Jeffrey J. Hall

YouTube video by Nikkei Asia Unpacking Sanseito and the 'Japanese First' movement

An interview with Nikkei Asia on Sanseito. Full discolure: I didn’t actually realize this was going to be a long-form video and was mostly trying to hit sound bites. But good experience to be thrown into the deep end these past few weeks of Sanseito coverage. youtu.be/s3K1lzia4eM?...

Yes, but a lot of these people really think Grok is amazing...until it does something like determine they have chimpanzee level intelligence.

Note: As Tobias Harris has pointed out, the maximum IQ on this scale was 100, so this isn't really the same as a real IQ test. bsky.app/profile/tobi...

Grok AI was asked to analyze posts by Sanseito supporters and determine their median IQ.
It determined the median IQ of a Sanseito supporter was 55, below the estimated IQ of a chimpanzee.
(Other parties: LDP 75, CDP 85, Komeito 70, JCP 82, DPP 76, Ishin 78, Reiwa 68, SDP 80)

A viral tweet about far-right Sanseito merch: the sign says "mostly made in Japan" (with small text for the "mostly" part), but a tag says "Made in China."
It's true that some of their merch is made in China, but their website also offers higher priced "made in Japan" merch.

住友陽文 on X: "一ノ瀬さんの説明はそうじゃない。中国利権を日本だけが独占するのは許さないとアメリカやイギリスが考えていたというのであって、一ノ瀬さんは英米の対日戦争を「中国を助けるための戦争だったかのように」は言ってません。それこそ印象操作というか、捏造ですね。説明を理解したうえで批判すべし。" / X 一ノ瀬さんの説明はそうじゃない。中国利権を日本だけが独占するのは許さないとアメリカやイギリスが考えていたというのであって、一ノ瀬さんは英米の対日戦争を「中国を助けるための戦争だったかのように」は言ってません。それこそ印象操作というか、捏造ですね。説明を理解したうえで批判すべし。

Credit to Professor Sumitomo Akifumi, who has tweeted in defense of Professor Ichinose: x.com/akisumitomo/...

A viral right-wing Japanese Twitter post is calling Saitama University historian Ichinose Toshiya a "traitor" for giving an un-controversial mainstream historical explanation of Japan's 1930s invasion of China on an NHK TV program aimed at teaching history to children.

In the mayoral races in Yokohama and Sendai, the incumbent mayors won reelection tonight. Both were seen as progressive in their initial runs defeating LDP candidates, but seem to have been Ainori in these elections. Still, good news for two major Japanese urban centers.

A viral tweet with 5.7M+ views accused Prime Minister Ishiba of being an "anti-Japanese" leftist because he doesn't visit the Yasukuni Shrine. A Community Note added context: he doesn't visit it because the Emperor also didn't visit it after class A war criminals were enshrined.

干上がった田んぼに救世主！初の給水車出動でピストン輸送…農家は「最高の水や」　富山 | TBS NEWS DIG 高温と雨の少ない状態が続いていて、富山県内のあちこちで深刻な水不足に陥っています。干上がってひび割れが発生している砺波市の山あいの田んぼには、緊急対策として給水車がやってきました。加賀谷悠羽記者「砺…

A recent article from TBS showed that water trucks were being used for rice fields in Toyama:
newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2...

Japan's agriculture minister, Koizumi Shinjiro, has talked about deploying water trucks to help rice fields in areas where rainfall has been lower than expected.
A viral post compares this to "trying to put out a wildfire with cicada pee," but such trucks are actually used by farmers.

「高齢女性は子どもが産めない」参政党代表の発言を女性候補はどう思う？　街頭演説中のさや氏を直撃 - Smart FLASH/スマフラ[光文社週刊誌] 通巻1782号 8月12日号 7月29日発売

The full quote, from Flash: “Our predecessors fought the Greater East Asia War because they wanted to create a world without racial discrimination.” smart-flash.jp/sociopolitic...

Sanseito politician Matsuda Manabu has been appointed chair of Japan's Upper House Discipline Committee.
In 2022, he called Covid vaccines "murder weapons."
In 2025, he said Japan fought in World War II to "create a world without racial discrimination."

Edo Naito's Japan Times piece about Sanseito is extremely misleading: "There is no evidence of historical revisionism in the policies or draft Constitution."
Sanseito's politicians are very open about their nationalistic views on history.

A fringe or political force: Will the real Sanseito stand up? There were a few things that might raise eyebrows, but nothing especially scary. Sanseito's published policy platform is relatively benign.

New piece by Edo Naito on Sanseito does very little other than aid the normalization of far-right views. He also calls this characterization of the party 'snarky, which feels like a dismissal of the time and effort me and others have put into our research 🧵
www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2...

Former Japanese Prime Minister Kishida shared a birthday card he received from fans. It has illustrations of him smiling with US President Biden, drinking a beer with South Korean President Yoon, and throwing a ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game. www.youtube.com/watch?v=E793...

A Japanese person took their 10-year-old son to see the new Superman movie, and the kid said "it was totally like the story of Momotaro" (a Japanese folk tale about a hero who was discovered as a baby & raised by a childless couple, and later teams up with a dog, bird, & monkey).

Japanese right-wing influencer Himasora Akane is trying to prove a woman who ran as an anti-China candidate in the recent Upper House election is secretly Chinese, using skull structure arguments that resemble racist American WW2 propaganda about how to tell Japanese/Chinese apart.

It is worth remembering that, while the former factions leading the rebellion may appear to have the majority with 169 out of 297 votes, they were the very forces that supported Takaichi in the last leadership election

Yet she still lost — because former factions can’t whip votes like they used to

The conservative Sankei Shimbun has been running articles that oppose Prime Minister Ishiba's plan to issue a statement on the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2.
Abe's 2015 statement said that future generations of Japanese shouldn't be "predestined to apologize" for the war.

Update: According to Aoyama Shigeharu, there were in fact 63 people who spoke, with 38 calling for Ishiba to resign, 8 saying he doesn't need to, while 17 remained neutral

After the meeting, Ishiba said he still intends to stay on and Moriyama said preparations will be made for a General Conference

＞PM hopeful Takaichi Sanae posted a thread criticising the trade deal, where she appeared to accept the mistaken view of her economic adviser Fujii Satoshi (Prof. of Civil Engineering at Kyoto) that the tariff applies only to the US-Japan trade deficit rather than to the total value of imports

2/2

加速する中堅若手「石破おろし」　すねに傷…表立って動けない重鎮ら：朝日新聞 参院選大敗後も続投に意欲を見せる石破茂首相（自民党総裁）。党内では「石破おろし」を実現するため、中堅・若手議員を中心に、両院議員総会の開催を求める動きが加速している。　「衆院選で負け、参院選でも負け…

Kishida is reportedly concerned that, as the divide within the party deepens, its people are paying less and less attention to the difficulty of running a minority government: "I wonder just what kind of future the ones scheming to oust Ishiba are envisaging…" digital.asahi.com/articles/AST...

Japan should have recognized the state of Palestine earlier. 146 Members of the both Houses of the Parliament of Japan had requested the Government to recognize the Palestine state in the Parliamentary session.

日本でも先の通常国会で、超党派のパレスチナ議連と人道外交議連が音頭をとって、衆参146名の議員が日本政府にパレスチナの国家承認を求める署名を提出しました。本来、日本がG7の中で先頭を切ってパレスチナの国家承認をすべきでした。フランス政府の決断に敬意を表します。

Kono Taro, on both his English and his Japanese Twitter accounts, says Japan should've already recognized the Palestinian state by now. In the Japanese tweet, he goes a step further and says Japan should have taken the lead on this topic within the G7.

We finally collide

MoF conspiracy theory books still selling well

Morinaga Takurō (bottom row) and the remnants of the Abenomics-era reflationists (top row, they now primarily write for the rightwing magazines Hanada and WiLL)

This shelf is near the entrance of the 3rd largest bookshop in Tokyo (Marunouchi Maruzen)

YouTube generation propels Japan's anti-foreigner politics into the mainstream Yuta Kato is increasingly annoyed by foreigners ignorant of Japan's social etiquette, whether that involves blocking the streets near his work in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district or distracting commuters by playing loud videos on their phones.

New from Reuters: "YouTube generation propels Japan's anti-foreigner politics into the mainstream" (featuring myself and @rmarcantuoni.bsky.social) www.reuters.com/world/youtub...

Sanseito claims there are fake Sanseito supporters who are making them look bad:
「If you receive aggressive messages from an account claiming to be a “Sanseito supporter,” please exercise calm judgment and handle it by [reporting and blocking] the account.」

YouTube video by NewsX World Populist Shift in Japan: What’s Next? | NewsX World

I was interviewed by India's NewsX World about the aftermath of Japan's Upper House Election (recorded before the Japan-US tariff deal, but the main points remain relevant):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDp...

TV Asahi notes that Takaichi does not have a strong base within the LDP

During the last leadership election, she had the following 20 diet members put her forward as a candidate

But 8 of them have since lost their seats in national elections where the former Abe faction members faced a wipeout