A nationalist party secures surprisingly large voice shares in the Senate elections in Japan. Sanseito shows the proximity to the AfD in Germany.
Her success was a surprise for many experts. In the Senate elections in Japan last weekend, the right -wing populist Sanseito (in German: “Participation Party”) managed to unite around 12 percent of the votes, although the party was only founded five years ago.
The right -wing populists pursue a migration -critical course. You have political proximity to the right-wing extremist AfD in Germany and describe US President Donald Trump as a political role model. But why is there such a party in Japan? T-online gives an overview.
In 2020, Sanseito emerged from the YouTube channel of a certain Sohei Kamiya. On his channel, Kamiya mainly represented xenophobic political views and spread conspiracy theories. So he explained that the Jews were behind the fall of the Japanese Empire. During the 2020 Corona pandemic, he decided to bring his different political content together in one party. In the Senate election, which took place two years later, Sanseito then won 3.3 percent of the vote and moved into the Japanese Senate (Shūgiin) with a MP himself. Similar to the USA or Great Britain, Japan has a two-chamber system, with a law of both chambers adopted. The Shūgiin is the somewhat more important of the two chambers because he can overlook the decisions of the other chamber (Sangiin).
According to the Japanese journalist Daiki Sakakibara, the party was almost quadruing the party within three years of being quadrupled folds in the economic situation of Japan and the associated anger at the government. For years, the Japanese economy has only grown in the comma area and suffers from an enormously weak currency. But the biggest economic problem in Japan is the travel prize. It has exploded this year and is now more than twice as expensive as it was a year ago. “It’s a big deal in Japan,” said Sakakibara.
Sanseito finds one answer to the country’s economic weakness: the party wants to put a stop to the migration to Japan. Based on Donald Trump, the Japanese right -wing populists call this policy “Japan First”. According to Sakakibara, this anti -migration -anti -migration rhetoric captures a group of people, namely the “lost generation”. This describes people in Japan who were born between 1970 and 1980 and ended school or training during or directly after the big economic crisis and, due to the poor economic situation, could never really gain a foothold on the labor market.
But even among young voters, the party was able to score, the internet -savvin is than older generations. According to a re -election survey by the Japanese newspaper “The Asahi Shimbun”, 37 percent of Sanseito voters stated that they were influenced by social media in the election decision, more than that of any other party. “On the one hand, Sanseito benefits from the weakness of the other parties on social media, on the other hand, the party has a very good presence on the Internet. Very catchy slogans and easy -to -understand messages such as ‘Japan First’,” said Sakakibara.
However, according to the journalist, the party also benefits from the fact that the weak Yen has come into the country in recent years. This led to the fact that the rejection against foreigners had increased again, especially in the tourist areas. In general, migration to Japan has increased in recent years. According to official statistics, a total of almost 3.7 million foreigners live in Japan, which makes around three percent of the total population for a population of 123 million people. For comparison: in Germany the proportion of foreigners is around 15 percent and is almost five times as high as in Japan.
