Japan’s right-wing fringe is no MAGA or reform movement

Plenty of contentious issues loom ahead of Sunday’s elections in Japan: A shrinking economy, falling real wages and no trade deal to shield against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

But the narrative has instead been dominated by a fringe group and its chatter about the nation’s growing cohort of foreign residents.

A spike in the polls for the right-wing Sanseito has alarmed mainstream parties and shifted the debate to its anti-immigration policies. Leader Sohei Kamiya denounces "globalism” and wants fewer overseas workers. The party’s "Japanese First” slogan intentionally riffs on Trump. It won three seats in last year’s Lower House vote and three more in Tokyo’s recent assembly election.

But what has really captured attention are the opinion surveys for Sunday's Upper House vote, where Sanseito has polled as high as second place. Given global trends, many are asking if it’s Japan’s turn to go down the path of right-wing populism.

Such concern is overblown. This is not the start of something like the U.K.’s Reform, much less Trump’s MAGA. The rise of such a movement continues to be very much overstated. Japan’s increasing number of foreign residents is causing some growing pains, mostly due to their prior absence and a surge in ill-mannered tourists.

But both MAGA and Reform were given room to grow because of decades of mainstream politicians persistently ignoring voters’ dissatisfaction with policies that moved jobs abroad and put few checks on immigration. In Japan, such complaints don’t really carry water.

Are foreign workers stealing jobs? Quite the opposite: There is an acute and growing labor crunch and migrants are needed to keep all kinds of basic services functioning, from staffing convenience stores to driving trucks.

Is illegal immigration off the charts, one of the issues that fueled Trump’s victory last year? Hardly. The number of visa overstayers has collapsed in recent years. Japan admits few asylum seekers, resisting calls to follow the example of Western nations who now seem to be having doubts. As a result, most foreign residents are productive members of society.

Law and order? It’s hard to point the finger at visitors for an increase in crime because, despite a slight post-pandemic uptick, Japan does not have a significant problem. Are they taking the houses? No, there’s more than enough, though ridiculously permissive rules are creating room for discontent as wealthy foreign buyers strain the housing market in central Tokyo and Osaka.

There are some simple factors driving Sanseito’s rise. First is the lack of alternatives. The traditionally governing Liberal Democratic Party is deeply unpopular, for reasons including public dissatisfaction with inflation and lingering discontent over a funding scandal. This frequently leads to protest votes, particularly early in campaigning before citizens have a chance to examine policy platforms (Japanese election campaigns are mercifully short.) In last year’s Lower House election, many turned to the center-right Democratic Party for the People, though its star is fading as voters get to better know its policies and politicians.

The issue is aggravated by the fact that the LDP currently has its most unlikely leader in recent memory in Shigeru Ishiba. Best known for his opposition to the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he hails from the party’s liberal camp and is distrusted by rightwingers. Even when agreeing on the need for foreign nationals to integrate into society, he managed to denigrate Japanese customs and language as "tedious.” Naturally, conservatives were outraged.

Sanseito may indeed see success on Sunday. But will it be sustained success? The most likely scenario is another flash in the pan movement, as familiarity breeds contempt with the party’s embrace of anti-vaccine and other conspiracy theories, as well as its lack of serious policy chops. Even during Japan’s economic stagnation during the 1990s and early 2000s, voters largely ignored populists. That’s because lawmakers preserved job security, health care, infrastructure and pensions, though at a cost to innovation and creative destruction. Japan lacks the kindling for a populist fire.

"The only way I see Sanseito becoming a more established presence in Japanese politics is if the trend holds that conservative voters who traditionally support the LDP are not casting a protest vote,” says Rintaro Nishimura, a Tokyo-based associate with strategic advisory firm The Asia Group, and instead are "truly fed up with the party’s ‘moderate’ shift in the post-Abe era.” To do that, he says, Sanseito would need the discipline to create a proper economic and foreign policy platform.

Like the complaints of Reform voters that have manifested into Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s immigration crackdown in the U.K., just because Sanseito says something doesn’t make it untrue. As I recently wrote, there are areas of concern, from how easy it is for nonresidents to purchase property to overly accommodative scholarship programs, where Japanese might feel hard done by. Authorities should address these concerns now; Ishiba is reluctantly moving, setting up a "command center” to coordinate responses to issues involving foreign nationals.

Nonetheless, the electorate is unlikely to put their faith in a party whose leader opposes vaccinations and advances crackpot views such as cancer being invented after World War II or wheat being pushed on Japan by the U.S. to destroy the country’s food culture. Sanseito’s ideas make for good headlines and will no doubt find some backing. But in all likelihood it will stay on the fringes, where it belongs.