Although anti-Semitism has found support among certain segments of all social groups, Japanese society at large and its governments have never adopted firm anti-Semitic attitudes. The idea of Jewish economic, political and intellectual "omnipotence" (mannoron) -- an integral though "soft" form of Jew-hatred which sometimes inadvertently instills suspicion and fear among non-Jews -- has gained wide adherence among Japanese who are not otherwise anti-Semitic.

Yudayaka -- "The Jewish Peril"
The first and most successful nation to modernize in the Asia Pacific region, Japan also has the oldest and richest anti-Semitic tradition in the area. Japanese anti-Semitism may be the ultimate oxymoron since Japan is a Shintoist/Buddhist society with virtually no Jewish minority. Nonetheless, under the powerful impact of The Protocols (introduced by soldiers returning from the Siberian Intervention of 1918-23), and the regicidal Bolshevik revolution, anti-Semitism became a component of the Japanese national political discourse. The Protocols and The International Jew have been available in Japanese since 1924, Mein Kampf since 1934. This anti-Semitic trilogy has come out in new editions about every ten years.

Jew-hatred in Japan is distributed through books, magazines, audio- and video-cassettes and public appearances by anti-Semitic writers; compared to Southeast Asia and the West, Japan still lags behind in cyberhate. Officially Japan has never considered anti-Semitic materials and their circulation harmful in any way. Their unrestricted and wide availability is accepted by Japanese at all levels because the right of freedom of expression in postwar Japan is absolute. One example of the extent to which this right is respected is the AUM Supreme Truth group, which perpetrated the deadly gas attack on the Tokyo public transportation system in 1995. AUM was allowed to resume propagating its ideas in 1997 even though its leader is on trial for that and other crimes.

Japanese anti-Semitism is extremely vitriolic in tone and very often phantasmagoric in content. Occasionally, the term "Jews" is employed as a generic term for "the West" but the fundamental terms of reference are unmistakably anti-Semitic.

The aspect of monetary gain, both for writers and publishers of anti-Semitic materials, though difficult to measure, cannot be ignored. The most prominent anti-Semitic writers produce two to four tomes per year, as well as magazines, audiotapes and videotapes. Masami Uno (see below), Japan's leading anti-Semitic activist, has two "research institutes," a publishing arm and a merchandise catalog. Cheap, soft-core literature on "Jewish omnipotence" in business and in general, as well as hard-core anti-Semitic propaganda, sell well in Japan. Fascination caused by ignorance, but also in some cases fear and hatred of Jews, probably explain the great popularity of both types of anti-Semitic yudayamono (Jewish books).

Before 1945, Japan's anti-Semitic writers/activists came from all walks of life: General Nobutaka Shioden, the Russian-language instructor and Greek Orthodox convert Tsuyanosuke Higuchi, German literature professor Hikoshige Okutsu, prominent diplomat Toshio Shiratori, and many others. Since 1945, anti-Semitism has found adherents on both the far right and the far left. Among ultra-nationalists, the most well-known exponents include former high-school teacher, self-styled Middle East specialist and Baptist minister Masami Uno; communist-turned-anti-Semitic ultra-rightist, self-styled Buddhist "philosopher," animal rights activist and diet-book writer Ryu Ota; and "Yakobu Morugan" [Jacob Morgan] -- probably a pen-name used by Ota. Daiichi Kikaku Shuppan has become Japan's dominant publisher of anti-Semitic materials. It has adopted a uniform, attention-grabbing cover design which always includes a colorful Hebrew background and provocative titles in bold characters.

Nationalistic anti-Semitic writing in Japan subscribes to the Protocols-inspired conspiracy theory. It considers Israel to be the center and the Rothschilds the pivot of the "plot." Uno and his fellow ultra-nationalists are also Holocaust deniers. The built-in flexibility of conspiratorial, scapegoating anti-Semitism, as facilitated by The Protocols, has allowed Ota, in particular, to find Jewish domination of Japan as far back as the 7th century, and more recently, since 1945. Japan -- thanks to its racial homogeneity -- is depicted by Uno, Ota and others as the last bastion of opposition to the complete takeover of the world by the Jews, who already "dominate" all major Western nations.

The leftist anti-Semitic camp in Japan is composed almost exclusively of intellectuals and academics. It emerged after the Six Day War with the aim of garnering unequivocal support for the Arab side. Tokyo University professor Yuzo Itagaki, journalist Ryuichi Hirokawa and his estranged wife, former Israeli and child of Holocaust survivors Ruti Yoskovici, are among the major exponents of this group. Japanese Marxist anti-Semites do not consider the Jews a national entity and usually write the word itself in quotation marks. Itagaki has written extensively, mostly on the "Zionist character of Nazism" and the "Nazi character of Zionism."

On the whole, the two anti-Semitic camps in Japan do not cooperate despite their common ground. Anti-Semitism of the ultra-right is far more prominent, as is its message, reflecting the fundamental nationalistic tendency of Japanese society at large.

Contemporary Anti-Semitic Publications
In the 1990s, Ryu Ota has become the main challenger to Uno for title of principal purveyor of anti-Semitic propaganda in Japan. He formed an anti-Semitic political group with which he tried to participate in parliamentary and municipal elections, and he offers Mantra, almost surely the only anti-Semitic publication with a Buddhist title, which competes with Uno's Enoch and New American View.

In the last few years veteran American "Jewish plot" crusader Eustace Mullins has found enthusiastic disciples in the elderly Ota and other Japanese anti-Semitic writers. Mullins toured Japan as recently as February 1996. Similarly, Western anti-Semitic writers are founts of inspiration. Ota quotes a great deal from American far-right publications such as Truth at Last and Spotlight, as well as The Turner Diaries, which he considers is compulsory reading "for all anti-Jewish patriotic Christians in the US."

Ota was also influenced by Professor Hikoshige Okutsu, a major pre-war specialist in German literature and president of the Japan Society of German Culture, who was classified as a minor war criminal by the US Army of Occupation after the war for his anti-Semitic activities. Ota cites widely from Okutsu in Hit the Great Satan, published in 1997. The jacket, which is decorated with Hebrew letters, promises to reveal "the real criminals who have undermined Japan until today," and the subtitle reads "the counteroffensive of the Japanese race against the Jews has started." The book is a condensed and updated version of Ota's earlier works, such as The Jewish Plan for the Occupation of Japan and Strike at the Jewish Lackey,Traitor Omae Ken'ichi (both 1984). Among the theories expounded in the book, Ota claims that TWA flight 800 was downed by a missile fired by the CIA, which was headed at the time by the "Zionist-Jew John Deutsch." On the domestic front, Ota calls former prime ministers Morihiro Hosokawa and Yasuhiro Nakasone, among others, as lackeys of the "world dominating power" [the Jews] for their support of more Japanese openness to the outside world.

While the English version of the title of Masami Uno's new book is relatively tame -- Revealing the Evils of Modern Globalism (1997) -- the Japanese title reveals its unmistakably anti-Semitic content by the use of Satan, the generic word for Jews in the anti-Semitic vernacular -- Global Strategy, the Devil's Equation. In the prologue Uno states: "1997 is the starting year of dramatic change in the world situation ... at the center of which are the Club of Isles, the world's most powerful group, and the most influential Jewish group , the Sanhedrin." According to Uno, the Sanhedrin, "is the body with the authority to make all political, economic, [and] social...decisions for the Jewish race."

Other books currently available about the Jewish conspiracy include: The 450-Year Secret of Jewish Aggression against Japan (1995), which traces the beginning of Jewish "aggression" against, and subsequent "domination" of, Japan to the arrival of St. Francis Xavier and other Jesuit and Dominican missionaries in the 1540s, all of whom were "Jews disguised as Portuguese and Spanish"; Yakobu Morugan's The Last Warning from the Devil/the Jews: Give Dazed Japan the Finishing Blow (1995), which claims, inter alia, that the 1995 Kobe earthquake was an "artificial earthquake, engineered by the Jew-Freemason world dominating power"; The Devil's Warning (1995), by Eisuke Sasagawa, which is "for the benefit of Japanese who do not know the Jews," and which warns: "Cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer's are artificial maladies" and "The total offensive of the Rothschilds on Japan has begun"; and Collapsing Japan, Wandering Japanese (1996), by the apparent newcomer Terukazu Ohoshi, who proceeds to show how the Jews killed President John Kennedy through their domination of the Mafia.