Draped in a Japanese flag, Yusuke Kawai, with his intense gaze and commanding presence, knows how to make his speeches theatrical. "I am fighting so that women can once again walk alone in the city at night," said Kawai, a 40-something Kyoto-born politician and humanities and economics graduate, as well as former actor.

Standing atop his small campaign truck bearing the slogan "Nihonjin First" ("Japanese People First"), Kawai − the president of the small far-right Yamato party − delivered a tough-on-crime, anti-immigrant message. Under the watchful eyes of a plethora of police officers, 200 people − mainly women and young adults − had braved the humid air of the muggy September evening to go and listen to him speak outside Warabi Station in Kawaguchi, a suburb of Tokyo.

The city, located north of the Tokyo metropolitan area, has become a focal point for Japan's increasingly virulent anti-foreigner rhetoric. This discourse has sprung up in a country that is historically resistant to immigration, attached to its security and the preservation of its culture, and so gripped by anxiety that it has elected openly xenophobic parties to parliament and pushed the government to tighten immigration controls.

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