The NFL Should Have Noticed What Japan Gets Right

If the NFL really wanted to bring in a non-white musical act to entertain instead of inflame, it could’ve done a lot better than Bad Bunny. The Puerto Rican rapper is American by citizenship, but refused to rap in English, which is still by far the dominant language spoken by football fans. (RELATED: Because It’s Inappropriate, That’s Why)

The NFL should have looked east. As in the Far East. As in Japan.

Japanese people, by and large, love the United States. They don’t want to be American. They’re happy being Japanese, but they love American culture, American music, and, according to stadium-filling rockers One OK Rock, “American Girls.”

One OK Rock’s quartet hails from Tokyo, but unlike Bad Bunny, they can speak and write and sing in English. Some of their biggest hits — which have rocked arenas and stadiums in Japan, across Asia, and in the United States — are in English. Bangers “Make It Out Alive,” “Neon,” “Fight the Night,” and many of the band’s other massive hits are in English. And they know how to put on a great show. A friend of mine caught them opening for Muse a couple of years ago and, based on that concert, became a huge fan.

One OK Rock would have unabashedly blown the global Super Bowl audience away. They’re that good in their songwriting and their live performances, as good as any major U.S. rock band. Bad Bunny wouldn’t even be a bad memory.

On the same weekend as the Super Bowl and Bad Bunny’s bad joke of a performance, One OK Rock’s home country, Japan, voted for a new government. 

The Liberal Democratic Party is Japan’s equivalent of the American Republican Party — it’s pro-family, pro-business, pro-Japan in character. The LDP has mostly dominated the post-war Japanese political landscape. But over the last few elections, the LDP lost power as it lost its way over immigration. In response to the country’s ongoing population decline crisis, the LDP had begun to sip the diversity Kool-Aid. And parties emerged to challenge them from the right. The LDP was egged on during the Biden years by America’s Democrats, who push immigration as the solution to every problem and ignore the problems it tends to create. See: Minnesota’s Somali corruption scandal. (RELATED: Japan at the Crossroads)

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi recognized the issues facing her party and Japan, and called snap elections once she had undone the loosened immigration policies of her predecessors.

That turned out to be a master stroke by Japan’s first female prime minister. (RELATED: Japan Set to Elect Female Nationalist, Pro-Taiwan, Anti-China Hawk as Next PM)

The revamped and refocused LDP cruised to win after win, racking up a supermajority in Japan’s Diet — its parliament. The word “landslide” features in just about every headline on the election results. 

Takaichi has cast herself as a “Japan First” leader, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It helped her fend off and then absorb the policies of the more rightward political parties that were stepping up to challenge the LDP. It was politically smart and will be good for Japan.

Japan’s culture and history stretch back thousands of years. But the diversity-obsessed Western left sees this as racist and has pushed Japan to become more Pakistani and Bangladeshi, without caring about the crime that had begun to rise where non-assimiliating populations were imported. It shouldn’t be controversial to say Japan should stay Japanese. Thankfully, Japan’s leaders are choosing to ignore the “diversity is strength” nonsense.

Takaichi is an interesting figure. She’s a drummer and a former motorcycle rider. Unlike many politicians, she has lived a real life among real people. Unlike many on the left, Takaichi doesn’t hate her own country or its strongest allies, the United States and South Korea (and Taiwan). She rightly sees Japan’s vital place in the world, promoting personal freedom by acting as checks — economic and military — on its menacing neighbor, communist China.

If Takaichi sounds a little bit like Trump in her priorities, that’s no accident. President Trump endorsed her before the election and congratulated her after her smashing victory. Her agenda is essentially Tokyo’s version of Trumpism — national priorities first, citizens over immigrants, and Japan’s culture and heritage must be preserved.

Japan still faces twin crises — its population is still rapidly declining, and its economy has stagnated since the 1990s. But Takaichi is likely to be proven right. Restoring pride in Japan for its own culture could lead to reversing the population crisis, and at any rate won’t be as destructive as importing masses of people who don’t understand, share, or care about Japan’s values would be. Reversing the population crisis through keeping Japan thoroughly Japanese stands a great chance of turning its economy around, too.

A.J. Rice is president & CEO of Publius PR, editor-in-chief of The Publius National Post, and author of the #1 political satire book in America, The Curse of the Bearded Lady: How the Trans Mafia Whacked American Sanity.