Tokyo – As the tariffs of President Donald Trump join a feeling of uncertainty in Japan, more voters here are adopting an idea inspired by his former ally of the United States: “The Japanese first.”
The nationalist slogan helped the populist party of the Sanseito right to obtain great profits in the parliamentary elections of Japan on Sunday, since he capitalized the economic discomfort and concerns about immigration and overwriteness.
The party leader, Sohei Kamiya, who since 2022 had occupied the only seat of Sanseito in the upper house of the Parliament of Japan, will now join another 14 in the 248 seats chamber. It is far from the origin of the party as a marginal anti-vacunation group on YouTube during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although Japan has had a complex relationship with foreigners and their cultural identity, experts say that the rise of Sanseito is another indication of the global change to the incarnate right and partly driven by Trump, with populist figures that gain ground in Europe, Great Britain, Latin America and other places.
Kamiya “becomes a mini triumph” and “is one of those Trump has understood the wind in his candles,” said Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies and history at the Japan campus of the University of Temple.
Speaking in a demonstration on Saturday in Tokyo Siba Park, Kamiya said that his calls for greater restrictions on foreign workers and investment were not driven by xenophobia but by “the operation of globalization.” He criticized the support of conventional parties to boost immigration in an effort to address the work shortage facing the population of aging and reduction of Japan reduction.
“Japan is still the fourth largest economy in the world. We have 120 million people. Why do we have to trust foreign capital?” Kamiya told an enthusiastic crowd.
The results of the elections were disastrous for the Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ihiba, who faces calls to resign now that its conservative democratic liberal party, which has governed almost uninterrupted since the end of World War II, has lost its majority in both cameras of Parliament.
The Japanese leader had also been under pressure to reach a commercial agreement with the Trump administration, which said Tuesday that the two parties had agreed to a 15% United States rate on Japanese assets.
On Wednesday, Ishiba denied that he planned to resign at the end of August.
The message of the series of electoral losses of his party is that “people are unhappy,” Kingston said.
“Many people feel that the status quo is partial of their interests and that it covers the elderly over young people, and young people feel resentful that they have to carry the heavy burden of the growing aging population of the back,” he said.
Kamiya, 47, an energy speaker with knowledge of social networks, is also a strong contrast to leaders such as Istiba and Yoshihiko Noda of the constitutional Democrats, both 68, who “seem yesterday’s men” and the faces of the establishment, Kingston said.
With the voters concerned with stagnating wages, growing prices and umbrella employment perspectives, “change creators obtained many protest votes from people who feel deprived of their rights,” he said.
The Sanseito platform resonated with voters like Yuta Kato.
“The number of [foreign immigrants] Those who do not obey the rules are increasing. People do not express it, but I think they feel, “said 38 -year -old hairdresser to Reuters in Tokyo.” In addition, the load for citizens, including taxes, is becoming larger, so life is becoming more difficult. “
The main reason why Sanseito went well in the elections, said: “They are talking in the name of us.”
Kamiya’s party was not the only one that benefited from the discontent of the voters, with the Democratic Party of the center of the right for people by increasing their number of seats in the upper house from five to 16.
Sanseito, whose name means “participating in politics”, originated in 2020 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting conservatives with YouTube videos that promote conspiracy theories about vaccines and retreating against mask mandates. Its YouTube channel now has almost 480,000 subscribers.
The party also warned about a “silent invasion” of foreigners in Japan, where the number of foreign residents increased more than 10% last year to a record of almost 3.8 million, according to the Immigration Services Agency. However, it is still much lower as a proportion of the population than in the United States or Europe.
Critics say that this rhetoric has fed hate discourse and growing hostility towards foreigners in Japan, citing a survey last month for the Japanese station NHK and others in which almost two thirds of respondents agreed that foreigners received “preferential treatment.”
In the Sanseito rally on Saturday, the protesters held signs that said “without hatred” and “racist go home.”
Kamiya denies that her party is hostile to foreigners in Japan.
“We have no intention of discriminating against foreigners, nor do we intend to encourage division,” he said on Monday. “We only aim to firmly rebuild the life of the Japanese who are currently in trouble.”
Despite its electoral advances, Sanseito does not have enough members in the upper house to have a lot of impact by itself and only has three seats in the most powerful lower read chamber. The challenge, Kingston said, is if Kamiya can “take this anger, discomfort and bring his show throughout the country.”
