Political Culture in Japan and the World

 3 December, 2025

___________

This week’s class was about politics, a topic I find especially interesting because I follow politics in the Netherlands. Over the last few years, many people, including me, have lost trust in how politics works in my country. Before elections, politicians say nice and hopeful things, but too often those promises are forgotten afterwards. The political system in the Netherlands works with a democratic, plural-party system: there are several major parties and voters choose between left, center, or right. For more than ten years, right-leaning parties were often in power. Over the last one and a half years, a more extreme right party gained influence, but they still failed to deliver on many promises, eventually a centrist-left coalition won with a narrow margin of about 30,000 votes.

In class I also learned something surprising about citizenship law in Japan. Many people (myself included) thought that if your family bloodline has no Japanese ancestor, you cannot get Japanese citizenship. But this is only partly true: according to the Japanese Nationality Act, a child acquires Japanese citizenship at birth only if at least one parent is already Japanese at that time.  For foreigners or people without Japanese ancestry, citizenship is still possible, through naturalization. 

This difference reminded me how politics and laws shape life differently in each country. In the Netherlands, the political system is stable and open: many people can become citizens easily if they meet legal and residency requirements. In Japan, citizenship laws are stricter and often tied to ancestry or long-term residence, which shows a different attitude toward nationality and belonging.

Another big difference is how political decisions are made in Japan, where harmony and consensus are very important through a process called nemawashi, meaning that support is built quietly before any public decision is made. Unlike the Netherlands with its constantly changing coalitions, Japan has been dominated for decades by one main party (the LDP), showing how stability and continuity play a much bigger role in Japanese politics.




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