Sanseito, or the "Party of Do It Yourself," was a big winner in the recent Upper House election, taking 14 new seats. The self-described volunteer citizens movement was formed in 2020 to advocate for more traditional conservative values and create a new alternative citizen-based party.
When party leader Sohei Kamiya won a seat in the Upper House election three years ago, Sanseito became a legally recognized political party. It then won three seats in the Lower House last October. Today, it has more than 140 members in local assemblies around Japan, including in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly.
Sanseito has recently received considerable attention from left-leaning and progressive political parties and their media supporters. They paid little attention to it until one of the major polls a few weeks ago showed the party as the second most popular in Japan after the Liberal Democratic Party, shocking quite a few folks into seeing Sanseito for the first time as an electoral threat.
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