The Wall Street Journal reports, "fearful of Beijing's muscle-flexing in nearby waters and worried about Japan's economic future, more people are expressing feelings of nationalism, mistrust and sometimes outright hostility toward their neighbors''.
"Ideas that have long been suppressed and locked away, like the desire to hate and discriminate, are now pouring out from many corners of the country and amplifying each other in an echo chamber," says Kiyomi Tsujimoto, a veteran opposition lawmaker. "That's fueling anti-Korea and anti-China sentiment."
Pacifism still runs deep in Japan, and the shift to the right is in its early stages. But the tone is already influencing Japanese politics, with the emergence of a new wave of candidates—mainly in their 30s and 40s—who hold staunchly conservative views.
In a Tokyo gubernatorial election earlier this month, Gen. Toshio Tamogami, a former air-force chief who heads a right-wing group known for its xenophobic rallies, snared an unexpectedly large share of votes, even though the country's traditional media had all but written him off as a fringe figure. An exit poll by the Asahi Shimbun daily indicated that 24% of respondents in their 20s had voted for Mr. Tamogami, who lost the race.
The rise of a more-vocal nationalist minority in Japan is cause for concern among foreign officials not just in East Asia, but also in the U.S. Some leaders fear it could exacerbate regional tensions and increase the odds of a confrontation between China and Japan—the world's second-largest and third-largest economies after the U.S.
Many Japanese officials and lawmakers interpret the changes differently. They say that citizens are finally responding to what they see as persistent and unjustified attacks from China and South Korea over wartime-legacy issues. They say those countries have refused to acknowledge Japan's repeated efforts to apologize and to atone for its wartime atrocities.
Chinese and South Korean officials dismiss such notions. Criticizing Tokyo for what they see as revisionist history, leaders of the two countries have refused to meet privately with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since he took office 14 months ago.
"It is deplorable that leading Japanese politicians have recently been attempting to deny and even justify past wrong-doing with an attitude of historical revisionism," Kim Jung-ha, a senior South Korean diplomat, said at a United Nations meeting in January.
Japan under Mr. Abe seems to be repeating the mistakes of Germany before World War I and those of Japan before World War II, said Yang Bojiang, a Japan expert at the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a commentary on Monday in the People's Daily, the Communist Party's newspaper. "This must arouse the vigilance of peace-loving countries of the world to prevent humanity from being dragged once again into the abyss of war," he said.
China and South Korea have also seen nationalist bumps in recent years. But the trend in Japan is especially sensitive, given its historical role as an aggressor in World War II. The last time Japan saw a sharp rise in nationalism was in the 1920s and 1930s, the period leading up to war. At the time, the country was struggling amid the aftermath of a huge Tokyo earthquake and the global depression.
Unlike in that era, today's Japan is a mature democracy that has contributed to international peace for decades. Its military is tightly under civilian control. Many political scientists say that Japanese society has the flexibility to push back the pendulum if it keeps swinging toward nationalism, as it did during similar episodes of regional tensions in the 1980s and 1990s.
And yet, it appears that many Japanese are feeling more vulnerable. A government survey last October found a record 81% of respondents said they didn't feel friendly toward China, up from 59% just four years earlier and 40% two decades ago. In another survey last year, 40% said their attitude toward South Korea had deteriorated over the previous year, with many citing Korean criticism of Japan over wartime-legacy issues.
Such angst is spilling into popular culture. Weekly magazines are outdoing one another with sensational headlines attacking South Korea and China. "Uncover the Dark Side of Korea," was the title of a recent cover story in Weekly Bunshun. "China's Anti-Japan Propaganda, Big Intentional Lies," said a headline in Weekly Shincho.
The nationalist bent is especially pronounced among Japan's youth.
The emerging cadre of young, conservative politicians is backing Mr. Abe.
Among them is Kensuke Miyazaki, who gave up running a career-placement company to become a politician.
"There are so many people in our young generation who can't have pride in our country and feel negative about its future," says the 33-year-old lawmaker. "It has a lot to do with our experience of being taught a self-torturing view of the history that we were a country of aggressors."
Though most of the novice politicians have limited influence as individuals, their collective ranks, now in the dozens, give clout to Mr. Abe's aggressive diplomatic and defense stance. Japan's constitution limits its military strictly to self-defense; Mr. Abe is pushing to allow troops to fire back if friendly forces, such as from the U.S., come under enemy attack.
