Cries about the downfall of modern Japan and the crumbling of its identity are overwhelmingly driven by outsiders. What is actually going on inside the country, and will that reality ever matter to the sensationalist outlets more willing to parrot easy falsehoods?

In the wake of recent House elections, Sanseito is defying the odds and surging in the polls. How can a country already tilted so far to the right still have further to go? And what does Sanseito’s rise reveal about the broader, increasingly isolationist mood sweeping the globe?