Episode 589 – The All-Seeing Eye, Part 6

August 8, 2025

Our final episode in this miniseries brings conspiracism in Japan to the present day, as we discuss a wave of antisemitic conspiracy theorists from the 80s and 90s and the impact of the internet on conspiracism in Japan and around the world. Finally, we’ll look at how things stand today, and go over some final thoughts on conspiracism in general.

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Sources

Dickey, Colin. Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

Hoborowicz, Marek. “The Faces of Japanese Anti-Semitism: ‘A bubble Anti-Semitism?'” Security Dimensions 22 (2017)

Ota, Koki, Masaki Chujyo, and Fujio Toriumi. “Pathways to Conspiracy Theorizing on YouTube in Japan.” Proceedings of the Nineteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2025.

Cheng, John W. “Conspiracy Theories and their Believers in Contemporary Japan.” Bundezentrale fur politische Bildung, Nov 14, 2024\

Images

Just to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here, here’s the cover of Masami Uno’s “Bussho no Nerai: Nihon wo Kuu Originaru Yudaya no Inbo”. Roughly, that would be “Bush’s Aims: The Schemes of the Original Jews to Consume Japan.” I haven’t read it, but just based on the title and the date (during the 1st Gulf War) I can pretty much guess what it says.
Some press coverage of Ota Ryu in his heyday to give you an idea of what he looks like.
Anti-vaccine Covid conspiracy theorists in 2021, from the Mainichi Shinbun. By far this is Japan’s most common conspiracy theory today.