“I want to see the prime minister!” ”We have come to meet her!” Sanae Takaichi’s campaign closing rally in Japan is a mass phenomenon. There are children and elderly people, young couples, mothers with their children. Rivers of people flow into the esplanade of Futako Tamagawa Park, on the outskirts of Tokyo, this Saturday late afternoon. It has something of a rock concert, with thousands of people. Security is intense. Although no one loses their mind when the star comes out on stage and makes several bows: “Good night, in the middle of this cold, thank you for coming.”
His speech is not passionate, but it does seek to be inspiring. It is full of promises. Ask for the vote for this Sunday. It talks about the need to be a country that can defend itself. Of security, self-sufficiency and Japan’s technological capacity. To raise salaries, to boost companies. He draws applause when talking about. Call for an effort to leave a better future for the new generations. “We have to think that we are not weak,” he proclaims. “Become a rich and strong archipelago again,” underlines its motto with Trumpist echoes.
Some leave ecstatic: “I never come to these things. I was very impressed,” says Tomi Takashi, a smiling 60-year-old school teacher. “Until now I wasn’t interested in politics. It was thanks to her,” says Yumi Oyama, 30, an employee at a technology company.
The ultra-conservative Takaichi took office as prime minister in October. Three months later, in January and with popularity through the roof, he became the one with the greatest political weight in the Diet (the Japanese bicameral Parliament). It seemed like a risky bet. But having become a figure that transcends politics, the polls give a comfortable advantage to her party, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (PLD). Some surveys assure that it could go from the current 198 seats to more than 233 of a total of 465 seats; and would even exceed 300 with its current coalition partner, the Innovation Party.
In part, the secret seems to have been the brake on the bleeding of votes towards populist parties leaning further to the right that brandished an anti-immigration discourse with a pull among young people. He did not have a clear majority in the Diet and forced the resignation of the previous prime minister, his colleague Shigeru Ishiba. Takaichi, representative of the hard wing of the LDP, was the party’s response, and the plan seems to have worked.
“She was seen as someone who could stem the tide and bring back the wayward souls of right-wing followers of [el ex primer ministro Shinzo] Abe,” says Koichi Nakano, professor of Political Science at Sofia University in Tokyo. “That’s why I think he has been projecting this image of toughness.” His “inflammatory” comments are seen as an “asset.” At the same time, he has become an attractive option for “uncommitted” voters, he says.
She also enjoys the approval of the , which explicitly supported her on Thursday, while the careful image of the PLD’s electoral propaganda refers to her admired Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady British, with a blue jacket and pearl necklace.
His strategy has affected a dissatisfied citizenry. Because there is no Japanese you ask who minimizes the challenges. Many see themselves as a country in decline, with the economy stagnant and the population in free fall. One of the interviewees remembered a famous science fiction novel from the seventies, Japan sinksfor , only in the book it was a geological question.
“There are so many problems that I can’t say which one is the main one,” says Mr. Teruo Yamada, a wiry rice cake seller. He is 76 years old and has been at this wooden stall for 62 years, where he still charges some customers by counting with a soroban, the Japanese abacus. It feels like he’ll never retire. It is the living memory of Kawaguchi, a dormitory town on the outskirts of Tokyo where immigration tensions have come to life. “First the Chinese arrived in the nineties, then the Kurds…” says Yamada.
The figures, if compared with European countries, are ridiculous. But they show a change in trend in Japan. In 2025, records will be broken with 3.9 million foreign residents, 3.21% of the population. In Kawaguchi, a district with a strong foreign presence, they make up 8% of the 607,000 residents (in Madrid they reach 20%). Most of them are Asian: Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipinos. The Kurds number around 1,500 and yet they have become a nationwide problem, inflamed by social media.
Tatsuhiro Nukui, a volunteer with the Heval association, which helps the integration of this group, shows the hate letters that they began to receive in 2023, when a brawl between Kurds spread on the internet. The letters use very thick words by Japanese standards: “Kurdish garbage,” “we are going to kill you.” And from the networks it has jumped to the real world. The association provides support to a family that has reported the attack by a Japanese man on their son, when he was playing in a park. In a video, recorded by the father, the alleged aggressor is seen saying: “If there were no law I would kill you.”
Nukui believes that foreigners are “scapegoats” for Japan’s real problem: “Population decline.” The country ages, the elderly die and children are not born because life is too expensive for young people to consider a family. “People who come from outside are part of the solution,” he says. “We have to see how we live with them.”
Despite the polarization, the electoral campaign is not noisy. And it is usually only noticeable in the form of small interferences in an orderly and laborious routine. Propaganda is limited to the billboards set up for this purpose, and the candidates tour the districts giving small rallies at street level.
It happens in the following way: a small van, let’s say, from the Communist Party, the minority force on the far left, arrives and stops in front of a neighborhood supermarket. They display flags and loudspeakers. The district candidate gets out of the vehicle, and delivers her speech to a few paying attention. Flanked by a poster calling for raising taxes on the rich, she criticizes Takaichi’s growing militarism: “This government is thinking about using the country’s money for weapons.” Alert: “Politics is becoming increasingly skewed to the right.” He finishes his short speech, shakes hands with the attendees, bows, picks up everything and leaves in the van.
Immediately afterwards, another van arrives from the opposite party on the political spectrum, Sanseito. With his xenophobic slogan “the Japanese first” he saw a . “We have to preserve the country’s identity,” defends its candidate in front of the supermarket. “To say that the citizens of the country come first is something obvious.” Once the rally is over, he shakes hands, bows and the van continues on its way.
Despite the very distant speeches, everything seems quite polite. Although it is worth not forgetting that sometimes Japan shows a brutal face: there is the , in 2022, when he gave one of these speeches on the street.
With the rise in the cost of living biting into the pocket, the economy and tax cuts are another of the central axes of a strange campaign, which has even caught political commentators on the wrong foot: “The most important issue in these elections is understanding these elections,” says Satoru Ishido, a 42-year-old writer and journalist, regular in televised debates. At just 16 days, it was the shortest campaign since the post-war period, and he believes it has not been clear to voters what policies are being debated. “As a result, the election has essentially become a question of whether or not to support Takaichi.” Almost like a referendum.
Meanwhile, the main opposition party, the progressive Democratic Constitutional Party, has been diluted. To confront Takaichi, he has formed a centrist alliance with the Komeito Buddhists, a former coalition ally of the LDP who drew a red line before allying with Takaichi: they are pacifists. With the polls against, on Friday, one of the heavyweights of the new alliance, the former Minister of Economy Banri Kaieda, tried to dazzle a few dozen followers at another street rally with a speech focused on low salaries, the price of housing, and the risks to peace.
“World peace is the most important issue in these elections,” added one of the attendees, 62 years old, a Komeito voter. He preferred not to give his name, but said that there are too many conflicts in the world and that Takaichi could fan the flames.
The prime minister is known for her defense of a Japan with greater military packaging, without fear of removing the pacifist corset enshrined in the Constitution. In his third week in office, he created a scandal by suggesting that an attempt by China to blockade or seize Taiwan could pose “an existential threat” that would justify the deployment of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (the Japanese army). His Government has begun to review the antinuclear doctrine and has approved a new increase in the military budget.
“It has broken the glass ceiling and all that, but it is more important in which direction the Government is going to take,” said the pacifist Komeito voter. “It’s dangerous.”
