New Kid on the Block: The Far-right Sanseito Party Is Making Waves in Japan 

During the height of the pandemic, a former supermarket manager and English teacher, Sohei Kamiya, worried about his country. So he began “gathering” people on the internet via a YouTube channel.  

Within a year, a few thousand people he “collected’’ formed the Sanseito party, or the “do-it-yourself” party, vowing to put “Japan first.”  

“The party was formed with the sincere hope that each and every citizen could change Japan through browsing the Internet,” explained Kamiya.  

Initially, the group won a few council seats and one seat in the upper house of the legislature. It was dismissed as a gathering of kooks, or a fringe movement that would peter out.  

However, five years later, it has won 14 more seats in the 248-seat chamber in the parliamentary elections in July and emerged as the single biggest winner in terms of gains made in the race, has 150 municipal representatives across the country, and has shaken up the Japanese political landscape.  

“Sanseito has become the talk of the town,” Joshua Walker, head of the US-based non-profit Japan Society, told Reuters. 

The dramatic rise of the right-wing populist party, with its charismatic and keenly attentive leader, shows the party’s message – initially focused on traditional values, vaccine skepticism, overtourism, the rising number of foreigners, and globalism, but now also on inflation – is resonating with millions of Japanese voters.  

Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University, told Deutsche Welle that Sanseito has been able to tap into public grievances with traditional political parties, which many believe are out of touch, and are especially behind on social media. 

“People have been unhappy with all the problems that they face every day, and they just felt the …traditional parties are not listening to them,” he said. 

Observers said the messaging is reminiscent of other far-right populist movements in Europe and elsewhere that have been gaining traction in recent years. However, it’s an unusual development in conservative Japan where voters usually opt for the center and stick with what they know, say analysts.  

Now, the country is headed into the unknown. 

“Japanese politics are moving into a messy new era,” wrote the Economist. “The long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faces many threats, with big implications for the country’s future.” 

That is because Sanseito’s rise in popularity has come at a cost to the governing coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner Komeito, which secured only 47 seats in the 248-member House of Councilors, falling three short of the 50 it needed to win to retain its majority in the upper house, in an election in which half the seats were contested.  

As a result, Sanseito will have an outsized influence on Japanese policy, say analysts. 

The loss is also another setback for the ruling bloc, which already lost its majority in the lower house in the October elections. It has held the majority in parliament for 15 years but has been more or less in power since 1955. The results of the past two elections have also severely weakened Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s grip on power. 

Ishiba has acknowledged the “harsh result” of the elections but said he would stay on as prime minister and so far resisted calls to step down, citing urgent economic issues such as critical trade negotiations with the United States. But how long he can hold on is now a question.  

The pressure is on as Japan faces rising discontent with the status quo, analysts say.  

Japanese voters are angry over stagnant wages and inflation, particularly a doubling in rice prices, and the LDP’s refusal to cut the consumption tax – a key opposition demand that Sanseito supported. 

Meanwhile, the world’s fourth-largest economy has traditionally been strict on immigration, but in recent years worked hard to attract more international tourists and foreign workers to counter a rapidly aging population and plunging birth rates. 

Tourist numbers, rising dramatically, are causing problems in certain towns with popular attractions. It’s become such a concern that the government recently formed a new task force to address the issue. 

Sanseito supports caps on the number of foreign residents.  

Critics have accused the party and its leader of xenophobia and misinformation, particularly over Sanseito’s promotion of conspiracies centering on vaccines and the idea that a cabal of global elites is plotting to weaken Japan. Many say it’s become a cult. 

But analysts say that despite the criticism, Kamiya and his Sanseito party are hitting the right notes, for now. 

After the recent election wins, Kamiya felt vindicated, gloating that “The public came to understand that the media was wrong and Sanseito was right.”