PoliticianPolitical leaning: ConservativeProfile last reviewed: 2026-07-29
Sohei Kamiya
Leader, Sanseito
Japan for the Japanese, streamed live: cap the foreigners, scrap the postwar constitution, and treat every institution that says otherwise — media, ministries, even a nationalist prime minister — as insufficiently loyal.
Sohei Kamiya (神谷宗幣) built Sanseito out of a YouTube channel during the 2020 pandemic and spent five years as its single senator before "Japanese First" broke through: 14 upper house seats in July 2025, then a jump from 2 to 15 lower house seats in the February 2026 general election. English-language media file him as Japan's "mini Trump," and the comparison holds in method as much as content — an online-native party, a running war with the mainstream press, and a demographic grievance turned into a governing demand, the same playbook that carried Trump, Milei and Bukele. He is now the awkward flank of Sanae Takaichi's landslide government, calling a hard-right prime minister's foreign-national policies "extremely insufficient" and demanding a legislated cap on immigration.
Basis for the leaning assessment
Editorial estimate of +80, placing him at the Japanese far right. Red-coded signals weighed: restrictive immigration and foreign-worker policy as the party's defining plank; regulating foreign purchases of land and water; opposition to same-sex marriage, selective separate surnames and female imperial succession; a natalist critique of gender-equality policy; wanting the postwar constitution replaced outright rather than amended; independent defense capability, higher defense spending, preemptive strike capability and nuclear deterrence; historical revisionism on the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War. Genuinely cross-cutting elements that argue against pushing him to +90: Sanseito is a nationalist economic populist party, not a small-government one — it wants the consumption tax abolished, the national burden rate cut from 46% to 35%, deficit-financed growth, corporate profits shifted from capital to labor, and monthly child payments, all of which read fiscally expansive rather than conservative. He also opposed LDP constitutional-emergency language out of distrust of the WHO, and favors weaker sanctions on Russia — positions that break with mainstream Japanese conservatism. Community votes and the AI assessment should override this number.
Current Stances
Stances are editorial interpretations, always shown with the statements and actions they rest on.
Immigration & Bordersobserved 2025-07-20 – 2026-06-17
Put a hard cap on the number of foreigners allowed into Japan.
Kamiya's defining plank: he wants a legislated ceiling on foreign nationals, a dedicated government agency to police the whole area, stricter naturalization, and limits on foreign purchases of land and water. He insists this is economics rather than xenophobia — cheap foreign labor suppresses Japanese wages — while warning that foreign workers who cannot find good jobs will raise crime.
Supporting statements & actions (3)
2025-07-20Speech
More and more foreigners are coming (to Japan).
Campaign messaging during the July 2025 upper house election, paired with his line that Japanese people's lives are getting harder and harder; he also warned that relying on cheap foreign labor would suppress Japanese wages and that foreign workers unable to find good jobs would raise crime. Date is the article's, which does not give the exact day of the remark.
2026-02-09Action
Sanseito jumped from 2 to 15 seats in the February 8, 2026 lower house election, while the LDP under Sanae Takaichi took 316 of 465 seats in a record postwar landslide.
Result of the snap election called after Takaichi dissolved the Diet on January 23, 2026; Sanseito finished fifth by seat count and remained outside the governing coalition.
Goals
Short-term
Legislate a cap on foreign nationals
ActivePass a statutory ceiling on how many foreign nationals may come and live in Japan, and create a single agency with comprehensive authority over foreign-national policy — pressuring the Takaichi government from the right rather than joining it.
Declared: 2026-06-17Source ↗
Long-term
Replace the postwar constitution
ActiveDiscard the 1947 constitution rather than amend it, and rewrite it to give Japan independent defense capability, preemptive strike capability and nuclear deterrence.
Declared: 2025-12-10Source ↗
Turn Sanseito into a party of government
UnclearKamiya set a target of 30 lower house seats and reached 15, calling that a partial success and continuing to build toward the leverage needed to set national policy. He has not declared a bid to lead a government, so the ambition remains undeclared.
Declared: 2026-04-09Source ↗
Consistency Tracker
Does each new statement or decision square with the record? Verdicts are not accusations: both sides of the record are presented so readers can judge for themselves.
Evolved
Earlier statement / action
2022-07-01Publication
[Sanseito would not] sell [Japan] out to Jewish capital.
From a Sanseito campaign pamphlet during the July 2022 upper house election, which the paper reports also claimed Jewish financiers were profiting from inciting fears about COVID-19. Kamiya has denied being antisemitic, later telling a press conference he had Jewish friends and had belonged to the Japan-Israel Friendship Society. The cited reports date the pamphlet to the 2022 campaign without giving an exact publication day, so the date shown is approximate.
The line gave Kamiya his first burst of international coverage and is still the standard reference point in foreign reporting on Sanseito four years later.
Later statement / action
2026-06-17Action
We need stronger and clearer policies.
Said to reporters after Sanseito submitted an upper house bill to create a single agency handling all policy on foreign nationals; he called the Takaichi government's policies on foreign nationals extremely insufficient and argued Japan should cap the number of foreign nationals allowed to come and live in the country.
Most-Cited Sources from Voterscommunity reading list
Articles readers attached to their poll votes as evidence. Only pages cited independently by two or more voters are listed.
- 1ktvz.com/news/national-world/cnn-world/2025/07/20/how-did-a-right-wing-populist-party-that-began-on-youtube-win-big-in-japans-recent-election ↗
Cited by 7 voters
Liberal 3Conservative 4 - 2www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA03BIG0T00C25A7000000 ↗
Cited by 5 voters
Liberal 1Conservative 4 - 3www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-862234 ↗
Cited by 3 voters
Liberal 1Conservative 2
Most-Discussed Moments
The statements and actions that set social media on fire — top 2, in chronological order. Every entry links to its source.
- 2022-07-01Publication
[Sanseito would not] sell [Japan] out to Jewish capital.
From a Sanseito campaign pamphlet during the July 2022 upper house election, which the paper reports also claimed Jewish financiers were profiting from inciting fears about COVID-19. Kamiya has denied being antisemitic, later telling a press conference he had Jewish friends and had belonged to the Japan-Israel Friendship Society. The cited reports date the pamphlet to the 2022 campaign without giving an exact publication day, so the date shown is approximate.
The line gave Kamiya his first burst of international coverage and is still the standard reference point in foreign reporting on Sanseito four years later.
- 2025-07-03Speech
Older women cannot have children.
Said in his opening street speech of the 2025 upper house campaign in Tokyo, arguing that to maintain the population Japan must build a society where young women can bear children securely, and that the country had pushed young women too hard to work. Translated from the Japanese original.
Triggered days of sexism and ageism accusations across Japanese media; the passage was made unavailable on Sanseito's official YouTube channel, and Kamiya defended rather than withdrew it, arguing there is a childbearing age range.
Timeline of Statements & Actions7 records, newest first
2026-06-17Action
We need stronger and clearer policies.
Said to reporters after Sanseito submitted an upper house bill to create a single agency handling all policy on foreign nationals; he called the Takaichi government's policies on foreign nationals extremely insufficient and argued Japan should cap the number of foreign nationals allowed to come and live in the country.
2026-04-09Interview
Called Sanseito's rise to 15 lower house seats a "75% success" at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan press conference, where the party's new catchphrase "I am Japan" was noted to have gained less traction than hoped.
His first major post-election appearance before the foreign press, billed as covering imperial succession, immigration, defense and foreign ties. Written as an event description because the club's page does not present the phrase as a full verbatim quotation.
2026-02-09Action
Sanseito jumped from 2 to 15 seats in the February 8, 2026 lower house election, while the LDP under Sanae Takaichi took 316 of 465 seats in a record postwar landslide.
Result of the snap election called after Takaichi dissolved the Diet on January 23, 2026; Sanseito finished fifth by seat count and remained outside the governing coalition.