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"Next Year's News This Week" SNS: Asia Letter: Q1 2026 SOHEI KAMIYA REDEFINES JAPANESE POLITICS By Scott Foster ________ [Ed. Note: Contrary to our usual mandate, portions of Scott's letter relating to his interview with Sohei Kamiya were published previously, in a 12/10 article in the Asia Times, lightly edited for SNS.] It isn't surprising that Taiwan has the supply chain position that it has today. It started working on it 40 years ago. [...] Because TSMC is here, then the packaging companies, and then the subcontractors come, design houses come, and the IP providers come. Some of that emerging in the U.S. is encouraging, but it requires consistent policies [and] consistent investments for such supply chains to emerge as resilient supply chains. This will take decades, not years. - Pat Gelsinger, General Partner, VC firm Playground Global; fmr. CEO, Intel (Nikkei Asia, 11/24/25)
Sohei Kamiya Redefines Japanese Politics Sanae Takaichi, Japan's first woman prime minister, has grabbed the headlines with her gender, her right-wing politics, her remarks about how the Japanese military might get involved in a battle over Taiwan, and her appearance with President Trump on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington at the home port of the 7th Fleet in Yokosuka. But the real new force in Japanese politics is Sohei Kamiya, whose nationalist Sanseito party has put nearly 200 of its members into national, regional, and local assemblies and presented the nation with a detailed policy platform that would overturn the liberal elitist assumptions governing Japan today. Kamiya has incurred the wrath of the mainstream media with his "Japanese First" slogan, his proposal to limit and more tightly regulate immigration, and his opposition to "excessive globalism." He outraged American liberals by welcoming Charlie Kirk to Tokyo a few days before Kirk's assassination. The Guardian called him a Japanese "mini-Trump." But electrifying speechmaking aside, Kamiya is not at all like Trump. A self-made son of parents who ran a supermarket (where he briefly served as manager) and who taught high-school history for a while before going back to university to get a law degree, he has a common touch that has enabled him to mobilize disaffected citizens - a high percentage of them young people who have lost, or never had, faith in established political parties. When I interviewed him early this month at his office near the National Diet in Nagatacho, Kamiya's comments were well-considered and precise - unlike some of his statements in the past, which were quite inflammatory. There was no bombast, gross inaccuracy, or blatant exaggeration in the manner of Donald Trump. |
