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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes the electoral geography of the Sanseitô surge in Japan’s 2025 Upper House elections at the municipal level, thereby testing the persistence of relative electoral stability in shrinking rural areas.

Paper long abstract

The 2025 elections for the Upper House of the Japanese National Diet were marked by the sudden rise of the right-wing populist party Sanseitô. Amidst growing concerns around inflation, US-Japan relations, and immigration, the Sanseitô gained a striking 12.5% of the votes by embracing harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and a political style that resembles other right-wing populist parties in Europe as well as the MAGA movement in the US. Given the recent electoral vulnerability of the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), it is an important question if and to what extent the Sanseitô surge indeed signals a lasting shift in the Japanese party system.

In sharp contrast to Europe and the US, Japan did not have a strong right-wing populist contender until recently. This is striking, not least, because of the presence of lasting regional disparities: Large parts of non-metropolitan Japan have been struggling with prolonged economic dependency, aging, and out-migration – a socio-spatial constellation that has consistently been identified as a fertile breeding ground for anti-establishment (right-wing) counter-movements in Europe and the US. So far, however, Japan’s shrinking rural areas have remained strongholds for the ruling LDP. In fact, a municipal-level analysis of the Lower House elections between 2012-2021 showed that those areas facing the highest levels of long-term decline and economic dependency (“depopulating regions”, kaso chiiki) not only display stronger support for the LDP, but also higher turnout and lower support for “third parties” – all of which suggests that Japan’s shrinking rural areas remain less inclined to electoral discontent than their urban counterparts. The results of the 2024 Lower House elections confirmed this pattern.

The Sanseitô surge in the 2025 Upper House elections offers an ideal opportunity to put the relative electoral stability in Japan’s shrinking rural areas to the test. This paper draws from granular municipal-level data to analyze the electoral geography of the 2025 Sanseitô surge. We hypothesize that the specific socio-spatial characteristics of shrinking rural areas – esp. the combination of aging and economic dependency – continue to favor the established conservative LDP over the anti-establishment contender.

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Paper short abstract

The paper identifies three categories of new voices contesting rural subnational elections in Japan: recent in-migrants; new local parties; and local branches of “populist” parties and asks how these three groups impact contestation and participation through an overview and select cases.

Paper long abstract

Japan's electoral competition and party system has undergone visible upheaval in recent years: the ruling coalition losing majorities and the formation of an alternate one, the surge of new “populist” parties on the right and left, as well as newly salient issues such as immigration, overtourism, and inflation.

Yet it is unclear that any such substantial transformation is occurring at subnational level. On the face of it, municipal and prefectural elections, particularly in rural areas, are mired in uncompetitive contests, a shortage of candidates, low turnout, and an inability of opposition parties to develop strong party organizations. No significant subnational populist party organization has emerged in rural areas as often identified in other democracies.

Yet, dig a little deeper and there are signs of change in what appears to be mere slow decay.

The paper identifies three important categories of new voices in rural subnational elections: 1.) Recent in-migrants (usually younger, often female, with novel ideas and experiences to transform the local community); 2) New local parties and groups (although predominantly in urban areas, but emerging in rural prefectural assemblies and municipalities that are not affiliated to national parties, but have distinct local policy programs and organization); and 3) Local branches and representatives of new national parties such as Reiwa Shinsengumi and Sanseito (particularly the latter which has rapidly expanded seats in subnational elections across the country).

The paper asks how these three new voices impact contestation and participation in rural subnational elections. Which kind of issues do they articulate and campaign for, under what kind of ideological framework? Do these three voices diverge or converge on national-level issues? Are these three new voices distinct or overlapping in their actors and networks? What are their relative strengths and weaknesses in achieving their respective goals? And ultimately, have any of these new groups captured enough seats to substantially impact local government policy and budgeting?

The paper provides an overview of these trends and case studies of local governments which have experienced an influx of these groups in legislature and/or executive level to begin to answer the above questions.

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Paper short abstract

This study answers the research question: to what extent, and how, do smart city projects lead to regional development in Japan? It presents a statistical analysis of smart city funding distribution and a qualitative analysis of two case studies within the framework of public service ecosystem.

Paper long abstract

In the 5th Science, Technology and Innovation Basic Plan (2016), the Japanese national government launched the idea of Society 5.0 and designated the smart city as a space for its realization. In the past 10 years, implementation of smart city has progressed by taking advantage of regional vitalization schemes. Here lies the anticipation that smart city projects will result in regional vitalization. Thus far, however, existing studies do not sufficiently address the causal relationship between smart city projects and regional vitalization. Against this background, this study asks the following research question: to what extent, and if so how, do smart city projects contribute to regional vitalization? To address the first question, this study presents renewed analysis results on the regional distribution of smart city funding between 2017 and 2026, using the framework of Urban Employment Areas (Kaneoka and Tokuoka 2005). The results reveal a strong urban bias in the distribution of funding. To answer the second question, two prominent cases of rural smart cities in Okayama Prefecture are selected for indepth study. In order to make meaningful sense of local engagements, the idea of a service ecosystem is adopted. An emerging strand of public service literature points out that the New Public Management framework cannot explain governance in practice at the local level, as it fails to take citizen participation seriously. Instead, it recommends adopting public service logic, which considers governance as the outcome of co-creation among public, private, and civil actors. From this theoretical perspective, regional engagement develops as a web of service-for-service exchange among cross-sectoral actors, and regional vitalization occurs as the result of value co-creation among these actors. Final discussion will situate the observed local engagements back into the context of regional inequality. The conclusion will point out the dual structure of changing and unchanging relationship among local, prefectural, and national governments.

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Paper short abstract

This paper asks how solution-oriented and democratic crisis governance can be effective. Through the lens of vigilance, it analyzes how the interaction between traditional local governance structures and vigilance enabled the activation of community resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper long abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a stress test for the crisis management capacities of governments worldwide. Japan’s response was remarkable in several respects. Instead of enforcing legally binding measures, the government appealed to the principle of voluntary self-restraint (jishuku). Despite its aging population, which is particularly vulnerable to the virus, Japan recorded a lower excess mortality rate than most OECD countries. This was achieved while maintaining public life, without encroaching on individual freedoms, and without large-scale protests. One line of explanation attributes this success primarily to Japanese culture. A second perspective emphasizes the importance of social capital, social networks, and social infrastructure as key determinants of community resilience. A third approach focuses on the tight-knit networks of local governance, which are essential for maintaining community functions.

This paper asks how solution-oriented and democratic crisis governance can be effective. Through the lens of vigilance, it brings together the three existing research approaches and analyzes how the interaction between traditional local governance structures and their institutionalized forms of vigilance enabled the activation of community resilience. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in a rural town in Oita Prefecture, using an explorative-interpretative research design that draws on a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the paper investigates how the formal and informal layers of community governance may have increased community resilience, without leading to a significant populist backlash, as seen in other democracies. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how democracies can govern societal transformations by emphasizing the importance of local governance structures for their success.