Japan’s MAGA Moment | The American Spectator

The rise of Japan’s Sanseitō party shouldn’t shock anyone paying attention. 

For years, the political class shrugged off rising unease about immigration, globalist overreach, and the slow bleed of national identity. Sanseitō didn’t invent the anger. It harnessed it, gave it a voice. It said aloud what millions have muttered for a decade: Something vital is vanishing, and those in charge either don’t notice or simply don’t care.

Sohei Kamiya’s transformation from supermarket manager to political insurgent tells the real story. The former retail worker built his Sanseitō party from Internet forums in 2020 on COVID skepticism before pivoting to what really moves voters: resentment over the foreigners overrunning Japan.

His Japanese First campaign sits somewhere between Nigel Farage’s polished populism and Trump’s raw grievance politics. Less theatrical than Trump, more openly nativist than traditional Japanese conservatives. Kamiya found electoral gold in a simple pitch: Japan for the Japanese, tourists go home.

The numbers explain everything. Japan’s foreign resident population jumped from 2.23 million to 3.77 million over the past decade. Tourist numbers keep breaking records. The result? Towns buckle under badly behaved visitors. Sacred hot springs run dry from overuse. Sanseitō bagged 14 seats in Japan’s upper house — a dramatic increase from their single previous seat. Some might see this as accidental. In reality, it was inevitable.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s reaction reveals everything wrong with Japan’s ruling class. Rather than address legitimate concerns, he launched a task force — the Office for the Promotion of a Society of Harmonious Coexistence with Foreign Nationals — citing crimes or nuisance behaviors committed by some foreign nationals. The bureaucratic word salad says it all: too little, too late, too tone-deaf. Ishiba now faces resignation calls after his Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in both houses for the first time in 15 years. The writing blazed on the wall in neon. When voters hand you that kind of defeat, it’s not about better messaging. It’s about finally listening.

The LDP’s problem runs deeper than bad timing. For decades, they’ve played globalist enablers while wearing conservative masks. Japan actively courted foreign workers and tourists to juice its stagnant economy. The strategy worked — until voters decided there were too many foreigners.

You cannot engineer demographic change and expect electoral stability. The LDP discovered this the hard way: Invite the world in, lose your political base. Kamiya simply gave voters permission to say what the establishment spent years pretending not to hear.

Frustrated natives are tired of being told to accept rapid demographic changes, economic stagnation, and performative liberalism, especially from a ruling class that seems more committed to pleasing foreign investors than defending national identity.

A record 21.5 million foreign tourists visited Japan in the first half of this year. Locals have reached their limit. Selfie sticks crack the quiet. Camera flashes bleach the sacred. Souvenir stalls choke the streets where locals once lived normal lives. The sacred mountain watches its towns turn into postcards, real places becoming props for Instagram feeds. The endless parade mistakes living communities for entertainment. Residents become unwilling extras in other people’s vacation photos. What made these places worth seeing dies under the weight of everyone trying to see it. The tipping point arrived fast and ugly. Authorities cordoned off one of the mountain’s most iconic viewing spots — an emergency brake on a spectacle that stopped feeling charming and started feeling like occupation. When you have to fence off your own landmarks from tourists, the experiment has failed. But tourists aren’t the only foreigners getting a hard reception. The resentment runs deeper, touching jobs, wages, and national identity itself. Across generational lines, Japanese citizens express similar frustrations. Older workers believe foreign labor undercuts wages and job opportunities for natives. Many argue that fundamental cultural incompatibilities make successful integration impossible. Younger employees resent government resources flowing to foreign residents while Japanese families struggle with stagnant wages and rising costs. These sentiments aren’t extremist. They’re predictable responses to demographic transformation imposed without consent.

Political elites warn that restricting immigration could damage Japan’s ability to attract needed foreign workers. But this assumes Japan needs mass immigration to survive — the same globalist fallacy that devastated Western Europe. Look at Britain’s grooming gangs, France’s no-go zones, Germany’s knife attacks. Sweden went from social democratic paradise to Europe’s rape capital. The same technocratic thinking that delivered those disasters created MAGA’s opening in America.

Nationalism is trending from Tokyo to Tennessee. Voters everywhere are reaching the same conclusion: Globalization was sold as prosperity but delivered displacement. Jobs didn’t just vanish; entire ways of life went with them. Traditions gave way to uniformity. Cultural identity thinned out into export-friendly versions of itself — sanitized, marketable, forgettable.

Globalization was meant to spread opportunity. Instead, it spread sameness. A McWorld of slogans, megaprojects, and outsourced meaning. Streets once alive with memory now serve as backdrops for tourists chasing curated experiences. Ritual became performance. Belonging became branding. People aren’t chasing nostalgia. They’re demanding something real. Something rooted. Something that can’t be bought, sold, or translated.

Sanseitō‘s Japanese First message struck a nerve not because it was radical, but because it was obvious. After the electoral victory, Kamiya declared that the public came to understand that the media was wrong and Sanseitō was right.

The media will call it far-right. But what’s actually “far” about wanting to preserve your culture, defend your borders, or prioritize your citizens? These used to be basic governmental responsibilities. When governments forget who they serve, movements like Sanseitō emerge to remind them. Not with polite reminders, but with votes.

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