How a far-right 'Japanese First' party made big election gains
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
20 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
Inflation, political turmoil won't put investors off Japanese property
Japan has entered a period of profound change. Inflation has returned after decades of deflation and stagnation. Japan's relations with the United States, which helped underpin the post-war global order, have deteriorated dramatically. A culturally homogenous nation is experiencing an epic boom in tourism More surprisingly, a country renowned for political stability is at risk from the anti-establishment populism that has upended politics in other advanced economies. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner Komeito lost their majority in the upper house of parliament in an election on July 20. New parties – in particular a hard-right, anti-immigrant party called Sanseito – made strong gains by capitalising on public disquiet over the surge in prices and the influx of foreign tourists and migrants, accentuating the double-edged sword of inflation. The two sides to rising prices – especially their causes and side effects, which include the 28 per cent fall in the yen versus the US dollar since March 2022 – are particularly apparent in Japan's property sector. The prospect of a virtuous cycle of rising prices and wages that stimulates domestic demand and facilitates structural reforms is one of the big themes in Asian real estate. Private equity fund KKR, a big investor in Japanese real estate, said last year that 'Japan's economic reawakening and the big shifts occurring in Japanese society make for attractive investment opportunities'. The country's commercial property investment market accounted for more than a third of transaction volumes in the region in the first quarter of 2025. Moreover, rental growth has taken hold, with rents for grade A offices in Tokyo increasing at one of the fastest paces among the major office markets in the Asia-Pacific region in the second quarter of 2025. Rent increases in Japan's professionally managed rental housing, or multifamily, sector have become a key driver of investment, helping to compensate for the sharp fall in rental yields.
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
Is being a Nazi ‘hip'? Germany's youth increasingly embrace far-right ideology
Germany is moving to the right again. This was not only made evident by February's election results, but it's also becoming more visible among ordinary folks, especially young people. February's snap vote, brought after the collapse of a centre-left administration, saw the conservative bloc come out on top ahead of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which garnered its best-ever result in a federal vote amid discontent over immigration and the economy. The soaring support for the AfD, in a country where being far-right was long considered a no-go in light of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, appears to be going hand in hand with a wider willingness to openly voice racist views. Thanks to social media, the far-right scene is able to better target young people, some of whom the irony of chanting Nazi slogans in a country that is responsible for the Holocaust appears to be lost. Domestic intelligence officials in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate say that right-wingers nowadays express their views more openly than they used to and are increasingly present on social media.
South China Morning Post
5 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Japan pitches Tokyo as new UN hub while US steps back from world stage
As the United States increasingly retreats from global leadership, Japan is positioning itself to fill the void with Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike's proposal that the United Nations shift some of its operations to the Japanese capital. Advertisement Koike returned to Japan on Sunday following an official visit to the US, where she addressed the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies in Washington and highlighted Tokyo's emergence as a major player on the world stage. During her visit, she also met with policy experts at the Hudson Institute think tank, where Tokyo's drive to become a sustainable metropolis was high on the agenda. On Thursday, Koike held a 15-minute meeting with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the organisation's headquarters in New York. There, she proposed that more of the UN's offices be relocated to cities elsewhere in the world, including Tokyo. 'Tokyo would like to provide various types of support [to the UN],' Koike told reporters after the meeting, highlighting the city's advantages over other locations, such as 'public safety, security and now, with the weak yen, there are other positive aspects to life'. Advertisement Guterres acknowledged that his office had 'received offers of cooperation from various countries and regions', but declined to elaborate on the Japanese proposal or whether it might be pursued further.
