The party bringing Trump-style populism to Japan

A far-right populist party in Japan is courting allies of Donald Trump as it builds on its recent electoral gains.

Sanseito uprooted Japan’s political foundations when it won 14 new seats in the House of Councillors election in July, “shattering the long-standing belief that modern Japan is immune to populism”, said news agency Anadolu.

Now hardline nationalist leader Sanae Takaichi has won the leadership election for Japan’s ruling party the Liberal Democratic Party, paving for a possible pact between the ruling party and Sanseito. But the Maga-inspired party “faces a distinctly Japanese quandary of how to upend the status quo in a society that prizes politeness and consensus”, said Reuters.

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Spooking the mainstream 

Sanseito was one of the election’s “biggest winners”, and it now has 15 lawmakers in the 248-member house. This is “not a huge number”, but it’s “enough to spook Japan’s mainstream conservatives”, said Project Syndicate. A poll by public broadcaster NHK last month found Sanseito is now the most popular opposition party.

Japan has “long prided itself on social harmony and relative political moderation, avoiding the deep partisan trenches of US politics”, said the East Asia Forum, but the recent election “exposed a truth that can no longer be ignored”: the nation’s “divisions are real, complex and growing, and Sanseito has skilfully turned these fractures into political capital”.

The value of that capital can be seen in Takaichi’s assent to power, “echoing Sanseito’s warnings about foreigners”, said Deutsche Welle. Takaichi kicked off her first official campaign speech with an anecdote about tourists reportedly kicking sacred deer in her hometown of Nara, without providing evidence.

Indeed Takaichi’s relationship with Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya “will be interesting to observe”, said Philip Patrick on UnHerd, and there is “something of the Tory-Reform UK dynamic to the relationship between the two Japanese parties”.

Not going ‘wacky’

Although the wider populist movement in Japan has latched onto “some common themes” with its international counterparts, like vaccine scepticism, nationalism, and opposition to “woke” social justice initiatives, they’re a “little different from far-right parties in other countries and from the older extreme right in Japan”, said Project Syndicate.

In the past, Japan’s far-right “traded mostly in nostalgia”, driving “noisy sound trucks, blaring wartime patriotic songs and bearing young ruffians in quasi-military gear”. They “longed for Japan’s imperialist past”, and pointed the blame at the “United States, Japanese leftists, and Communist China” for “robbing” the nation of its “martial spirit”.

In contrast, the topic that “excites” today’s populists most is the “increasing number of foreigners in Japan – immigrants, workers and tourists”. “Like Trump, Kamiya has stirred controversy with his remarks” on ethnic minorities, said Reuters. An outspoken critic of immigration, on one occasion the Sanseito leader “used a slur against Japan's ethnic Korean population – a comment for which he later apologised”.

But Sanseito “are not Trump worshippers” and won’t push “wacky” policies like those embraced by the US president, Kamiya told the news agency. The Japanese “value harmony and place an importance on getting broad, gradual consensus”, he said, before adding: “I do, too”.