Dr Karin Narita on "Japan, the Global Right, and Liberal Modernity: Right-Wing Thought and Political Critique"
About the Talk
The past year has dramatically shown that Japan is no stranger to the kind of nationalist and populist radical right movements which have proliferated around the world over the last decade. The rise of the far-right party 厂补苍蝉别颈迟艒 and the election of the right-wing politician Takaichi Sanae as the first woman prime minister has demonstrated that reactionary and anti-globalist views are gaining traction and influence. Far from a sudden emergence, the rise of the reactionary Right is underpinned by long-standing critiques of modernity and the global liberal order expressed by Japanese conservatism. Taking seriously the theoretical foundations of the Japanese Right this talk asks what politics is rendered visible by conservative critique, on one hand, and what reactionary politics are enabled by the same, on the other. Critiques over issues such as nationalism, historiography, and geopolitics demonstrates how the Japanese Right unpicks the tensions and contradictions of Japan鈥檚 place in the liberal international order.
Event Details
Wednesday, 4th of February 2026
13.15-14.30
OC1.07, Oculus Building and Microsoft Teams
Contact easg@warwick.ac.uk for a Teams invite
About the Speaker
Karin Narita is a postdoctoral Research Associate in Japanese Politics and International Relations in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield. Her main research focus is the intellectual history of the Global Right, and she is particularly interested in right-wing ideologies in Japan and East Asia. She is a co-author of World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Former Prime Ministers in Japan: Power, Influence and the Role of Informal Politics (Bristol University Press, forthcoming 2025). Her research has also been published in the Journal of Political Ideologies, Millennium, and International Political Sociology. She previously taught political theory and international relations at Queen Mary University of London, where she received her Ph.D., and at King鈥檚 College London.