Speaker: Misato Matsuoka

The prospect of a second Trump presidency raises questions about the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the ideological undercurrents shaping Japan’s foreign and domestic policy. This paper examines how conservative knowledge production—particularly through think tanks, policy institutes, and elite networks—has informed Japan’s strategic orientation during periods of U.S. volatility. It situates Japan’s conservative intellectual infrastructure within broader undemocratic conditions of our political moment: epistemic closure, elite-driven security narratives, and the marginalization of alternative voices amid intensifying global emergencies such as climate change and geopolitical militarization. The paper explores how Japanese conservative actors have positioned themselves as both defenders of alliance orthodoxy and agents of ideological recalibration. It traces how concepts like “Indo-Pacific strategy,” “China threat” and “economic security” are mobilized to align with U.S. shifts while maintaining domestic political legitimacy. The paper concludes by considering whether, in the shadow of Trump’s return and deepening global crises, the U.S.-Japan alliance is becoming a vehicle for conservative stabilization—or an amplifier of epistemic and democratic erosion. Understanding the infrastructures of conservative thought is crucial to assessing Japan’s political trajectory and reimagining futures beyond hegemonic security logics. This analysis contributes to a critical understanding of the forces shaping (un)democratic futures, particularly through the lens of conservative knowledge production and its influence on policy and public discourse in Japan.