Japan upper house election: is country about to lurch to the right?

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1. It would be difficult to imagine a friendlier and more tolerant xenophobe than Jun Tajima. The 40-year-old estate agent from Tokyo loves talking to foreigners in the fluent English that he taught himself by watching coverage of the Premier League. He is an equally ardent follower of Major League Baseball and longs to visit London or Los Angeles.

   This Sunday, however, he will vote for the most extreme right-wing party to win significant success in Japan since the Second World War. It is a movement whose central plank is its dislike and mistrust of foreigners in Japan. Sanseito, literally the “political participation party”, compares itself to the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), France’s National Rally and Reform UK.

   Its leader, Sohei Kamiya, is sceptical about vaccines, has warned of the menace of “Jewish capital” and believes that Japan should have its own nuclear weapons. But the party is known and defined by its slogan “Japanese First”, which has propelled immigration and mass tourism to the forefront of electoral politics with a greater intensity than ever before.

   A remarkable and growing number of people agree with him. Before Sunday’s voting for half the seats in the upper house of Japan’s national parliament, the Diet, some polls show Sanseito moving into third place, behind the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its historic opponent, the centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. A poll by the Asahi newspaper suggested that in the vote for seats allocated by proportional representation, Sanseito could win as many as 14 per cent of votes cast by the unaffiliated, compared with 19 per cent for the LDP.

   The LDP leader, Shigeru Ishiba, has been leading a minority government since the general election last September, when the party lost control of the lower house of the Diet, which chooses the prime minister. All the indications are that the party will shed more seats on Sunday, worsening Ishiba’s already desperate situation and opening the way to party rivals to challenge his party leadership — although whether anyone else would want the job at such a grim juncture is not clear.

   More significant in the long run, though, may be the rise of Sanseito, a force for ultra-right nationalism such as Japan has not seen before

2. Isn’t it already lurching to the right? Recommend doing some research on **Nippon Kaigi** (日本会議)

   Some info from Wikipedia.

   >***Nippon Kaigi (日本会議)*** ***is Japan’s largest ultraconservative and ultranationalist far-right non-governmental organisation and lobbying group***

   >*The group has significant influence in Japanese politics. In October 2014, 289 of the 480 Japanese National Diet members were part of the group. Many ministers and a few prime ministers are included as members, including Shigeru Ishiba, Tarō Asō, Shinzō Abe, Yoshihide Suga, and Fumio Kishida.*

   Nothing new they have saying for years. In Japan best avoid the right-wingers and their noisy black sound-trucks prowling the streets.

3. Political participation among the Japanese public is very low. Therefore, every Japanese government caters to farmers (because farmers have a very high voter turnout). However, it’s true that Japan currently has a strong xenophobic atmosphere, as the country has imported a large amount of labor, particularly from Southeast Asia. You can see Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, and Vietnamese everywhere – in 7-Eleven, Lawson, Don Quijote, and other places.

   Also, although I feel a bit sorry to say this about the Japanese, based on my experience browsing X and Yahoo News, in the comments under any crime news article, most Japanese comments immediately say things like: ‘That person doesn’t look Japanese from their face,’ or ‘His Japanese has an accent.’ Even if it’s later confirmed the person is Japanese, you’ll still see comments like, ‘Check if his parents are immigrants.’

4. Something for me to look forward to as a foreigner living in Japan

   Don’t mind I have been here 10 years, always paid my taxes, pay a lot more in taxes in one year than the average Japanese person will do in 5. I don’t go around throwing up on train platforms, doing chikan, degrading women. Had two kids here

   But hey, I’m the problem with everything

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