LDP's Hiroshi Yamada on the Country's New Course — and Tibet

Hiroshi Yamada is a longtime Japanese lawmaker who has made his name as a sharp-elbowed conservative voice on questions of national identity, constitutional revision, and China. He also serves as General Secretary of the Japan Parliamentary Support Group for Tibet. Yoshida frames the Tibet issue as a front line in the broader contest with Beijing, not as distant human-rights advocacy.

A graduate of Kyoto University, he argues that what he calls "old media" culture has narrowed Japan's postwar debate. According to Yamada, a new governing coalition should use its early momentum to reopen questions the country has avoided for decades.

Conservatism as Method, Not Creed

Sitting down for an interview with JAPAN Forward, the veteran lawmaker argues that Japan needs something more prosaic.

"Conservatism isn't an ideology," Yamada says. "It's an approach — cherish what our ancestors and predecessors cultivated, and at the same time change what should be changed for a new era."

That approach, he adds, is defined as much by what it rejects as by what it embraces. "After the French Revolution, you started seeing ideals and ideologies that said, 'Human beings must be like this,'" he says. "We don't try to force the present to fit a blueprint."

Yamada's comments come as Japan's politics enter a new phase, with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party governing alongside the Osaka-based Ishin no Kai and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi under pressure to show results quickly. For Yamada, the case for a conservative course is strategic. He links economic stagnation, a shifting security environment, and unresolved postwar debates into a single agenda.

The lawmaker describes Japanese conservatism as squaring democratic legitimacy with the pull of history. "In Japan, the simplest way to put it is to value 'horizontal democracy' and 'vertical democracy,'" he says. "Horizontal means drawing on the wisdom and strength of people living now. Vertical means treating the voices of our ancestors and predecessors as part of the conversation, and thinking about future generations, too."

Centrality of the imperial House

When asked what should never be altered, Yamada doesn't hesitate. "What Japan must not change is the foundation of the country's character," he says. "That foundation is the existence of the Imperial House."

He describes the imperial line as the core institution around which Japanese society and culture formed. "For more than 2,000 years and 126 generations, the Imperial House has continued as one family," he says. "That is the basis on which Japanese society, culture, and even the family unit were built." Pushing the claim to its bluntest conclusion, he claims, "If the Imperial House disappears, Japan disappears."

On the question of succession, Yamada leans heavily on lineage continuity. "From Emperor Jimmu to the 126th (Emperor Naruhito), without exception, it has been a paternal line."

In Yamada's telling, the problem is less philosophical than mathematical. There is a shrinking pool of heirs and fewer fallback options. His solution is to revise the Imperial House Law to allow adoption from former branches that were cut off from the imperial family after World War II. "The core is to make adoption from those former princely houses possible," he said. "That is the most important point."

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First-Year Priority List

Yamada offers a three-item list laying out the new government's priorities.

"First, Japan hasn't really grown [economically] for nearly 30 years," he says. "We have to pivot to policies that grow the economy."

Second, he argues, Japan should strengthen defense and diplomacy "by an order of magnitude," with China in mind.

Third, he wants what he calls a "normalization" of issues the postwar system left unresolved. Those include constitutional revision and the Imperial Houseframework, as well as Yasukuni Shrine, which he says Japan should defend more plainly as a place to honor its war dead. "For 80 years after the war, these have been treated as issues better left untouched," he says. "We need to correct that."

Resistance from Within

Although this may sound like a maximalist agenda, Yamada contends that the coalition dynamic may actually make movement easier than before. "Under the LDP–Komeito government, conservative policies were often sidelined," he says, describing Komeito as a liberal brake inside the coalition. "Those items are now back on the table in the agreement with Ishin, and I see that as a positive."

The harder fight for Prime Minister Takaichi, he predicts, "will be within her own party. LDP politicians run from liberal to conservative. Even with an agreement with Ishin no Kai, the liberal side [of the LDP] won't stay quiet." Still, he says he doesn't expect the prime minister to fold. "Given her personality, she's not the type to abandon what she agreed to with Ishin just because parts of her party object," he says. "Many of the items in the agreement are exactly what she cares about most."

Old Media's Missing Conservative Voice

Yamada also argues that Japan's political debate is distorted by a media environment he says has long marginalized conservative perspectives, especially in English.

"The media are mostly liberal in every country," he says. "But in Japan it's particularly strong because of the defeat and the seven years of occupation." He claims postwar purges removed prewar leaders and helped elevate labor and leftist activists into influential roles across universities, newspapers, and broadcasters. "The result is a warped media environment where liberal messages are broadcast, and conservative messages are not broadcast at all," he says.

Social media, he argues, has begun to reverse that imbalance. "In the internet era, you can become the broadcaster," he says. "Ideas that were suppressed for a long time have suddenly come out into the open."

Tibet as a Warning

Yamada speaks at length about Tibet. He has pursued the issue for years and now serves as General Secretary of the Japan Parliamentary Support Group for Tibet.

He frames Tibet's incorporation into the People's Republic of China in stark terms. "After 1949, right after the establishment of the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party militarily invaded and seized Tibet, which existed as a state," he recounts. "It was an invasion. The argument that it was originally part of China doesn't hold."

He ties Tibet's fate to the wider Indo-Pacific security picture, emphasizing that "The Tibet issue isn't just about Tibet. "It can happen to Taiwan and even Japan. It's a shared threat facing the countries around China."

Yamada cites allegations of coercive assimilation. "Children are put into dormitories and forced to speak Chinese, forced to abandon Tibetan culture," he says. "A kind of cultural holocaust is being carried out."

Still, he argues the issue rarely breaks through in Japan. "Japan has the world's largest parliamentary league supporting Tibet, and yet the media, and even the government's stance, are extremely cold," he said. "The situation in Tibet isn't reported." He blamed what he called Japan's "old media," which he said is wary of provoking Beijing. "No matter how many statements we issue, the media doesn't cover them," he says.

In that context, his prescription for Japan is partly tactical: keep speaking. "Even if old media try to ignore it, it's important to keep putting out appeals regularly through the internet," he says. Hosting Tibet-related international meetings in Japan would also help, he adds.

Author: Daniel Manning