FEATURE: "Awakened conservatives" in Japan targeting foreigners

Kyodo News

3 days ago

By Takara Sato, KYODO NEWS - 2 minutes ago - 11:27 | All, Japan, Feature
As the number of inbound tourists to Japan skyrockets while the population shrinks, the country is seeing a revival of right-wing populist parties with extremist positions on immigration controls as a key plank in their conservative ideology.
On social media, ultranationalist Japanese have long targeted foreigners with hate speech. In Japanese cities, ultranationalist groups blast hate speech through loudspeakers. Now, new political parties are bringing similar messaging to mainstream politics and drawing support from the long-dominant conservative Liberal Democratic Party.
Like Sanseito, a right-wing anti-immigration party founded in 2020, the ultranationalist Conservative Party of Japan led by novelist Naoki Hyakuta has been edging toward a harder line.
In last year's lower house election, the CPJ won three seats despite being in existence for only about a year.
In 2014, Hyakuta, then a governor for public broadcaster NHK, asserted the Nanjing massacre never happened. He faced a torrent of criticism last year after suggesting that to improve Japan's birth rate, women over 30 should be subjected to hysterectomies and that single women over 25 be prohibited from getting married.
That hasn't stopped some women from backing his party.
A 46-year-old housewife from Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, who supports the CPJ, started watching videos featuring Hyakuta and CPJ Secretary General Kaori Arimoto on YouTube.
Their words hit home. She especially identified with the party's stance toward foreign workers living in Japan. She says she is afraid when she sees foreigners hanging out in the local park, especially at night.
"It's not like they have done anything to hurt me, but I'm too scared to walk at night. I used to do some walking, but I don't like to do it alone," the woman said with a downcast look.
Asked not to be named, she said the "quantity and quality" of foreigners in Japan should be guaranteed.
"If it is a foreigner who really cares about Japan, I welcome them," she said before adding, "They call it coexistence, but I think it will change the culture and atmosphere of the country."
She had voted for the LDP but had never really thought about what conservatism meant. She now considers herself an "awakened conservative."
The CPJ has been grabbing votes from the LDP, says Yoichi Shimada, a CPJ Diet member who was first elected to the House of Representatives last year.
Shimada points to the ouster of lawmakers in former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's LDP faction, the largest in the party until its dissolution. It included politicians implicated in a slush fund scandal who were not endorsed by the party in the Oct. 27 lower house poll.
That led to a reduction in Abe's strong nationalistic influence, and conservative voters have been alienated from the LDP, currently led by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba who is widely considered a moderate, he suggested.
"Mr. Abe said that the LDP would be finished if it lost 30 percent of its principled conservatives, Shimada said. "It's just as he warned."
Another former LDP supporter who has turned to the CPJ is a 63-year-old self-employed woman from Kobe. She appreciated the close ties Abe built with U.S. President Donald Trump and Abe's tough diplomatic stance toward China and South Korea. She was stunned when Abe was assassinated in 2022.
"I was really worried about where Japan was heading after that," she recalled.
The woman, who also remained anonymous, said she feels uplifted when she hears Japan's national anthem, "Kimigayo."
"It's in my blood. Always has been. If I was told to go on a suicide mission, I would go," she said.
She believes Japan is rapidly collapsing under an influx of foreign workers and foreign acquisition of Japanese land. This led her to support the CPJ.
Some observers suggest emerging right-wing populist parties have achieved a breakthrough in national politics. But Masaki Hata, an associate professor of political psychology at Osaka University of Economics, is uncomfortable with that term.
"Sanseito has not improved its voter share since the 2022 upper house election," Hata said. "When people say 'breakthrough,' I would like to say, 'let's look at the structure of the elections more closely.'"
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications data show Sanseito garnered 3.33 percent of the votes in the proportional representation constituency in the 2022 upper house election. It netted 3.43 percent in the national proportional vote in last year's lower house election, according to preliminary results.
Hata dismisses support for the CPJ as mainly backing for Takashi Kawamura, one of the party's leaders and former Nagoya mayor, but admits the LDP slush fund scandal helped Sanseito and the CPJ gain clout. According to exit polls by Kyodo News, about 2 percent of LDP supporters flowed to each of the two parties.
While these new right-wing parties share anti-foreigner messaging with counterparts in Europe, especially France's National Rally led by Marine Le Pen, Hata believes their growth will be limited in Japan, which has a single-seat constituency system in which one candidate is elected from each electoral district.
He emphasized, however, that not only Sanseito and the CPJ but conservative parties such as the Democratic Party for the People and the Japan Innovation Party have portrayed foreigners as enemies to gain support.
"This is not something that is readily reported in the media. We have to sound the alarm on this," he said.
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