Is Sanseito Here to Stay?

Sohei Kamiya campaigning with Tsutomu Otsu for the 2025 summer election cycle. Photo by Noukei314.

M

y time as an exchange student in Japan has often felt like a mad sprint for assimilation—absorbing as much of the norms and language as I can to avoid standing out as a foreigner. But, as I sat less than 10 feet away from Sanseito Member of the Diet Mizuho Umemura in a workshop titled “What is Japan First?,” I felt a strong sense that this goal had eluded me. 

Umemura, to her credit, proved a formidable orator: she embodied the image of a concerned mother who became a politician to protect her children’s future. We made awkward eye contact a few times while she unraveled her well-spun narrative: Japanese citizens are fighting bitterly for life in the face of a tyrannical globalist government, which injects misbehaving and economically-burdensome foreigners into society as cheap labor for multinational corporations. Though this rhetoric is inflammatory, it points to real, deep concerns about Japan’s cost of living crisis and the shifting nature of national identity amidst a growing immigrant population. Sanseito, an ultraconservative populist movement that expanded from 1 to 14 seats in this summer’s elections, has capitalized on the steadily growing discontent towards the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for its perceived inability to address these issues. This leaves the LDP, which has held majority power in the Diet almost continuously since 1955, at a critical juncture. While Sanseito’s legislative reach remains minimal now, decisive action is needed to prevent its evolution from a party of short-term novelty to one with serious, long-term influence. The stakes of this potential power shift are high not only for Japan’s foreign-born residents, whose civil rights are on the chopping block in Sanseito’s agenda, but also for Japan’s democracy amidst a global wave of right-wing authoritarianism. 

A key part of Sanseito’s messaging strategy is that it attracts politically disengaged constituents who are experiencing financial strain due to Japan’s rising cost of living. In November, I interviewed Nobuyuki Hamano, a senior research fellow at Sompo International who worked on the Abe administration’s growth strategy in 2015 on this issue. According to Hamano, Sanseito didn’t gain traction within the LDP’s voting coalition so much as it “gathered up people with no affiliation who were starting to care a little more” about politics. Indeed, an Upper House poll on the 2025 election reported voter turnout rose 6% from 2022, with the number of early voters growing by 30%. Unaffiliated voters are a ripe demographic, with the Pew Research Center reporting in 2024 that 56% of adults “didn’t feel close” to any political party. With wage growth failing to match a nationally unprecedented 2% rise in the consumer price index and the political blowbacks from embezzlement scandals and accusations of foreign influence on LDP leadership, confidence in the LDP has steadily dwindled. Hamano also suggested that, given its heavy reliance on multiparty coalitions in the National Diet, the LDP is unable to effectively address these concerns without weighing an array of conflicting interests and demographic demands. 

Sanseito is eagerly filling in the gaps: it promises its voters tax cuts and 100,000 yen credits for children under the age of 15, right alongside policies cutting access to healthcare and restricting capital ownership for foreign residents under the narrative of reallocating resources to Japanese citizens. These policies play on the economic fears of Japanese citizens by offering short-term and hot-button solutions, which thrive on the atmosphere of uncertainty and lack of political leadership within the LDP. 

In line with its hostile stance toward the rights of foreign residents, Sanseito also works to mobilize its voters by stirring up anti-foreigner sentiment. This strategy requires little analysis; it is the natural process of scapegoating that occurs when rising economic insecurity converges with the compounded frictions of introducing cultural diversity into an ethnically homogenous population. Umemura’s workshop reflected these frictions. Drawing upon issues like tourist overcrowding and foreign property investors potentially drawing business away from local communities, Sanseito creates the illusion of an “excessive acceptance of foreigners” to the detriment of Japanese society. Its members blame foreigners for the nation’s economic woes, citing without proof that “too much money is being spent on social security and education support for foreigners” despite their making up little more than 3% of the Japanese population. 

The public normalization of these claims is difficult to accurately measure due to a vast array of conflicting surveys. While a recent NHK poll found that 64% of respondents agreed that foreigners were “overly favored” by the Japanese government, another inquiry conducted by the Japan Center for International Exchange noted that 43% of respondents expressed positive feelings about increased immigration, while 35% were negative and 22% were ambivalent. Interestingly, research conducted by the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Osaka found that anonymity had a positive effect on respondents’ attitudes towards foreigners; that is, they were less likely to express exclusionary opinions if they knew others wouldn’t see their responses. This indicates that there may be perceived social pressure to take a harder stance on foreigners in Japan, and that average attitudes are more complex and multifaceted than we currently understand. It’s also likely that online echo chambers are not only exaggerating the presence of foreigners and the inconveniences associated with overtourism, but also overly magnifying the existence of anti-foreigner sentiment, given the tendency of social media algorithms to disproportionately promote inflammatory content. 

Such ambiguity presents a key opportunity for the LDP to counter Sanseito’s anti-immigrant rhetoric by facilitating concrete policies to assimilate foreigners into Japanese society. Japan is unique in that it currently lacks any official immigration policy, instead maintaining limited regulations for various visas, which has caused ire in the past because citizens often feel that a wave of immigrants are entering without any explanation from the National Diet. Thus, the LDP can claw back ground from Sanseito by implementing comprehensive laws defining normalized pathways to legal residency and show they are taking active steps to ensure foreigners adapt. Unfortunately, it seems that the Takaichi administration is taking a similar approach to mainstream American Democrats in addressing the opposition’s xenophobic sentiment. They are promising to take a more punitive stance on migrants, unwittingly bolstering Sanseito’s narrative that there genuinely is an immigrant crisis. If this pattern continues, we may see a more coherent rise in anti-foreigner sentiment over the next few years. 

In terms of addressing national economic insecurities, the LDP faces a much more difficult task than its right-wing opponents. Sanseito wins elections by criticizing the current administration. But, assuming it continues to grow, the party won’t have to prove the efficacy of its policies until it gains enough power in the Diet to tangibly effect policy decisions. Conversely, the LDP must balance developing strategies for long-term sustainable growth with marketing itself as an effective legislator now. With an issue as complex as inflation, this is hard to do, as there are a multitude of factors driving rising prices. On one hand, the Bank of Japan is limited in its capacity to address inflation via raising interest rates, since there are concerns over weakening domestic consumption trends already burdened by high public debt and an aging population. Additionally, current inflation in Japan is predominantly driven by a 49% climb in the price of rice caused by supply shocks due to bad weather. There are limited immediate solutions to this issue beyond fiscal stimulus campaigns—which often struggle to receive legislative approval given Japan’s high public national debt. 

Solving these issues requires long-term investments in domestic production and human capital to drive sustainable economic growth—the fruits of which do not appear overnight. So, the LDP will have to accompany its rebuilding strategies with immediate relief policies for Japanese citizens. Luckily, the stimulus package introduced by Takaichi’s cabinet in November does just that. The bill includes both long-term investments in critical industries and education and immediate tax cuts for the burdened populace. The political success of this policy now lies in the LDP’s ability to effectively market to citizens its positive impacts.

Ultimately, the Sanseito movement is gaining traction by filling in gaps left by the LDP in addressing voter insecurities—using foreign-born residents as a scapegoat. Though the party makes up a minority in the National Diet, it is persuasive, and its rapid expansion through local elections indicates it is building strong foundations. However, despite Sanseito’s efforts, public attitudes toward the assimilation of foreigners into Japanese society are more accurately characterized by ambivalence rather than a contentious divide between acceptance and intolerance. The LDP must capitalize on this ambiguity by directly addressing voter concerns and taking a more cohesive stance on immigration reform; if not, foreign-born residents might not have a future in Japan. 

Note: This article would not have been possible without the incredible translation work of Hanako Sakanoue, a third-year undergraduate majoring in Social Sciences at Sophia University.

Tazia Mohammad (CC ‘27) is an Economics-Political Science major at Columbia College.