Motes and logs

by liberal japonicus

We had an election here in Japan, I had hoped to post something on Friday before the polls but unfortunately, my wife's father passed away and Japanese funerals being what they are, I couldn't write anything. Rest below the fold

Perhaps you have seen news about the elections and how a party called Sanseito emulated Trump and gained a surprising share of the vote on the back of a anti-foreigner Japan first message. A BBC report to the current received wisdom on that.

The party was born in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, where it gained prominence with YouTube videos that spread conspiracy theories about vaccinations.

More recently, it has built its platform on a nationalist "Japanese First" agenda, warning against a "silent invasion of foreigners".

Sanseito's rise in popularity reflects growing unease over immigration and overtourism – issues the ruling government also sought to address with a new committee it created days before the election.

My own take on all this is that while the rise of Sanseito is troubling, it is over-egging the pudding. Yes, Sanseito is trying out a lot of the elements of right wing populist parties. However, it is less it coming out of nowhere and more realizing that the ideas put forward by Sanseito were nestled in the LDP, but got let off the chain with the assassination of Shinzo Abe in 2022.

Sanseito got its start with anti-vax, anti masking rhetoric. However, that never really took off here in Japan. Anti-mask doesn't really have the traction it has in the US and you don't get the confrontational encounters that I read about there. No one assumes your political stance from choosing to wear a mask. I still wear a mask when I go on public transport now, and in fact, I'd say that 1 out of 10 people still wear masks here. This doesn't deny that there is a anti-mask sentiment, and it shouldn't be a surprise that the locations where Sanseito took seats reflect that. They took 14 seats total from 125 being contested (the full upper house has 248) 7 of those were in electoral districts, in Tokyo, Saitama, Kanagawa, Ibaraki, Aichi, Fukuoka prefectures, and Osaka, all of which are urban areas, and won 7 additional proportional representation seats. Urban areas where people might be bothered by a push for masks more than in rural areas, so I think that this is sort of the seed crystal of the party, but it's not anything like it is in the states, and is unable to create a self sustaining mythology that expands to people destroying weather radars or banning flouride in drinking water. It seems pretty clear that Sanseito's vote share came out of people leaving the LDP. But falling back on 'it's the anti foreign rhetoric' gives a misleading picture.

Bizarrely though (or maybe not), there's a second party that did equally as well, but you would struggle to find a mention of, the Democratic Party For the People or DPFP. As an aside, I'd observe that generally, if you want a party with any kind of name that can be made into an acronym, you have to go with some English name monstrosity. Sanseito has the kanji of 参政党, the first kanji means participate, the second politics and the third is the kanji all political parties use. This gives you something like 'Political Participation Party' or 'Participate in Politics Party, but the party itself gives its English name as the Party of Do it Yourself, I suppose because DIY is a relatively recognized acronym. Anyway, the DPFP did equally as well. So why all the squawking about Sanseito?

The answer is because they are flashy. The DPFP made bigger gains, is basically a center-right party, but their leader is seen as 'indecisive'. Sanseito leader Kamiya, on the other hand, is slick and confident. The Sanseito catchphrase of 'Japan First' is written in Japanese, which kills me because the English 'first' is used, written in katakana. If you take a look at some of their agit-prop here, you can see they go with the bright orange (the leader Kamiya professes admiration for Trump) and you can see another flyer that says 党治はロックだ, which could be translated as 'Politics rock!' Cause nothing says Japan like Rock and Roll! My wife made the observation that you can tell they are a cult just by looking at their fonts. So basically, it's like all the people who believe in Area 54 suddenly got thrust in the spotlight. And Japan being what it is, I feel like a certain amount of time will go by before they realize that the party are wandering around with their fly open and everyone else is too polite to tell them.

Some fun hits

According to the Kanagawa Shimbun, several party staff members approached the reporter, who had already entered and been seated in the venue, saying, "You must be preregistered," and, "You need to leave," preventing the reporter from attending. There were also remarks suggesting the use of force, such as "We've called security."

Sanseito's press conference invitation did not mention any preregistration requirement, instead stating, "We kindly ask you to make every effort to attend." The Kanagawa Shimbun reporter was the only one present from the daily and was unable to cover the conference.

This reporter supposedly wrote several articles critical of Sanseito's Hiroki Hajikano, who was elected in the Kanagawa constituency for the upper house. In its protest letter, the Kanagawa Shimbun expressed concern that similar actions could be taken against other media outlets, describing it as "a disregard for journalism as a whole." link

Daddy Trump would be proud

Kamiya, who won the party’s first seat in 2022 after having gained notoriety for appearing to call for Japan’s emperor to take concubines, faced a backlash early in this year’s campaign for branding gender equality policies a mistake, saying they encourage women to work and keep them from having children. link

Interestingly, of the 7 contested seats that Sanseito won, 5 of them were with female candidates. About half of the 248 seats are contested every 3 years, and while I don't have a list, looking at their pictures here, there are 9 women total. So, as has been reported, this was part of an upsurge in female candidates. Now, perhaps Kamiya has rethought his positions, but if he hasn't, I wonder what will happen if/when he reverts to form, like here

A remark by Sohei Kamiya, leader of the minor opposition party Sanseito, that "older women cannot have children" during an election speech has sparked a spate of protests in Kanagawa Prefecture.

At a rally hastily organized by citizens in front of JR Sakuragicho Station in Yokohama on July 6, participants criticized Kamiya's comment, saying, "The value of women must not be differentiated based on whether they give birth or not."

Kamiya stated during a stump speech in Tokyo on July 3, the day campaigning for the House of Councillors election officially got underway, "We were wrong up until now, such as (promoting) gender equality. Although women's participation in society is a good thing, only young women can have children." link

and

During the speech, Kamiya also made remarks about the biological limitations of childbirth, stating that only young women can bear children.

Although Kamiya emphasized that he did not intend to marginalize older women, a portion of the speech referencing this topic was later removed from the party’s official YouTube video. Sanseito said the omission was due to a “technical issue,” not censorship.

When pressed by reporters about his comments, Kamiya clarified that while medical advances have enabled women in their 40s to give birth, “there are biological limits.” link

That the nuttiness runs deep

A former municipal assembly member in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Kamiya unsuccessfully ran for a Lower House seat in 2012 on the ticket of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Kamiya opened his YouTube channel the following year and started “Ishiki Kaikaku Daigaku” (Consciousness reform university), a hybrid course of online and physical lectures, in 2018 to offer information he said was not available in schools or through the mass media.

The course covered a wide range of subjects, from histories of Japan and other countries to spiritual interests.They included: “Knowing ‘hidden power’ that dominates this world,” “Revival of Japanese soul, Awakening of cosmic consciousness,” “Was Hitler really a great evil?” and “Meals and mindsets that please genes.” link

In fact, it was there before Kamiya's ascension, which was made possible because he was able to push out his elders. Earlier in the above link was this

In August 2023, about a year after the Upper House election, Kamiya, then the party’s number two, demanded that Sanseito leader Manabu Matsuda resign and succeeded him. Matsuda, a former Lower House member who co-founded the party with Kamiya and three others, had labeled a COVID-19 vaccine a “lethal weapon.” That year, many senior members left the party, including an individual who had insisted that wheat flour did not exist in Japan before World War II. 

Thank god they got the nutters out of the party, now there are just Kamiya's chickens…

As I said, Abe was on the right, this Diplomat article covers a lot of his right wing politics. Here is a graf that I think is important

In spite of the frustration the conservatives felt over Abe’s policies during his second bid, due to the reliability of his conservative credentials, these differences of opinion did not ultimately force them to defect from Abe’s orbit. Likewise the LDP’s supporting base remained loyal. However, since Kishida Fumio assumed the premiership in fall 2021, indications suggest that the once-reliable conservatives are fleeing from the LDP – a process accelerated by Abe’s death.

As an interesting contrast to the US, this Diplomat article, entitled The LDP Bears Responsibility for Japan’s Populist Surge, is pretty much on the money, but has me wonder why US articles discussing the rise of populism in the US always fall back on the explanation that the left is responsible for the current state of affairs.

However, I do think that the article misses out a key point, which is that Abe was basically the tent under which all of these conservative/populist/right wing quirks could be contained. I didn't think much of him, and felt that he was set on pulling the country to the right, but he was able to keep the populist right inside rather than have it bust it's banks.

This substack post, an interview with one of Abe's aides, has an interesting anecdote

Tomohiko Taniguchi: The late Prime Minister Abe, with whom I worked happily for almost eight years, played golf together with Donald Trump a number of times, not because both of these men were big golf fans, but because Shinzo Abe wanted to spend more time with the United States. President Trump in a way is like a broken record — at one point he says, “Yes, I understand,” and the next moment he comes back to where he was 10 minutes ago.

It’s very important to continue to have good conversations with Donald Trump. After all, there is no luxury for Japan to choose one from another when it comes to dealing with the President of the United States. The establishment of good rapport with whoever happens to be in the highest office in the United States makes very important sense for Japan. That’s the reason why Shinzo Abe worked extra hard to work with Donald Trump.

[…]

For instance, the conversation between the two leaders, Abe and Trump, went to cover some of the historical issues in the modern era in the Indo-Pacific — in Asia more precisely. To the surprise of many, Donald Trump once raised a question, “Is it true that Japan had a war with China in the 19th century?”

Shinzo Abe said, “Yes, Mr. President, there was a war between Qing Dynasty China and Japan.”

Donald Trump said, “Wow, you must have been defeated badly.”

“That’s not true, Mr. President. It was Japan that won the war.”

Mr. Trump’s response was, “Really?”

“Further than that, Mr. President, there was a war between Tsarist Russia and Japan.”

“Are you kidding? You must have been badly beaten.”

“That’s not the case. Japan actually won.”

“You are warriors!”

You know, that’s the conversation. Donald Trump really liked having those conversations, and Shinzo Abe did so.

While I am someone who believes in the Faulkner quote "The past is never dead. It's not even past," I wonder if Trump actually understood that the Qing Dynasty and Tsarist Russia were 'historical issues in the modern era'. I doubt it.

However, it's not simply some great man theory. Abe's assassination was by a Japanese 41 year old whose mother had been bilked out of a huge amount of money by the Unification Church. You probably know the Unification Church as the Moonies, and could be excused for thinking it is a South Korean phenomenon, but it also had a strong following in Japan. The Church was dissolved in Japan in the wake of the assassination, despite having deep political connections to LDP factions. Factions are like US Caucuses, but with a lot more control over their members and an ability to turn out the vote. They had formal names that were prosaic (Kinmirai Seiji Kenkyukai or Near future research council) or poetic (Suigetsukai, water-moon group, referring to Buddhist notions of transience) but were probably better known by their informal leader who was either PM or functioned as a main powerbreaker, so the oldest faction, the Kōchikai (which means broad pond and is supposed to be both an illusion to a Chinese poem and a pun on the last name of the first leader, Hayato Ikeda, who was PM in the early 60's. 

Another result of Abe's assassination, which could be attributed to the money that was flowing into his faction from the Unification Church, was the call by his successor, Kishida, to abolish factions. All of them did with the exception Taro Aso's Shikoukai, so the rough effect is like a world with one fax machine. Kishida did this because an examination of the financial trails of the Unification Church turned up massive under-reporting of donated funds as well as a number of other schemes that were clearly illegal and so Kishida had to kill the factions to save the LDP. However, looking at this in hindsight, the faction system was a way to keep the crazies at home and under control, so the absence of Abe and the way factions could rein in the worst elements is what is happening here.

However, a lot of commentary outside of Japan and by a lot of foreigners has focussed on the anti-foreigner and anti-immigration rhetoric as if it were something suddenly new and unexpected. While Abe famously loosened up immigration in a number of ways, they were initial steps that had not really impacted numbers. Other articles have discussed over-tourism here (an all purpose link here) but the articles miss the point that Japan doesn't have an over-tourism problem, it has a tourism distribution problem. 

To be blunt, while the news headlines may make it look as if Japan is drowning in a deluge of international tourists, spurred on by the continually weak yen, the reality is quite different. As many on social media have astutely pointed out, Japan doesn’t actually have an overtourism problem. Instead, only a handful of select places in the whole country have fallen victim to the hordes, and even then, the worst of it is largely limited just to mainstream attractions like Asakusa’s Senso-ji. As you’ll find if you venture just a few steps off the beaten path, much of Japan is still surprisingly empty.

but this both of these things are convenient hooks to hang a narrative that no one could have expected this to happen in Japan. What it fails to understand is that keeping the foreigner at arms length and promoting a unique and mystical Japanese culture is pretty much makes anti-foreigner sentiment an ingredient you can't substitute. Any country that develops a mythos of its own uniqueness is going to have these issues. It's not just the US. It happens in France, in Germany, in any country that puts some investment into a 'national culture' that is distinct from other places. 

As this Guardian article points out,

“To put it simply, I feel like the Japanese are starting to lose confidence,” says Masafumi Usui, a social psychology professor at Niigata Seiryo University. “When you’re living a comfortable life and are respected by others, then you feel secure, and you’re more open. But when people feel that their survival is under threat or in crisis, they start wanting to protect their existing culture. I think that leads to things like patriotism and xenophobia.”

But the framing has to be that something is uniquely wrong with Japan. Yes, Sanseito is a problem, yes, it is worrying. But it is, at it's heart, epiphenomenal. And until people start realizing that it is part of our human condition, part of the world that we have made around us, we will always get this kind of reporting that tries to push the problems off on the Other. 

I should add that some Japanese reaction to this is pretty surprising. Ishiba, the Prime minister, has suggested (or has had it suggested, it is really hard to tell) that he may resign in the next few months, and the candidate that is often mentioned to replace him is Sanae Takaichi, who was one of the candidates to replace Kishida and would become the first female Prime Minister. The response to that has been protests supporting Ishiba and hastags, often coming from people on the left, supporting him. I have no idea how strong this is, but my opinion is that Takaichi is a bit of a loon (emphasis mine)

A newspaper cutting suggesting Sanae Takaichi once publicly endorsed a controversial book praising Adolf Hitler's electoral tactics has been circulating on Japanese social media, just days after smiling photos of the 53-year-old minister posing with a Holocaust-denying politician were posted on a neo-Nazi website.

In the clipping from a May 1994 issue of magazine Tokyo Seikei Tsushin, Takaichi is pictured alongside other politicians promoting the then freshly-printed, Hitler's Election Strategy, A Bible for Certain Victory in Modern Elections.

Written by an official in Japan's largest and currently ruling political party – Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – the book presented the Nazi dictator as a role model for Japanese politicians.

As Truman said, either you have them outside, pissing in the tent, or on the inside, pissing out. What will Japan choose? Only time will tell.