blaring slogans such as "traitor," "get out of Kawaguchi," and "we don't need a councillor who sides with foreigners." A temporary-injunction application seeking to ban the demonstrations was filed the previous Friday, and on the day Yasuda visited, the trucks did not appear.

Where the old right wing trained its fire on imagined enemy nations or domestic communist parties, labor unions, and progressive parties, its successor increasingly targets foreign residents and the people who defend their rights. Hate demonstrations continue to be held across the country; individual mobilizations may number only in the hundreds, but they are unrelenting. Host Ogisho Chiki (荻上チキ) noted that the equation "foreigner equals crime" has become the de facto starting point for political debate, and expressed concern that even as recorded crime figures show a long-term declining trend, foreigners are being cast as the agents of a deteriorating public safety environment.

The Kochi Monument Removed After Six Days

The main subject of that day's FrontLine Session was a case Yasuda had covered in his regular column "From the Scene of History's Destruction" in the monthly magazine Chikuma. On June 6, 2026, a Japan-Korea friendship monument inscribed with the words "East Asian Peace" (東洋平和) was unveiled in the parking lot of the Kuroshio Hotel in Kochi Prefecture. The moment news of the ceremony circulated online, the backlash was immediate: calls, emails, and posts demanding to know whether the hotel was "supporting a terrorist" or "building a monument for a terrorist" poured in. Fearing the reputational harm that sustained public controversy poses to a hospitality business, the hotel removed the monument just six days later, on June 12.

The phrase "East Asian Peace" is taken from the manuscript "A Treatise on Peace in East Asia" written by An Jung-geun, who assassinated Itō Hirobumi at Harbin Station in 1909. The reason Kochi was chosen runs through the Port Arthur trial that followed the assassination: many of the presiding judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and journalists covering the proceedings were from Kochi Prefecture. During the Meiji era, when the Satsuma-Choshu clique dominated the central government, former Tosa samurai frequently sought careers beyond Japan's borders; many were also members of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, meaning they had a degree of ideological sympathy for An's convictions. The death sentence was not overturned, Yasuda explained drawing on interviews with historians, but many of the Kochi men involved felt a personal understanding of why An had acted as he did.

The Former LDP Heavyweight Who Put Up Five Million Yen

The monument was the project of Nishimori Shiozō, a major figure in Kochi's conservative politics and a former LDP heavyweight. Guided by the teaching of former Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru — that Japan had colonized and caused immense suffering to the Korean Peninsula and must face that honestly — Nishimori had devoted decades to promoting Japan-Korea friendship. He also held the view, Yasuda added, that cooperation with South Korea was indispensable from an anti-communist standpoint. Nishimori contributed five million yen of his own money and secured space on the hotel grounds he considered most fitting. The unveiling ceremony was a substantial occasion, attended by local prefectural assembly members and guests from South Korea, yet it ended with the monument being forced down by an online campaign.

When Yasuda interviewed Nishimori after the removal, the former legislator said he had no intention of giving up and was already looking for another site to rebuild. He appeared to be only partly aware of the scale of what had unfolded online, but his commitment, Yasuda reported, had not wavered.

An Jung-geun: Historical Context and the Question of Labels

Yasuda pushes back on the binary of "terrorist or hero." The annexation of Korea came the year after the assassination, in 1910, and for people who would live under colonial rule, resistance movements carried the weight of warfare — a view that remains deeply rooted in South Korean historical understanding. Yasuda also pointed to a revealing asymmetry: Itō Hirobumi himself was involved in political violence in his youth, including the arson attack on the British legation in Shinagawa, yet Japanese people do not reach for the word "terrorist" to describe him.

Ogisho shared his own experience of visiting the An Jung-geun Memorial Hall in Seoul on his first trip to South Korea, saying that engaging with the historical context and learning about An as a person allowed him to understand how someone could arrive at the conclusion An reached. Both agreed that asking first what happened and why — before rendering judgment — is the essential work of historical understanding, and that Japan cannot achieve genuine friendship with its neighbors without honestly confronting its own past.