For Shigeru Ishiba, the incumbent Prime Minister, this is clearly a humiliation. In truth, though, the world’s media seem most interested in another politician. With his sharp tongue and provocative charisma, Sohei Kamiya is already being likened to a Japanese Trump. Certainly, his Sanseito party’s “Japanese First” slogan is clearly based on the MAGA rallying cry of “America First”, even as Kamiya’s anti-immigrant sentiment echoes populists from Italy to Ireland.

As a result, Kamiya’s star is rising, with some pre-election polls placing his populists in third place, the party ultimately won just 14 seats. That’s an impressive victory for sure. But Sanseito is just one piece of the opposition pie, one encompassing several parties and 112 other seats. That includes everyone from the center-right Democratic Party to the Communists, each against the LDP — but each with very different ideas on Japan’s future.

“Do you have no party to vote for? Then we were born for you.” That is the tagline on Sanseito’s English language website — a howl of rage against Japan’s political establishment. Believing that the establishment Liberal Democratic Party is both politically ineffective and insufficiently conservative, it’s rooted in traditional values like family and national pride.

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This is particularly evident in Sanseito’s anti-immigration rhetoric, with Kamiya alleging that foreigners are being prioritized for welfare benefits, despite providing little evidence to support his claim. Yet just like the Farages of the world, who often tone down their words after some time has passed, Kamiya later admitted that Sanseito “has never called to drive out foreigners” and that “Japanese First” was less an actual policy than a nifty campaign slogan.

Besides, Sanseito’s rise among a subset of Japanese voters comes not because Kamiya’s ideas are popular — but because he’s been able to attract an electorate desperate for alternatives to the LDP. Prime Minister Ishiba, though hailing from the same party, is a completely different leader to the more domestically popular and internationally respected Shinzo Abe. Shockingly assassinated in 2022, the late Abe was certainly divisive. Yet he carried a sense of focused leadership that the current administration simply lacks.

The LDP’s current predicament is a mess of its own making. A slush fund scandal has rocked the party over the last few years, raising questions around the role of money in Japanese politics. It’s unclear what part Abe himself played in these events, but the dead are mercifully silent. Still, it was Abe’s political faction that was directly incriminated in the scandal, and it is now completely disbanded.

Prime Ministers Yoshihide Suga and Fumio Kishida both failed to regain public confidence in the LDP. Kishida attempted to address the scandal by sacking officials and dissolving his own implicated faction, but the public was not satisfied. The result was Kishida’s resignation, the end of LDP-Komeito’s majority in Japan’s lower house, with the ruling coalition now losing their hold of the Diet.

As a political outsider unrelated to the scandal, at any rate, the hapless Ishiba has inherited a Japan tired of LDP failure. Even so, it’d be wrong to see Kamiya as the Trump to Ishiba’s Hillary. For if Japanese populism may initially seem analogous to its Western counterparts, this is an entirely different political landscape. Sanseito’s pie-in-the-sky proposals — notably providing 100,000 yen (about $690) to families for every child they have — are closer to Corbynite social welfare. Kamiya’s push for AI and automation would be anathema to Rust Belt voters, but they make a bit more sense given Japan’s collapsing population.

In fact, it’s because of Japan’s notoriously low birthrate — actually not that far off other first-world countries — that jobs are becoming hard to fill. Representing about 3% of the population, foreigners can today be found in low-paying jobs such as manual labor. Yet there still aren’t enough of them to “steal” jobs from anyone. There are certainly more foreigners in Japan now than 20 years ago, but the numbers pale compared to the mass-migration seen in Europe. Approximately 357,000 foreigners arrived in Japan last year, a sharp contrast to the 1.2 million who migrated to the UK over the same period.

Illegal immigration? It’s actually on the decline in Japan. There are about 70,000 illegal immigrants in Japan out of an overall population of 123 million. America, for its part, has roughly 11 million illegals versus a population of 347 million. Proportionally, then, Japan is nowhere near close. According to a 2025 report from the Right-leaning Sankei Shimbun newspaper, the number of illegal overstayers in Japan is significantly down from the 1993 high of around 290,000, fluctuating between 60,000 and 80,000 since then. Because Japan has a tighter lid on illegal immigration compared to Western countries, it should come as no surprise that more quotidian issues, like the cost of living crisis, were far bigger concerns.

Over recent months, social media has highlighted the bad behavior stemming from overtourism, such as littering, noise pollution, and treating sacred Shinto sites like a playground. The government is doing its best to address these problems, but that’s little comfort for the locals who live nearby. It’s important to remember, however, that the troublemakers are tourists rather than immigrants. Studies suggest that crime rates among foreigners living in Japan are about the same, or even lower, than for the Japanese themselves.

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What, then, comes next for Sanseito? To begin with, don’t count on the party being around forever. While their triumph this time was notable, grassroots political parties tend to have a short shelf life in Japan: due to infighting, scandals, and poor leadership. Most of Sanseito’s newly-elected candidates have little to no political experience, while their idealism will eventually rub up against other opposition parties and the LDP itself, which is still a force to be reckoned with.

Yet even if Sanseito eventually dissolves, the establishment cannot ignore the grievances of its voters. As the past decade has shown, populist movements thrive when the “left behind” rise up. What happened last week is only the start of the LDP losing its grip on power — if, anyway, it refuses to change course. Stagnant wages, rising inflation, a weak yen, and Ishiba’s failed tariff negotiations with Trump — all these have left voters frustrated.

If things continue to worsen, then, the LDP is likely to expel Ishiba and find an alternative. A new leader is no guarantee of success, but Shinzo Abe’s heir apparent Sanae Takaichi has stated her intention to run for the party’s leadership. Much of her worldview, from economics to foreign policy aligns with Abe’s, which would potentially allow her to steer the LDP back towards what allowed it to stay in power for so long. Like the late prime minister, Takaichi is a dedicated nationalist, and supports Abenomics stalwarts like fiscal stimulus. More controversially, she is also dedicated to pushing for constitutional reform which would greatly expand Japan’s military powers — something Abe himself ultimately failed to do.

Then again, the LDP still has a serious image problem, not least with the slush fund scandal fresh in the nation’s mind. Should the opposition form a coalition powerful enough to become the ruling bloc, we may see a repeat of 2010 to 2012, when the LDP was out of power. Despite this setback, it eventually returned under the rebranded leadership of Shinzo Abe. Sanseito, in short, may enjoy some influence for a time — but will need more than slogans to stay relevant.

In practice, though, solidarity hasn’t always been easy. Though 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of Japan and South Korea officially normalizing relations, the past six decades have been a rollercoaster mix of cooperation and nationalist hatred. That’s clear enough recently — in 2019, Tokyo and Seoul became embroiled in a bitter trade war and mutual boycott. Foreigners are often baffled at why two countries with such similar systems of governance, and both surrounded by nuclear-tipped threats, get into such heated spats. Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even tried to get both sides to get along during the 2019 trade dispute. To no avail.

In part, the answer involves the normal ebb and flow of politics, with parliamentarians in Seoul and Tokyo happy to exploit their neighbors for short-term gain. In 2023, for instance, opposition politicians in South Korea’s parliament bashed President Yoon Suk-yeol for a summit with then-Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, calling it “humiliating, subservient diplomacy”. At root, though, what really matters here is history, and the brutal legacy of Japan’s long occupation on the mainland — even if Trump’s foreign policy revolution may, finally, bring the two sides together.

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Following its defeat in 1945, Japan relinquished imperial control of the Korean Peninsula. The spheres of influence which would define the Cold War for the rest of the century soon formed, as the US occupied Japan and what became South Korea, while the Soviet Union backed the Kim regime in Pyongyang. The Korean War broke out in 1950, following Kim Il Sung’s invasion of the South, which quickly drew America into the conflict. Despite Washington pressuring Seoul to allow Japan to get involved, South Korea’s dictator Syngman Rhee balked at the idea of Korean soldiers fighting alongside their erstwhile enemy, not least when memories of the occupation were still fresh in everyone’s mind. While acknowledging Japan’s strategic importance as a base for US forces, Rhee staunchly refused to normalize relations.

That would only happen in 1965 when both countries signed the Treaty on Basic Relations. Rhee had been ousted from power, but the parliamentary system that replaced him was weak and ineffective. President Park Chung-hee took advantage of the instability and launched a coup, cementing himself as a brutal military despot. Though he was also a militant anti-communist like Rhee, he also recognized the need to partner with Tokyo to face down the reds in China and the DPRK. It probably helped that Park had collaborated with the Japanese during the Second World War, working with the Empire as an officer instead of against it as a rebel. He graduated top of his class at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, one of the few Koreans allowed to attend.

In other words, then, though relations between Japan and South Korea were officially normalized decades ago, it only happened within the context of Cold War geopolitics and through a controversial Korean president who didn’t truly speak for his people. That meant Tokyo and Seoul moved on from their tragic past — but only for a while. This was proved after South Korea emerged as a democracy in the Eighties, and there was now more space for free discourse among Korean citizens.

For better or worse, old wounds reopened. There is no getting around the fact that, for 35 years, Imperial Japan subjugated the Korean people to its whims. Slave labor was widespread throughout the Empire, while by 1944 Korean males were being drafted into the army to assist with manpower shortages. These men saw direct combat with Allied forces, with over 22,000 dying on the battlefield. Between 270,000 and 810,000 Korean forced laborers also perished in coal mines and military factories under appalling conditions. The lack of clear data makes precise figures hard to determine, in turn allowing those with political agendas to inflate or diminish the number of victims as needed.

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Even more emotionally charged is the issue of “comfort women” — a euphemism for the Korean and other Asian women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops. Intense debates persist around exactly how many comfort women existed, and to what extent the highest echelons of the Imperial Japanese state were involved in the practice. Just as striking, some Japanese politicians continue to show a distinct lack of contrition for the affair. In 2012, for instance, the late governor of Tokyo said that “prostitution was a very good way of making a living for women at that time and they chose the trade not unwillingly.” Osaka, for its part, terminated its sister-city relations with San Francisco over a proposed comfort women monument.

To be fair, Japan has tried to make amends. In 2015, for instance, a bilateral agreement signed between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye included apologies and financial reparations — and was supposed to have been the final word on the scandal. Yet by 2019, the deal was essentially dead in the water. The conservative Park was ousted after a major corruption scandal, while the succeeding progressive Moon Jae-in administration was uninterested in maintaining the status quo.

Moon chose to capitalize on the anger of activist groups that probably wouldn’t ever have accepted any settlement to start with, even as he made Korean nationalism, fueled by anti-Japanese feeling, a key pillar of his government. This was further seen when South Korea tried another round of diplomacy with North Korea in 2018. This bickering explains that 2019 trade war, with some restrictions in place as late as 2023.

Yet, once again, the vagaries of politics are making themselves felt. After Moon finished his term, South Korea again went conservative. Affirming that Japan has “transformed from a militaristic aggressor of the past into a partner” President Yoon Suk-yeo made repairing relations with Tokyo one of his main priorities. On the Japanese side, meanwhile, the nationalistic fervor of Shinzo Abe’s faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has largely been replaced by Fumio Kishida and his more emollient tone. Into this mix came Joe Biden, and his focus on preserving America’s traditional alliances. The result was a rare moment when South Korea, Japan and the United States all backed their tri-party partnership against the looming Chinese threat.

If all of that sounds too good to be true — it was. Yoon is now in hot water for his failed attempt at enforcing martial law, a botched effort to harm the progressive opposition. It’s unclear if the disgraced President’s impeachment will be upheld, but if an election were held today, it’s almost guaranteed that Korea’s progressives would return to power. The leader of the opposition, Lee Jae-myung, is notorious for his anti-Japanese views. Some say these are genuine beliefs; others that he’s just an opportunist. Either way, Tokyo can probably expect some awkward conversations if Lee becomes South Korea’s next president.

As for Japan, the timing couldn’t be worse. The ruling LDP coalition recently lost their Lower House majority for the first time in 15 years, while Kishida is hardly as sly a political fox as Abe. With little domestic backing, he must walk a fine line between pushing for Japan’s interests and maintaining a good relationship with the tariff-happy Trump. Their first summit in February wasn’t a disaster — but Kishida pragmatically chose not to take sides in Washington’s criticisms of Ukraine.

Going forward, then, Japan will do its best to keep the US onside, but it’ll also have to work hard at maintaining good terms with South Korea. Ironically, anyway, pressure from one might prompt friendship with the other. If Trump introduces serious tariffs against both countries, they’ll inevitably need to boost mutual economic exchange. Not that American power is likely to vanish altogether. Especially on security, the US has always played a key role in getting Japan and South Korea to play nice. Washington’s last-minute intervention saved a pivotal information-sharing pact between Tokyo and Seoul during their 2019 trade war. Given Trump’s tough attitude on Europe, expect the commander-in-chief to make similar demands of his Asian partners once more — whether they want to get along or not.

Among other things, Japanese social media users noted that Ishiba looked rather awkward next to the imposing Trump, with the Prime Minister even neglecting to unbutton his suit jacket while sitting down. Such gaffes are rather common with Ishiba, but fashion sense was the least of his worries over the weekend. The most pressing item on the docket was convincing Trump to leave Japan out of his next round of new tariffs. Tokyo is also unhappy over the Biden administration blocking Nippon Steel’s plans to buy US Steel, though on this Trump agrees with his predecessor in the White House. And if that hints at economic trouble ahead, it speaks equally vividly to turbulent dynamics within Japan’s ruling party — and, perhaps, to a geopolitical future where Japan moves further and further from its erstwhile US partner.

In the near term, Ishiba will go home happy he hasn’t made things worse for Japan. Showering lavish praise on Trump’s personal qualities, suggesting he’d been “chosen by God” after his brush with a sniper’s bullet, he also stressed that Japan has been the US’s biggest foreign direct investor over the last five years. The President, for his part, expressed his love for Japan, but was quick to note that Washington’s trade deficit with Tokyo must be cut. Trump also responded in the affirmative to press questions if Japan would be included among his tariffs should no improvement be seen. On the Nippon Steel issue, he stated that the Japanese company would not fully own US Steel, but could “invest heavily” into it.

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These were more or less temporary answers to complex economic questions — questions which will surely test Tokyo-DC relations over the next four years. It’s tempting, here, to return to the ebullient Abe, and wonder whether Japan might be better prepared to face Trump 2.0 if he hadn’t been assassinated in 2022. That would be wrong. Quite aside from the fact that Abe had already stepped down as leader of his country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2020, the fact is that Abe and Ishiba are two very different political creatures. Foreigners often hold the mistaken impression that, because the LDP has stayed in power almost constantly for the last seven decades, very little in Japanese politics changes. That could not be further from the truth.

While the LDP indeed usually runs things, it is split into multiple factions, each with a distinct ideological flavor. Abe, for instance, came from the now-defunct Seiwa Kai faction, which promoted Japanese nationalism and was notably conservative. Ishiba, however, has always been against factionalism within the LDP, is less of a nationalist than Abe, and has his own ideas of how foreign policy should be conducted. While Abe was very hawkish on issues like China and North Korea, Ishiba believes in using diplomacy to de-escalate regional security issues. He is a former defense minister, and is famous for having an encyclopedic knowledge of military technology, but advocates for cautious moves that are less likely to upset Japan’s neighbors.

Ishiba won enough votes within the LDP last year to become the party’s leader, following a major slush fund scandal and the resignation of outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Having always been critical of such circles, Ishiba painted himself as a reformer, while some political observers have even referred to him as an idealist. That’s clear enough given his support for pie-in-the-sky policies like an Asian version of NATO and nuclear weapons sharing with the United States. The Japanese public are obviously unimpressed by such fantasies, giving his government dismal approval ratings, with the LDP coalition recently losing its majority in Japan’s lower house for the first time in 15 years.

In short, then, Ishiba is under immense pressure to prove that he is a competent prime minister. Yet beyond these domestic challenges — quite aside from Japan’s weak yen and infamously low birthrate — his idiosyncratic foreign policy also has vast geopolitical consequences. It’s uncertain how long Ishiba will remain Prime Minister, but for the time being Washington must take his distinctive worldview seriously, especially when it comes to the threat of China. During his Friday summit, certainly, Ishiba made the right noises, supporting “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” while once again claiming sovereignty over the disputed Senkaku Islands.

In practice, though, his recent actions suggest that Japan is moving closer to Beijing. The prime minister began courting Xi Jinping late last year, stating during a leader-level summit that Japan and China have a relationship that holds “significance beyond [the] bilateral dimension”. Ahead of Ishiba’s recent trip to the White House, meanwhile, top LDP officials met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing to discuss China removing bans on Japanese seafood imports. That may sound like a minor trade dispute. But with Trump potentially leveling new tariffs on Japan, Ishiba may look across the South China Sea for more reliable partners. Quite aside from Abe, this is a different tone to his immediate predecessor Kishida, who was consistent in calling Beijing a threat to Japan’s interests.

Trump, on the other hand, has filled his cabinet with China hawks. One good example came last week, when secretary of state Marco Rubio took aim at Beijing for exercising “unacceptable” influence and control over the Panama Canal. During his confirmation hearing a few weeks earlier, Rubio also warned of Washington’s “unbalanced relationship” with China, referring to the country as “the biggest threat” to American interests. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor, echoes these sentiments, affirming that the US will leverage existing Indo-Pacific partnerships to curb Chinese interests.

Between Trump and Ishiba, then, we see two leaders singing very different tunes on the People’s Republic. For the White House, the worst-case scenario here would be if Japan strengthened its relations with Beijing, which could lead to greater disagreements on security issues. Stronger economic ties with China might make Tokyo more reluctant to take an aggressive stance against regional CCP influence, anathema to hardliners in Washington. Recall that tens of thousands of American troops are stationed across Japan, ready to go to war, even as Ishiba has been notably skeptical of their deployment. Among other things, he’s criticised the aftermath of a 2004 military helicopter crash, which saw the area locked down by US investigators.

For the moment, though, a major rupture seems unlikely. Quite aside from the warm words during that White House summit, there’s 80 years of history to contend with. The general consensus is that a robust US presence is necessary to maintain Japan’s national security. Along with South Korea, indeed, Japan is America’s most important ally in East Asia, and all three countries serve as a bulwark against threats from China, North Korea and Russia. Besides, Ishiba’s personal views notwithstanding, not everyone in his party is as doubtful, and the premier would face significant domestic pushback if he tried to rip up the alliance altogether.

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In the long term, the status quo needs work. As the ruckus over US Steel implies, that starts with economics. If the US can cut its trade deficit with Japan, Trump will be less inclined to impose new tariffs. The President said as much over the weekend, even as there’s a stark political dimension here too: avoiding a trade war with Washington would give Japan less reason to cozy up to China, especially in industries like cars and semiconductors. To be sure, that wouldn’t be a panacea. Because Japanese automotive, electronics and banking firms still have considerable investments in Mexico and Canada, factories there would still be affected by Trump’s tariffs.

Even so, it’s obvious that keeping Trump happy could do wonders for Ishiba’s freedom of movement, not least on foreign affairs. Beyond his position on Taiwan, which looks to be a largely unchanged continuation of US solidarity, the President seems keen on restarting diplomacy with North Korea, something the Biden administration mostly ignored. Should new engagement happen, the Japanese prime minister could prove his worth as an ally by supporting the negotiations. That wouldn’t be easy: the DPRK’s abductions of Japanese citizens through the Seventies and Eighties remains unsurprisingly contentious, with the aging relatives of abductees are desperate for a breakthrough. All the same, Japan maintains some of the strictest sanctions in the world on North Korea. And if denuclearization is impossible — as it increasingly seems to be — Ishiba could dangle sanction relief as a way of getting a measure of arms control from Kim Jong Un.

There’s also a wild card scenario. Trump has always seen US troops abroad as an expensive investment, and is strongly pushing American allies to pull their weight. Ishiba, for his part, wants less US involvement in his country, and for Tokyo to have more control over its national defense. Despite their very different backgrounds, this could turn out to be a surprising area of agreement. Just don’t expect chats about trainspotting anytime soon.

In a sense, Ferreira’s argument remains true today. Barely 1% of Japanese people now identify as Christian, and if you asked the average Tokyo commuter to explain the Eucharist, they’d likely just stare. Yet if Japan is unique among the East Asian countries for remaining almost devoid of Christians, this is also a society where people wear their faith lightly, and where Buddhism and Shintoism have coexisted for centuries. That surely explains why modern Japanese now wallow in the symbols and traditions of Christmas, even as they twist outside customs to their needs. No less striking, those few Japanese who do embrace Jesus tend to do remarkably well — hinting at its long associations with Western sophistication.

Much as Catholicism is the assumed religion of every Italian — a faith, at the very least, to be embraced at birth, marriage and death — Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan are chiefly cultural institutions. The typical Japanese will visit a temple or shrine at the beginning of the new year out of tradition, and get married in one, but whether or not they literally believe in gods or spirits is harder to answer. When it comes to the God of the Western monotheistic religions, in fact, most Japanese would likely be considered agnostic. Given how different the Japanese attitude to faith is from Western monotheism — original sin and scriptural dogma are unknown — Shusaku Endo may have had a point when he wrote that his fellow countrymen “cannot think of an existence that transcends the human.”

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Yet ever since the Portuguese arrived during the Age of Discovery, there have always been Christians here. The first mass on Japanese soil is said to have occurred in 1552, at the behest of Jesuits based at Yamaguchi. The Portuguese had landed in the Land of the Rising Sun less than a decade prior, being the first Europeans to do so. Francis Xavier led the first Christian mission to Japan in 1549, with his successors to learning Japanese and converting as many natives as possible. Prefectures like Yamaguchi and Nagasaki still have the highest concentrations of Christians in Japan — partly because of the work of these hardy Catholic pioneers.

It’s debatable how many of these early Japanese Christians actually understood Christianity: most initially interpreted the religion as simply another sect of Buddhism. During his early proselytising, in fact, Xavier used “Dainichi” (“Great Sun”) as a Japanese translation for the Christian God, borrowing the name of a major Buddha. Yet if this subtle approach led to the conversation of several high-ranking daimyo (lords), with aristocrats keen to embrace the faith of the prosperous and musket-wielding outsiders, it also pushed the shogunate to crush Christianity and expel all foreigners from the country.

The artificial island Dejima, off Nagasaki, was the only port where Dutch traders were permitted to do business, and they skirted the ban on Christianity by framing their Christmas celebrations as marking the New Year. Some high-ranking Japanese officials occasionally attended these “Dutch New Year” festivities. Their European hosts did their best under the circumstances, cooking lavish feasts including sweet bread and pies, both unusual sights when the journey back to Amsterdam took six months.

Christmas proper would not be celebrated again for over 200 years, when the Emperor Meiji abandoned centuries of isolation and re-embraced Western culture. With the ban on Christianity fully lifted in 1873, Japanese writers like Inazo Nitobe converted to Christianity, received Western educations, and helped shape modern Japanese society. Like the daimyo of old, this was often an upper-class movement. By 1933, one in 2,000 white-collar Japanese had embraced Christ, compared to one in 55,000 farmers. At the same time, the number of foreigners entering Japan increased sharply. Diplomats and their families, oceans away from home, celebrated Christmas at their embassy postings.

That foreignness helps explain the spread of Christianity among the Japanese elite, with lawyers and doctors keen to both showcase their Western credentials and distinguish themselves from their more humble peers. You might say something similar about the spread of Christmas as a secular celebration. It’s telling that festivities became popular around the turn of the century, and the arrival of Western multinationals: Coca-Cola started selling its products in Japan in 1919, with the company famously associated with all things Santa. By the Thirties, Christmas imagery could be found in school textbooks, magazines, shops, restaurants, and cafes nationwide.

Ultimately, though, it would be the post-war American occupation that permanently embedded Christmas into Japanese culture. Little wonder Japan’s most famous Christmas tradition involves families chowing on Kentucky Fried Chicken. Similar to Coca-Cola and Santa, KFC Japan has made Christmas a signature part of its brand at the end of each year. Takeshi Okawara, the manager of the first KFC restaurant to open in Japan, supposedly heard foreigners talking about how they missed eating turkey, and wondered if his chicken could work instead. It did: KFC Japan now sells limited-edition buckets every Christmas. A cut above the usual fare, options include barbecue chicken legs and chocolate cake, even as diners must book tables.

The Japanese would absorb, or anyway distort, other festive Western customs — an echo of Dainichi and a mark of how adept they’ve become at shaping foreign influences to their tastes. One good example is the way many Japanese now view Christmas Eve to be the most romantic time of the year, even rivalling Valentine’s Day. It’s not entirely clear when this tradition started. As far back as the Thirties, magazine articles featured stories about young Japanese on romantic festive dates. Most likely, businesses wanted to take full advantage of consumer revenue before closing for New Year’s. At any rate, couples now plan lavish dinner dates weeks in advance: expect the classiest restaurants and hotels to be fully booked through the end of December.

No less striking, Japan now has a range of totally new Christmas traditions, together blending East and West. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” — composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto for a film of the same name starring David Bowie — is a universal favourite. The holiday also regularly features in manga and anime storylines. Directed by Satoshi Kon, Tokyo Godfathers is perhaps the most famous example. The visually stunning animated film is set during Christmas and centres around the country’s homeless community: a perspective rarely seen in Japanese animation. There are even Christmas-themed Japanese video games. Published in 1996, Nights into Dreams has players exploring a vivid dream world. The standard version was beautiful enough, but the Christmas edition adds winter scenery, and a cover of “Jingle Bells” as background music.

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While most Japanese aren’t Christians, in short, the Christmas spirit is now a permanent fixture here. But what of that tiny minority that really do convert? In certain ways, the faithful in Tokyo are similar to their counterparts in Paris or Berlin. Churches hold Christmas masses each December, often featuring Japanese-language hymns. In a nod to the country’s relaxed attitudes to faith, non-Christians regularly join their religious friends in celebration.

And if Japanese Christians manage to carve out a place for themselves this December, amid the Bowie and the lights, it’s also true that they occupy a distinct place in wider society. Over the years, Japan has boasted a remarkable nine Christian prime ministers, or 14% of the total. That includes Shigeru Ishiba, the current incumbent. Each found God differently. Takashi Hara was baptised Catholic after studying at a French parochial school in Tokyo. Taro Aso, for his part, seems to have inherited his faith from family.

But while religion here is basically private — unlike the US, politicians aren’t expected to invoke their faith in public — this political preponderance again speaks to the popularity of Christianity among the Japanese elite. The numbers, once more, are clear: one study, from after the Second World War, found that 40% of Japanese Protestants had gone to university, compared to barely 15% of the population at large. That’s dovetailed by more personal examples, like the Hattoris, a prominent Catholic family that owns the Seiko watch company. Of course, these success stories don’t wear their faith on their sleeves. That wouldn’t be the Japanese way. Yet amid the gentle universality of Buddhism and Shintoism, Christians in Japan are clearly doing well. Not that the public at large, busy with their chicken and date nights, really know or care.

And if the ultimate value of this support remains dubious — what North Korea is providing Russia pales in comparison to the over $175 billion worth of supplies Ukraine has received from Washington — it nonetheless speaks to the fact that the DPRK is one of the most militarised societies on earth. From an immense army, to an intensive if rickety arms industry, this is a country that can make its presence felt thousands of miles from its borders, especially once you factor in Kim Jong Un’s remarkable ability to circumvent sanctions and supply weapons to terrorists. Dovetail too the country’s long-running nuclear programme, and Trump must clearly take North Korea seriously, especially compared to the laxness of his predecessor.

In North Korean studies, one often hears of the country’s “military-first” policy or songun. This is the country’s stated policy of allocating as many state resources as possible to military development. In the event, songun is somewhat controversial, not actually appearing in writing until after nation-founder Kim Il Sung died in 1994. Yet it’s clear that the younger Kim believes his country needs to keep expanding its arsenal, both of conventional weapons and nuclear bombs. And if that explains why multiple rounds of diplomacy with the US and South Korea have failed — Kim never had any intention to denuclearise — the songun philosophy also speaks to recent domestic developments.

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Right through Covid, for instance, Kim Jong Un only continued to double down on military development. Despite the rest of the world masking up and staying indoors, the country still held a lavish military parade in 2020 to mark the 75th anniversary of its Workers’ Party. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) is estimated to have over 1.3 million active personnel. Like its southern neighbour, military service is mandatory for all men, but women are also included via selective service. In theory, men must serve up to 10 years, and women eight, though the country’s richest elites are always finding ways to reduce their time through loopholes and bribes. This still makes North Korea one of the most militarised countries on earth and its people are instilled in warmaking from a very young age.

Channelling his father and grandfather, meanwhile, Kim has mobilised millions of young people to join the country’s army, even as North Korean children have “volunteered” to work in coal mines, farms, and factories. According to one defector, factory workers enjoy just one day off a week. Agricultural labourers have it even worse, getting only one day off in 10. Like most socialist countries, meanwhile, one’s own labour is framed by government propaganda as essential in furthering revolutionary state goals. While North Koreans are typically required to work eight hours a day at minimum, this can be stretched much further if issued quotas are not met. Children are also mobilised to participate in the workforce so they are instilled with a sense of loyalty toward the regime as early as possible.

Certainly, this mass conscription helps explain why the DPRK has managed to send Russia so much military equipment, even as far richer nations are struggling to meet the demand. Not that the West should look to North Korea for inspiration anytime soon. That’s clear enough ethically: UN reports have consistently shown that forced labour and abysmal working conditions are rampant across the DPRK. More than that, though, the products of these sweatshops aren’t proving very useful. Experts assert that the DPRK’s munitions being found on the battlefields of Russia are highly unreliable, unsurprising given they come from old stocks.

That’s equally true when you look at specific weapons. Debris recently recovered from a crashed projectile appears to show that Russia is employing KN-23 or KN-24 missiles sent from North Korea. The KN-23 and KN-24 share similar hardware, which can make it difficult to distinguish which is which from wreckage. But, in theory, they can strike targets from 400 to 690 kilometres away and are particularly challenging to intercept. In practice, however, Ukraine’s forces were able to shoot one of these missiles down, while experts from NAKO, a Kyiv non-governmental organisation, believe it may have been faulty to begin with.

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Not that the role of the DPRK’s military equipment should necessarily be underestimated. After all, a war of attrition like the one in Eastern Europe can be prolonged indefinitely as long as both sides have enough ammunition and weapons to keep it going. North Korea is also not alone in exporting weapons to Russia: Iran and Chinese firms are providing Putin with everything from missiles to components. As any kind of peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine looks extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future, these shipments will undoubtedly continue as the war enters its third year in February.

And while North Korea’s aid may not be cutting-edge, the bigger question here is how it actually gets to Eastern Europe — especially given the mountain of foreign sanctions theoretically there to cripple the Kim regime. Things are especially given NAKO found that electronic components from the felled missile included parts from at least nine Western manufacturers, including ones based in the US and Britain. The chances of the West intentionally helping Pyongyang build weapons are obviously slim. Rather, it speaks to how deftly Kim has been able to sidestep outside sanctions.

The sanctions regime enacted by the United States and its allies has thus far been one of the most important tools for stopping North Korea’s illegal activities. But that hardly means it’s foolproof. As Mads Brügger has shown, officials in countries like Uganda are willing to look the other way if North Korean investment projects can benefit them. That’s even as shell companies can be used as fronts. Certainly, Kim Jong Un’s growing collection of luxury goods has still continued despite the pandemic. North Korea is also infamous for ship-to-ship transfers, which allow it to acquire sanctioned goods by using decommissioned and rebranded vessels flying under different flags.

No less important, North Korea is now fashioning itself as an arms exporter far beyond Russia. Sanctions monitoring organisations have long known that Pyongyang regularly deals with the likes of Syria and Iran in selling them old weapons stock, while also exchanging technical information on how to develop new missiles. Long before the war in Ukraine, North Korea has been a longtime supporter of terrorist groups like Hezbollah. While it’s unclear whether Kim Jong Un himself truly cares either way about the territorial disputes between Israel and the Palestinians, or between Moscow and Kyiv, North Korean support for the West’s enemies clearly makes sense. Having suffered terribly due to its self-imposed isolation during the pandemic, Pyongyang needs all help it can get. If this means aiding international terrorism, then so be it.

At the same time, this feeds into the future of North Korea-Russia relations. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Moscow can continue vetoing all new sanctions proposed against Pyongyang, even as the North Koreans themselves keep developing new weapons — and deliver them to the West’s ideological rivals. The DPRK is continuing to test and improve its ICBM technology, which is technically capable of reaching American shores. Then there’s the nuclear elephant in the room. With the West’s hopes of denuclearisation little more than a pipe dream, Kim Jong Un’s biggest priority is being recognised as a legitimate nuclear power. No wonder the country has conducted six nuclear weapons tests since 2006. South Korea’s military intelligence has long warned that Pyongyang is poised to conduct a seventh at any time, but when this will happen remains to be seen.

All this might matter less if the US were taking this threat seriously. As it is, and notwithstanding some new sanctions, the Biden administration largely treated North Korea as a side issue compared with China or the Middle East. But given Trump was the first sitting president to hold a summit with a North Korean leader, could he coax Kim Jong Un back to the negotiating table? The chances are slim, unless both leaders know that they can come away with something substantial. And given Kim is now adamant that the DPRK will never give up its nuclear weapons, it seems that future talks will only be around arms control, if they even happen at all. Though given how much of a threat North Korea poses from Lebanon to Ukraine, that’d surely be a start.