Plenty of contentious issues loom ahead of Sunday’s elections in Japan: a shrinking economy, falling real wages and no trade deal to shield against US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
However, the narrative has instead been dominated by a fringe group and its chatter about the nation’s growing cohort of foreign residents.
A spike in the polls for the right-wing Sanseito has alarmed mainstream parties, and shifted the debate to its anti-immigration policies. Leader Sohei Kamiya denounces “globalism” and wants fewer overseas workers. The party’s “Japanese First” slogan intentionally riffs on Trump. It won three seats in last year’s lower house vote and three more in Tokyo’s recent assembly election.
What has really captured attention are the opinion surveys for the upper house vote, where Sanseito has polled as high as second place. Given global trends, many are asking if it is Japan’s turn to go down the path of right-wing populism.
Such concern is overblown. This is not the start of something such as the UK’s Reform, much less Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA). The rise of such a movement continues to be very much overstated. Japan’s increasing number of foreign residents is causing some growing pains, mostly due to their prior absence and a surge in ill-mannered tourists.
MAGA and Reform were given room to grow, because of decades of mainstream politicians persistently ignoring voters’ dissatisfaction with policies that moved jobs abroad and put few checks on immigration. In Japan, such complaints do not really carry water.
Are foreigners stealing jobs? Quite the opposite: There is an acute and growing labor crunch, and migrants are needed to keep all kinds of basic services functioning, from staffing convenience stores to driving trucks.
Is illegal immigration off the charts, one of the issues that fueled Trump’s victory last year? Hardly. The number of visa overstayers has collapsed in recent years. Japan admits few asylum seekers, resisting calls to follow the example of Western nations who now seem to be having doubts. As a result, most foreigners are productive members of society.
Law and order? It is hard to point the finger at visitors for an increase in crime, because, despite a slight post-COVID-19 pandemic uptick, Japan does not have a significant problem. Are they taking the houses? No, there are more than enough, although ridiculously permissive rules are creating room for discontent, as wealthy foreign buyers strain the housing market in Tokyo and Osaka.
There are some simple factors driving Sanseito’s rise. First is the lack of alternatives. The traditionally governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is deeply unpopular, for reasons including public dissatisfaction with inflation and lingering discontent over a funding scandal. This frequently leads to protest votes, particularly early in campaigning before citizens have a chance to examine policy platforms (Japanese election campaigns are mercifully short.) In last year’s lower house election, many turned to the center-right Democratic Party for the People, although its star is fading, as voters get to better know its policies and politicians.
The issue is aggravated by the fact that the LDP has its most unlikely leader in recent memory in Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Best known for his opposition to former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the prime minister hails from the party’s liberal camp, and is distrusted by right-wingers. Even when agreeing on the need for foreigners to integrate into society, he managed to denigrate Japanese customs and language as “tedious.” Naturally, conservatives were outraged.
Sanseito might indeed see success on Sunday, but would it be sustained success? The most likely scenario is another flash in the pan movement, as familiarity breeds contempt with the party’s embrace of anti-vaccine and other conspiracy theories, as well as its lack of serious policy chops. Even during Japan’s economic stagnation during the 1990s and early 2000s, voters largely ignored populists. That is because lawmakers preserved job security, healthcare, infrastructure and pensions, although at a cost to innovation and creative destruction. Japan lacks the kindling for a populist fire.
“The only way I see Sanseito becoming a more established presence in Japanese politics is if the trend holds that conservative voters who traditionally support the LDP are not casting a protest vote” and instead are “truly fed up with the party’s ‘moderate’ shift in the post-Abe era,” strategic advisory firm The Asia Group associate Rintaro Nishimura said.
To do that, Sanseito would need the discipline to create a proper economic and foreign policy platform, he said.
Like the complaints of Reform voters that have manifested into British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s immigration crackdown in the UK, just because Sanseito says something, does not make it untrue. There are areas of concern, from how easy it is for non-residents to purchase property to overly accommodative scholarship programs, where Japanese might feel hard done by. Authorities should address these concerns now. Ishiba is reluctantly moving, setting up a “command center” to coordinate responses to issues involving foreigners.
Nonetheless, the electorate is unlikely to put their faith in a party whose leader opposes vaccinations and advances crackpot views such as cancer being invented after World War II, or wheat being pushed on Japan by the US to destroy the country’s food culture. Sanseito’s ideas make for good headlines and would no doubt find some backing. However, in all likelihood it would stay on the fringes, where it belongs.
Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan and the Koreas. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia, and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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