‘Japanese first’: Voters back Trump-inspired party to ‘Make Japan Great Again’ wins big in key elections

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/japanese-first-voters-back-trump-inspired-party-to-make-japan-great-again-wins-big-in-key-elections/articleshow/122807502.cms

43 comments

  1. Oh sure… Color me surprised. A xenophobic, work till you die, set in their ways, aging culture resonates with Trumpian conservatism.

  3. Oh good, the population with a plummeting birth rate, shrinking and aging population, and urgent worker shortage will blame their problems on immigration.

  4. Isn’t their population about to collapse if they don’t get some foreigners up in that sob pronto?

  6. As a foreigner living in Japan myself, it’s disheartening to see Sanseito’s rise to prominence. I’m somewhat comforted by the protests against them, but it still sucks.

    Edit: oh, also, btw, Sanseito has ties with Russia and Russian bots spread fake news on their behalf. Shocker.

  7. Evidently watching everyone else try this shit and it failing wasn’t enough evidence.

  8. I saw a comment on here about how Trump’s rhetoric is translated into a very sanitized version of what he’s actually saying. The commenter said they translated some of his wildest moments accurately and their japanese friends were aghast by the shit he actually says.

  10. >”The phrase Japanese First was meant to express rebuilding Japanese people’s livelihoods by resisting globalism. I am not saying that we should completely ban foreigners or that every foreigner should get out of Japan,” Sohei Kamiya said in an interview with Nippon Television after the election.

    Someone misses the Tokugawa shogunate.

  12. They’re so homogenous, aren’t they already “Japan first?” What is the perceived outside threat here? Westerners coming to teach English?

  13. > Sanseito began on YouTube during the Covid-
    19 pandemic, where spread conspiracy
    theories about vaccines and global elites

    Le sigh

  14. ???dont they barely have immigration? And they are an island nation and I dont think many boats are going to japan. Why are they so pissed off?

  15. Japan is already one of the most rigidly conservative countries in the world, how much farther do they wanna take it it? They’d close the borders entirely if they could

  17. can’t they see how well things turned out in the west?

  18. Haven’t all their policies since forever been Japan first? They’re not known for being the most open and welcoming country to my knowledge. This is just a bunch of grifters looking to capitalize on something that needs far left policies and a decade to fix. But hey, it is much easier to blame a small subset of the population and get robbed by the very government they elect.

  20. Please don’t put tariffs on Gundam model kits.

  21. Maybe they’ll pull through like Germany did. Idk how the world doesn’t look at America rn and go “no thanks”

  22. Oh look, a country that has been making bigger strides towards cooperation with NATO and Ukraine suddenly seeing an upsurge in an alt-right party that just so happens to be soft on Russia, would likely hamstring their economy, and has been appearing on news networks banned by the EU for being a disinformation arm of the RU government. What a surprise.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/japanese-first-party-emerges-election-force-with-tough-immigration-talk-2025-07-21/

    https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2025/07/17/-japanesefirst-party-denies-ties-with-russia-

    https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15912020

    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/18/japan/politics/russia-influence-japan-election/

  24. Huh? Japan is already very ethnically-homogenous. Humans are actually so stupid.

  25. America going isolationist, war in Eastern Europe, Asia gearing up for a tussle. Where have I heard this before?

  27. This timeline is so fucking stupid. Just get a bunch of people together who feel they’re owed the world due to heritage, birth, or race and then stoke the flames and ride yourself into a position of power. Why does this formula keep working, why are people so ignorant and easy to manipulate?

  28. Hmm. I guess we can just cross that place off the list now…

  30. Wow so history is repeating itself during ww2 era. Japan is aligning again with the nahtzes in the US

  31. Well, with fatman and little boy in the WhiteHouse, it should be easier than they might think.

  34. Ah yes, I’m sure the best way to combat a rapidly aging populace and declining work force will be to *checks notes* enact even more xenophobic policies that will incite interested international labor to rethink their position. Also, should do banger work for their tourism industry that is propping up a lot of the country!!

    Man, bigots really don’t think very much about big-pictures, do they?

  35. They have forgotten what happened the last time they aligned with Nazis.

  36. The Japanese are grasping at straws. What happens when they deport the 3% immigrants that are causing them all of this dishevel and nothing materially changes whatsoever? This is proof that many of today’s right wing movements are just empty grievance vehicles with no real chassis to support them.

    And by all means, they can ban immigration and deport every single foreigner, this will not make their lives better in any way whatsoever. I doubt this happens though, otherwise politicians will run out of grievances to exploit and will have to face the real structural issues that truly drive these grievances. But who wants to do that work, am I right?

  37. Goddamnit. We all gotta stop falling for this propaganda.

    Russia’s gonna win and then we’ll all be starving and under the governments yoke

  38. Living in Tokyo, the BBC article says it all.

    [BBC article](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly80nnjnv5o)

    “Kamiya launched Sanseito in March 2020 […] The former self-defense reservist has openly credited Trump for shaping his approach.”

    Sanseito gained attention among conservatives with its series of YouTube videos centred on anti-vaccine and anti-masking rhetoric.

    Which is so dumb because Japan didn’t have vaccine or mask mandates.

  40. Shocking coming from an island nation that deliberately isolated itself from the world for 200+ years. Hasn’t Japan always been “Japan First?”

  41. Little Boy and Fat Man – stand back and stand by.

  42. The party predates Trump but he’ll take credit.

  43. Oh look, an aging population chose nationalism for the promise of fantastical short-term gains that would be realized within their life spans. Again. So weird that this keeps happening.

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