Anti-establishment vibes
What Saitō Motohiko’s social media-fueled comeback says about Japan’s political moment
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I am still in Tokyo and posting may continue to be light depending how much time my schedule — and jet lag — permits me to write. While in Tokyo, I will be giving a talk via webinar at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry, METI’s think tank.
Otherwise, I spoke with Jacob Shapiro of the Jacob Shapiro Podcast about Japan’s politics. You can listen to the episode below.
Meanwhile, the Nikkei Shimbun published an interview on the broader question of political reform in Japan. It is available in Japanese here.
On 19 September, Saitō Motohiko, governor of Hyōgo prefecture in central Japan, was dealt a stunning blow when the prefectural assembly unanimously approved a no-confidence motion in Saitō’s leadership following a legislative investigation into allegations of “power harassment” of prefectural public servants by a whistleblower who was not properly protected by the prefectural government and was found dead by apparent suicide in July, after he had been punished by the government. Even the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Ishin no Kai, which backed his candidacy in 2021, abandoned him.
On 26 September, the governor said he would resign, but, rather than bowing out gracefully, said that he would seek reelection in the gubernatorial by-election to fill the seat. And on Sunday, 17 November, he retook the governorship with 45.2 percent of the vote, thanks in large part to a massive 14.55 percentage point increase in turnout and Saitō’s use of social media. Saitō’s victory has, not surprisingly, been described as “Trumpian” and a defeat for the mass media.
The echoes of outsider Ishimaru Shinji’s surprise second-place finish in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election in July are unmistakable. In a campaign that was largely devoid of policy content, being largely a referendum on whether Saitō “was a bully or was he bullied,” Saitō ran a deliberate campaign to drum up interest on social media and bring out young voters to sweep his way back into power. The Nikkei Shimbun reports that Saitō had a staff of 400 posting on social media on his behalf. His Twitter following surged from roughly 70,000 in late September to more than 200,000, and he was able to replicate Ishimaru’s feat of achieving a virtuous cycle, whereby sharing videos of his campaign speeches on TikTok and other video sites brought out larger crowds, which produced more compelling videos to share, bringing more voters out and so on. Of course, Saitō’s support on social media also came with the dissemination of social misinformation, including accusations that rival candidate Inamura Kazumi, the former mayor of Amagasaki in Hyōgo, supported voting rights for foreign residents, and hostile spamming of Inamura’s website.1 According to exit polls, Saitō appeared to take roughly 70 percent of the vote among voters under thirty, likely making the difference in Saitō’s six-point victory as he and Inamura were evenly matched in other categories.
It is often said that Japan’s democracy is free from the populism seen in its peers in the developed world. This is not strictly true, as I have argued elsewhere. Since the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, Japan has seen populism – or populist-style politics – at the national, and, more frequently, at the local level. Ishin no Kai, after all, the party that backed Saitō originally, was born as an urban populist party as party founder Hashimoto Tōru took aim at entrenched local elites. What is notable about Japan’s populism is that it has been largely an urban phenomenon: Hashimoto and Ishin no Kai; Koizumi Junichirō’s battle against the LDP’s old guard, symbolized by rural postmasters; Ishihara Shintarō’s pugnacious Tokyo populism; and now Saitō in Hyōgo, which, while less densely populated than others, still includes a major city (Kobe) and is part of the greater Osaka region.2 These parties – plus to a certain extent the Democratic Party of Japan leading up to its 2009 victory – have sought to mobilize the frustrations of urban, floating voters, voters not well integrated into the voting blocs of established parties, and turn them against entrenched political and administrative elites, usually promising “structural reform” of one form or another. These movements have at best a mixed record of success, but their recurrence is an indication of the structural forces at play, the persistent feeling that power is concentrated in the hands of old, entrenched elites standing in the way of changes that would improve the quality of life for a younger urban underclass.3
That said, the ability of the new breed of Japanese populists to use social media to reach voters who might otherwise stay out of politics is different and has left the established parties – not only the LDP but also the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) – alarmed by what first Ishimaru and now Saitō has achieved.4 The fact is that many Japanese voters are disaffected with their choices, younger voters in particular, and that social media provides candidates with tools to engage with disaffected voters – and generate excitement among disaffected voters – in a way that more traditional modes of Japanese election campaigning cannot match. “The method of calling up voters and asking for their support is no longer working. The LDP’s internet strategy is also outdated and emblematic of how the party is behind the times,” an anonymous LDP staffer told Mainichi. The Democratic Party for the People’s (DPFP) strong performance in the 27 October general election, which hinged on promises aimed at young voters and the effective use of social media, suggests that this approach can also work in national elections.
What does all this mean for Japanese politics? First, the ability of certain politicians to mobilize otherwise disaffected voters through social media is a potent demonstration of the existence of a disgruntled minority that feels excluded from political power. These feelings may be amorphous and latent, and they may take unique political talent to tap into, but they are unmistakably looming beneath the surface of Japanese political life.
Second, it is still largely a non-ideological phenomenon, a response to unfairness in the distribution of political power rather than a more sweeping rejection of how Japan is governed. It is particularly telling that despite two new right-wing populist parties in the general election – novelist Hyakuta Naoki’s Conservative Party of Japan (CPJ) and the slightly older Sanseitō – they each took only three seats (including one by the CPJ’s Kawamura Takashi, the former Nagoya mayor who is a veteran urban populist) and received a total of just over three million votes out of nearly 56 million cast in proportional representation voting. The DPFP, despite its use of the populist toolkit, is led by a former finance ministry bureaucrat and is more “good government” technocratic than populist in substance.
Third, the barriers to entry in national politics are significantly higher in national elections. Whereas the direct election of governors and mayors enables populist politics focused on a strong personality to work, it is a more difficult feat to pull off at the national level. It is not impossible, as Koizumi showed, but then Koizumi was also the head of Japan’s long-term hegemonic ruling party and could deploy its electoral machinery behind him. Smaller parties have to overcome the challenges of recruiting candidates, raising money, and the high degree of proportionality incentivizing other parties to run candidates and compete for the same disaffected voters, not to mention the reality that while urban Japan is better represented, there are still large swathes of the country where an urban-centered populist appeals will not work.5 The upshot is that while the Japanese political system is ripe for disruption – and some political actors are learning to use social media as a tool for upending the status quo – it will take more than the adroit use of social media for Japan to follow some of its G7 peers in embracing a hard-edged right-wing populism.
Saitō’s campaign may have claimed another victim, as Takeuchi Hideaki, a Hyōgo assembly member who was on the committee that investigated Saitō, announced his resignation after the election for “personal reasons,” though it is suspected that he is quitting after being the target of abuse and harassment via social media during the campaign.
Saitō’s support was strongest in urban Hyōgo and he received more than 250,000 more votes than in his 2021 victory.
Ishimaru is an odd fit in this mix because, to the extent that he had a policy platform in July, he said he wanted to raise awareness of rural Japan’s problems.
Although populists using communication tools in innovative ways is hardly new: recall the discourse around Koizumi’s use of “wide shows” to reach out to voters.
Thus, the DPJ took power on a platform that mixed some of the post-bubble urban populism with Tanaka Kakuei-inspired appeals to rural voters thanks to the influence of Ozawa Ichirō.