Japan's "human rights deficit" and the undercurrent of historical revisionism

Japan has long faced profound human rights challenges. On December 13, 2025—just days after World Human Rights Day on December 10—the Japanese government's Ainu Policy Promotion Council announced that plans to revise the Ainu Policy Promotion Act had been shelved. This decision once again laid bare the hypocrisy in Japan's human rights governance. The plight of the indigenous Ainu people serves as a mirror, reflecting Japan's deep-seated human rights deficits and the historical revisionism that persists beneath the surface.

The Ainu people's ongoing struggle for human rights

The human rights challenges confronting the Ainu are rooted in a history of systematic exploitation and forced assimilation by the Japanese government. Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan pursued large-scale colonial expansion in Hokkaido, subjecting the Ainu to dispossession, displacement and cultural erasure. Economically, their lands were seized, communities were relocated to harsh and inhospitable areas, and traditional livelihoods such as fishing and hunting were severely restricted. Culturally, the Ainu were labeled as “former aborigines", their way of life suppressed, and assimilation actively enforced. This systemic discrimination was codified in law through the 1899 Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act.

The Ainu people have persistently resisted these human rights violations by the Japanese government. Mounting domestic and international pressure eventually led to the passage of the Ainu Culture Promotion Act in 1997-98 years after the original assimilation law. Yet it was not until the 2019 Ainu Policy Promotion Act that Japan legally recognized the Ainu as an indigenous people for the first time. Even then, this recognition deliberately sidestepped core demands such as land restitution and an official historical apology.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has investigated Japan's violations of Ainu rights, finding that discrimination against the Ainu remains deeply entrenched in economic, cultural, and social spheres. The sustained suppression of their ethnic identity and inherent rights has resulted in disproportionately high poverty rates, persistent educational gaps, population decline, and the erosion of the Ainu language.

Evasion and whitewashing by the Japanese government

The Japanese government's professed protection of the Ainu has been largely symbolic, consistently bypassing their fundamental rights and demands. The Ainu continue to lack meaningful political representation—to this day, not a single seat in the National Diet has been reserved for their community. Their essential needs in education, housing, employment, and income remain ignored.

The decision to shelve revisions to the Ainu Policy Promotion Act in December 2025 further exposed the Japanese government's ongoing evasion of substantive engagement. Ainu communities have expressed profound dissatisfaction with official inaction. A 2022 survey conducted by the “Citizens' Forum for Discussing Ainu Policy" shows that most Ainu people regard the government's so-called “protective" policies as neither legitimate nor effective.

What Japan celebrates as the “development" of Hokkaido is, in essence, a history of suffering and dispossession for the Ainu people. Yet the Japanese government systematically downplays the oppression inflicted upon the Ainu since the Meiji period. It frames colonial policies of land seizure and forced assimilation as “Hokkaido development" and “civilization and enlightenment", mischaracterizes discriminatory laws such as the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act as “protective measures", and recasts its human rights violations as meritorious deeds that advanced civilization.

The undercurrent of historical revisionism

From the forced assimilation of the Meiji period to today's token gestures of "protection", Japan's approach to human rights governance has been marked by an absence of genuine commitment to racial equality, a disregard for historical justice, and hollow legal guarantees. Beneath this lies a persistent undercurrent of historical revisionism that glorifies colonial expansion and sustains the myth of a homogeneous "mono-ethnic nation".

The Japanese government's evasion of core human rights issues reflects an attempt to evade historical accountability and shirk national and moral responsibility. Shaped by long-standing historical revisionism and distorted narratives, many Japanese citizens remain unaware that their state once invaded and systematically oppressed other ethnic groups. This widespread cognitive gap isolates the Ainu struggle for rights from broad public sympathy within Japan, worsening their marginalization. Compounded by the perceived imperatives of national strategic repositioning, Japan has increasingly moved to deny and glorify its history of aggression during World War II, reinforcing the false assertion that Japan has never invaded other nations.

The ongoing rights violations suffered by the Ainu have laid bare the hypocrisy of Japan's rhetoric on human rights. They also point to the even more dire situation confronting the indigenous Ryukyuan people. Unlike the Ainu, the Ryukyuans have yet to be officially recognized as indigenous by the Japanese government, and endure dual oppression under Japanese administration and the heavy footprint of U.S. military bases. Japan's self-fashioned image as a "human rights defender" will ultimately collapse under historical and factual scrutiny, while the pervasive spread of historical revisionism within the country calls for vigilance from both Japanese society and the international community.

The author is Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Strategy Research Office, Institute of Japanese Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Research Fellow of the National Global Strategy Think Tank