Visit Japan and it feels affluent and successful. Roads look like they were tarmacked and painted the night before, and everyone seems to be driving a new (or perhaps just very clean) car. Levels of public safety and trust remain high.
Cities such as Tokyo are abuzz with high-end shops and restaurants. And for all that it’s a tourist-board cliché, Japanese culture really does run the gamut from the timelessness of temples, shrines and festivals through to cutting-edge fashion, architecture and visual media.
An ever-increasing number of tourists — rising to 36.9 million last year — find that all this is available at surprisingly low cost. Japan has had nothing like the high inflation of the UK and US, and the yen remains weak. Find the right restaurant and a sumptuous multi-course meal is yours for the price of a large McDonald’s back home.
And yet for people who actually live in Japan, the picture is less rosy.
Politically, the country is in flux after the resignation last weekend of prime minister Shigeru Ishiba. His departure, after less than a year in the job, was forced by seismic changes in Japanese politics over the past year as nationalism and discontent bubbled over.
The person serving you in that restaurant, or bagging your purchases at one of Japan’s ubiquitous 24-hour convenience stores, probably earns about £5 an hour.
Japan’s average minimum wage is half that of the UK’s national living wage. Then come all the taxes, including a deeply unpopular consumption levy of 8 to 10 per cent. Before you know it, the government has made off with about a quarter of your earnings — a higher percentage than for many low-paid workers in the UK.
This is one of the reasons Japan’s demographic crisis has become so serious: the population is projected to shrink from a peak of 128.5 million in 2009 to about 75 million by 2100. For all that westerners enjoy reading the occasional story about Japan’s “sexless youth”, the reality is less of stunted libidos and more of young people reluctantly concluding they cannot afford to have children.
This economic misery was front and centre in the upper house election campaign this summer — and the result was historic.
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Credited with steering a defeated Japan towards prosperity in the late 1950s and 1960s, Ishiba’s centre-right Liberal Democratic Party has rarely been out of power since its formation back in 1955. But now, for the first time in its history, the LDP, together with its coalition partner Komeito, have lost their majority in both houses of parliament.
Shigeru Ishiba announced his resignation last week
TORU HANAI/GETTY IMAGES
Two insurgent parties helped bring about this reversal, and they represent two very different possible futures for Japan.
The centre-right Democratic Party for the People (DPP) promises to raise take-home pay, while investing in education and returning tech companies to the global top tier after decades of losing out to Silicon Valley. A longstanding joke is that Japan is good at looking modern while still using fax machines behind the scenes.
The second triumphant party, rising from one seat to 15 in the upper house, is Sanseito (“Participate in Politics”). It is led by a charismatic former shopkeeper and schoolteacher named Sohei Kamiya, who rose to prominence on YouTube during the pandemic and has faced criticism for peddling conspiracy theories.
But his strategy of tying Japan’s economic woes to its relations with foreign countries, migrants and tourists resonates with a significant proportion of young Japanese. Sanseito draws most of its support from voters aged 18 to 39, and from men in particular.
Japan’s Trump?
There are parallels here with President Trump in the US and Nigel Farage in the UK: much talk of elites versus ordinary people, and “globalism” versus national interests. And yet Sanseito’s slogan of “Japanese First” notwithstanding, Kamiya is more than a Trump tribute act. He is bringing into the mainstream arguments that have rumbled away for decades on the fringes of Japanese politics.
Nationalists in Japan have long claimed that the country was defeated by America not once, but twice. In August 1945, they argue, hostilities ended and a culture war began, such were the profound effects of the Allied occupation, dominated by America.
Japan’s constitution was rewritten, the emperor was stripped of power and divine status, the maintaining of armed forces was forbidden and education was overhauled to include a guilt-inducing narrative about Japan’s recent past.
The country’s liberals welcomed most of this, but conservatives worried that Japan was becoming a vassal state, both politically and culturally.
To a degree that has some commentators in Japan seriously worried, Sanseito draws deeply on these grievances for its political platform. Improving Japan’s food self-sufficiency, a major concern for Sanseito, is a fairly mainstream idea.
But it also wants to rewrite the constitution, restore the emperor’s sovereignty, end pacifism, curtail citizens’ rights and introduce patriotic controls on education and the media. Some in the party have even come out in favour of acquiring nuclear weapons, attracting criticism from atomic bomb survivors.
Sohei Kamiya has amassed a large following
SOPA IMAGES LIMITED/ALAMY
It is telling of this political and cultural moment that both the DPP and Sanseito seek to address voter concerns about foreign influence. The DPP wants to limit the acquisition of land by non-Japanese and strengthen anti-espionage measures.
Kamiya goes further, talking about a “silent invasion” of foreigners. His party wants to stem the flow of migrants, create rules on integration and limit access to benefits. It seeks to solve Japan’s labour shortages via robotics and artificial intelligence, rather than relying on large-scale migration.
For some of Sanseito’s supporters, this is largely about China: fears that the Communist Party uses Chinese visitors and residents in Japan to extend its influence there. Others harbour broader concerns about over-tourism. Numbers are low, compared with countries such as Italy, but recent years have been a shock nonetheless in cities like Kyoto.
Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto
JASMINE LEUNG/GETTY IMAGES
For some, Mount Fuji is one of Japan’s biggest photo opportunities
TOMOHIRO OHSUMI/GETTY IMAGES
And the government wants to almost double these numbers, to 60 million every year by 2030 — injecting a hoped-for 15 trillion yen annually into Japan’s debt-laden economy. (British visitors are said to be the highest spenders, but Chinese visitors overall contribute the most by country.)
Beyond the raw numbers, it is common in Japan to encounter the claim that tourists do not know how to behave. They are loud, rude and drop litter, goes the argument. They pack out public transport and push up prices. Their passion for photography knows no bounds, from snapping geisha up close without permission to bringing traffic to a standstill while finding the best angle to capture Mount Fuji.
Especially newsworthy in Japan are instances of foreign influencers treating the country as one big Instagram opportunity. One filmed herself doing pull-ups on a torii gate at a Shinto shrine.
Another recently visited a graveyard at the foot of Mount Fuji and drank a can of drink left there as an offering to the deceased (having first flipped a Harry Potter coin to decide whether to do it or not).
No doubt the majority of visitors try to understand the feelings of their hosts, and will be motivated by the bad press around foreign visitors to be especially considerate. But such is social media and Sanseito’s command of digital politics that it is becoming normal to link meiwaku gaikokujin (“nuisance foreigners”) with Japan’s deeper problems.
Whether Japan’s insurgent parties continue to grow or lose out to a revitalised LDP, the sense in Japan of a society and culture under threat and in need of defending is set to be a potent force in politics for a good while to come.
Christopher Harding is the author of A Short History of Japan (Pelican, £20)