It’s a shame, really, that Japan, handcuffed by that notorious Article 9 of the Constitution, habitually remains mute, indifferent, if not aloof, to all political developments in foreign lands, and when she ever takes action she traditionally hands out financial aids in one form or another. Slumbering under the the US’ nuke-umbrella for God knows how long, Japan has long forgotten how to act on her own.

The situation in Ukraine developing as it does, a wind blowing strong timely across the country in the eve of the Upper-house elections in July – a wind called “Sanseito”, or a Do-It-Yourself political movement, urging the otherwise least political Japanese to wake up to the reality and realize what their country can and should do to register the nation’s sense of honor. The movement is pointing straight to the a chain of shortcomings Japan’s past regimes have knowingly committed and, quite logically, to an urgent need for national awakening. 

The upsurge of Sanseito responds direct to the demand of the time when Japan’s economy is in an abyss and its industrial might totally bygone. Sanseito raises issues that the existing political groups should have tackled long ago but failed to do do thus far. 

The coming of Sanseito is in a way pain on the back primarily of the ruling conservative party Jiminto, Liberal Democratic Party = LDP, as Sohei Kamiya, the initiator of Sanseito, once a Jiminto candidate in some local election, is now poking at Jiminto’s Achilles’ tendon on sensitive issues. 

Kamiya sees a parallel of Ukraine in Japan with Taiwan in her vicinity. He knows fully well what Jiminto stands for and how it has drifted away from its fundamental position on some basic party pledges made back in the day Japan regained sovereignty in 1951. He argues that Jiminto has drifted too far to the left to virtually loose identity as conservative party. The voters have, laments Kamiya, lost the last decent conservative party to vote for.

He stresses the good old Japanese with the mind of Yamato Damashii, the spirit of Yamato (Japan), are in desperate need of one honest Conservative party to replace Jiminto, stressing aloud: 

“That’s what prompted me to initiate Sanseito”.

Behind Kamiya are several, equally influential orators who are all self-employed and in no need of assembly seats to sustain their livelihood. Among them is Toshiaki Yoshino who runs his dental clinic along with facilities to practice Chinese medicine and claims to pursue research to fight cancer; also another is Manabu Matsuda, a former the Financial Ministry official, who had run and won a seat (LDP) in the House of Representatives. Intent on reorienting Japan’s real conservatism, Matsuda alternately switched over to several new conservative groups to challenge the House in vain and lately joined Sanseito as a financial counselor/candidate initiating his own policy called Matsuda Plan.

There are a few other senior councillor/candidates running for the party this coming Upper House elections.

Sanseito claims Japan is fast losing her potentially healthy economic might as if to serve the rest of the world. Japan has failed, they insist, to enjoy any part of its economic gains over the part three decades or so. Kamiya quotes data to show Japan’s college graduates earn a half of what their US counterparts and one-third of Swiss equivalents. 

Facing three nuclear-armed adversaries in her neighborhood, Japan must, Sanseito insists, build her own defense capabilities apart from and in addition to her benefits from the Japan-US Security Pact.

It is no easy deal to initiate a novice movement, much less a political party, in Japan where politics is heavily biased by China-based industries. Further, Japan has a constitution, notably the Article 9, that checks her security needs and binds her freedom to firmly secure her wellbeing. 

Amid the turmoil in Ukraine, Japan ought to reawaken to the reality and confirm national security, and in that sense the emergence of Sanseito and the movement it’s cultivating in the minds of the Japanese public, particularly among the so-called non-political stratum that accounts for over 50% of voters, are long-awaited call for decent political innovation in Japanese society.

All the political parties are crudely wordless at this point over the emergence of Sanseito – mostly likely because there’s no way of predicting how wind they are blowing winds up in July.

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