Sanseito pushes motherhood over careers, queries gender policies

Asahi Shimbun

3 days ago

Sanseito party leader Sohei Kamiya addresses a crowd in Tokyo's Chuo Ward on July 3, kickstarting his party's Upper House election campaign. (Jin Nishioka)
The leader of right-wing minor opposition Sanseito party called for a societal shift that encourages more women to stay home and raise children, rather than pursue full-time careers.
Sohei Kamiya was giving a speech in central Tokyo ahead of the July 20 Upper House election.
Kamiya, 47, criticized what he called Japan's 'misguided' emphasis on gender equality policies in recent decades.
While he acknowledged that women joining the workforce is 'a good thing,' he argued that Japan has 'gone too far' in pushing women into the workplace, at the expense of the country's declining birthrate.
'We've made mistakes, like with this whole gender equality thing,' Kamiya said in his July 3 address. 'Of course, women working is fine. But we pushed too hard with the 'everyone must work' mentality.
'What we really need to do is create an environment that gives incentives to young women to bear children and make them feel secure in doing so,' he added.
To support this shift, Kamiya proposed a sweeping financial incentive: a monthly child allowance of 100,000 yen ($690) per child until age 15.
'That's 18 million yen per child. If you have two children, that's 36 million yen. With this kind of support, staying home to raise children becomes a reasonable option, better than a part-time job or office temp work,' he said.
Founded in 2020, Sanseito has steadily built support on a platform of tax cuts, nationalist ideology and a 'Japanese First' message that calls for tougher immigration controls.
The party currently holds five seats in the Diet, including the one held by Kamiya.
During the speech, Kamiya also made remarks about the biological limitations of childbirth, stating that only young women can bear children.
Although Kamiya emphasized that he did not intend to marginalize older women, a portion of the speech referencing this topic was later removed from the party's official YouTube video. Sanseito said the omission was due to a 'technical issue,' not censorship.
When pressed by reporters about his comments, Kamiya clarified that while medical advances have enabled women in their 40s to give birth, 'there are biological limits.'
He emphasized that encouraging women of childbearing age to have more children is key to reversing Japan's population decline.
Sanseito has made family policy a central plank of its platform for the election, emphasizing that childbirth and parenting are 'core national priorities.'
The election is widely seen as a test of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's minority government, which is facing poor public approval ratings due to the cost-of-living crisis and other issues.
Sanseito promotes the idea that being a stay-at-home mother should be recognized as a legitimate and honorable choice, one that it argues has been overshadowed in recent decades by career-focused narratives.