Rise of Japan’s Hard Right Populists

Ichiro Suzuki

“Use tax for Japanese not for foreigners!” shouts Sohei Kamiya, head of Sanseito, a political party he founded only five years ago. The party’s English name is “The Party of Do it Yourself” displaying their belief that Japan should go it alone, with minimum involvement in the world outside of the country. Kamiya brought Japan’s political landscape what the country has been missing, a hard right populist party. While there have been a few far left populist parties, his is the first one in the right wing.

‘Japanese First’, the party’s official slogan, appeals to voters. Housewives are having a hard time making both ends meet amid rapidly rising prices. More than a few people believe that the system in Japan is exploited by foreigners and that governments are spending excessive amount of financial resources for them. They see these arguments on the internet and take them at face value though such stories are often false. It’s an irony that discontent has grown in the economy that is relatively in better shape than an ordeal that the country went through for a few decades. 

Kamiya was obviously inspired by rising popularity of Germany’s AfD and France’s National Front (RN). He also resonates with MAGA, of course, though not the entire Republican Party. He doesn’t call for an outright rejection of immigration, which hasn’t become as serious a problem as in Europe and the United States, amid steadily growing presence of foreigners and a surge of foreign tourists’ arrivals. That said, speaking against foreigners touches the heart of disaffected people in an economy where growth of their wages and salaries is running behind rising prices. It is a global trend. His anti-foreigners campaign is implicitly targeted against people of color, other Asians in particular, and not against Caucasians. 

At the end of 2024, 3.76 million foreigners lived in Japan, up 350,000 from a year earlier. These numbers included 900,000 permanents residents and 78,000 who overstayed their visa. There is no evidence that crime rate is higher among foreigners than Japanese citizens though illegal residents tend to commit crimes more often than others. On top of it, statistics show that the number of crimes by foreigners has halved over the past twenty years. While frictions between foreign residents and local communities are reported sometimes, they appear to be isolated cases. Like immigrants elsewhere, foreign residents pay taxes and hence are entitled to a variety of services. Even those who are staying illegally pay consumption tax when they buy something, and excise tax upon consumption of alcohol beverages and cigarettes. Though foreigners tend to be in arrears more often than Japanese residents in heath insurance payments, it is far too much to say they are screwing the system. Disaffected people, however, are drawn to unfounded claims that make them feel better. 

Sanseito openly displays their negative feelings against LGPTQ and DEI and is against separate surnames for married couples, a growing issue in the country, which has been firmly in place elsewhere for years. In addition, they don’t hide a nostalgia toward the Japan before 1945, which was not exactly ruled by democracy and suppressed freedom of speech. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s most conservative wing has had sympathy with the nostalgic thoughts. This wing fervently supported former PM Shinzo Abe, but their discontent has grown under PM Kishida’s liberal turn toward these ‘woke’ issues. Now they have found staunchly conservative Sanseito to vote for. Sanseito’s foreign policy stance is far from certain but the party is decisively anti-China, in sharp contrast not only to far left parties and but also not a small part of the LDP. 

As expected, Sanseito has made a massive advance in the House of Councilors (Upper House) election on July 20 while the ruling coalition has suffered a historic defeat. Upper House election results don’t immediately affect how a government is formed. It remains to be seen how the hard right party affects national politics in the coming months. 

About the author: Mr. Suzuki is a retired banker based in Tokyo, Japan.