Team Mirai pushing to bring digital democracy to Japan

The top story to emerge from Japan’s Lower House election on Febuary 8 was the overwhelming victory of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the implosion of the old left-wing opposition.

But the other big story was the emergence of Team Mirai as a significant force in national politics. Mirai means “future,” in this case, a future enabled by artificial intelligence (AI).

Team Mirai was founded by AI engineer Takahiro Anno in May 2025. In July, he won a seat in the Upper House election. In February of this year, Team Mirai won 11 seats in the more powerful Lower House, receiving 3.97 million votes, or 6.9% of valid votes cast.

Up from zero, Team Mirai nearly matched the new right-wing Sanseito party, which jumped from 2 to 15 seats. Mirai won more than twice its 5-seat target, while Sanseito fell 50% short of its 30-seat target.

Team Mirai is a non-ideological party that advocates using digital technology to reform politics, improve government services and drive a new cycle of economic growth.

It is full of IT specialists capable of understanding what needs to be done and making their own practical contributions to getting it done. Unique among Japanese political parties, its technocratic approach resembles that of Singapore’s People’s Action Party-led government.

With faith in technology, Team Mirai aims toward “a country that can believe the future is bright.”

A graduate of the University of Tokyo School of Engineering, Takahiro Anno is also a founder of AI venture companies and a science fiction writer. At the university, he studied under Professor Yutaka Matsuo in the Department of Technology Management for Innovation.

Matsuo is a specialist in AI, deep learning (machine learning based on neural networks) and web engineering. His Matsuo Lab aims to “unravel the mysteries of intelligence” and “create an ecosystem that is equivalent to Silicon Valley.”

After graduating from the University of Tokyo in 2014, Anno worked for the Boston Consulting Group. In 2016, he founded the chatbot startup BEDORE, where he served as CEO. Two years later, he co-founded legal tech venture MNTSQ, which provided AI-based services to Mitsubishi Corp. and Hitachi Ltd.

In 2022, Anno joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan, following the favorable reception of “Continuous Integration” and other short stories, and his novel “Circuit Switcher.” That same year, he graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a degree in AI art.

After returning to Tokyo, Anno became a member of the legal system working group at the Japanese government’s Digital Agency and an adviser to GovTech Tokyo, the organization in charge of upgrading the city’s social systems with digital technology. In January 2025, Anno launched his Digital Democracy 2023 project.

Anno entered politics as an independent candidate for governor of Tokyo in July 2024. He came in fifth with only 2.3% of the vote, but performed well for an inexperienced candidate who was only 33 years old, and raised his profile with the general public. A year later, he and Team Mirai entered national politics.

In the Upper House (House of Councillors) of Japan’s National Diet, Anno is a member of the Special Committee on Formation of Digital Society, Utilization of Artificial Intelligence and Related Matters. In the Lower House (House of Representatives), Team Mirai members will contribute to debates in parliamentary committees.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on March 5, Anno listed the three major themes of Team Mirai’s policy agenda:

• “First, invest boldly for the future… in AI, autonomous vehicles, robotics, universities and research institutions.”

• “Second, protect people’s lives today. Bold vision means nothing if people are struggling right now.” Reduce social insurance premiums, protect essential health coverage, and introduce an earned income tax credit “so that working people keep more of what they earn, and no one is left behind.”

• “Third, upgrade politics and public administration through technology. Japan’s political and administrative systems are overdue for a digital upgrade. We believe that technology can make government more transparent, more efficient, and more responsive to every citizen – and we are already building the tools to prove it.”

Those tools include the use of AI to gather the opinions and suggestions of the public directly at large scale, in order to base policy on the consideration of a wide range of views and complex reasoning rather than simple political soundbites.

Team Mirai’s Idobata System, which is part of the Digital Democracy 2030 project, is an open-source platform for policy deliberation and feedback that allows citizens to discuss issues with chatbots, creating a feedback loop between the public and the party. Other apps track bills in the Diet and could improve the transparency of political funding, reducing public distrust of politics and politicians.

Anno believes that this kind of digital democracy is well-suited to Japan’s multiparty politics – and, to which we would add, to the wide range of views represented under the “big tent” of the ruling LDP. It is not an adversarial two-party system.

“Furthermore,” Anno said, “there is a cultural affinity towards AI and technology [in Japan]. And as can be seen by the rapid recent gains of our party, more and more people are calling for a solution and resolution-based form of politics, rather than singular ideological confrontation. Based on this background, we believe that it is possible for Japan to take the lead and show the world a new model of democracy that uses technology, and we will work hard to realize it.”

Something also needs to be done about Japan’s slow legislative process. “As the speed of global change keeps rising,” Anno told the Japanese press, “the processing capacity of Nagatacho [the district in Tokyo where the National Diet is located] hasn’t increased that much. We need to structurally update the legislature.”

The use of AI could go a long way toward solving Japan’s social and economic problems. One clear example is autonomous driving. Building a nationwide infrastructure for autonomous driving, in Anno’s opinion, should be a key national strategy – not only to address the shortage of truck, bus and taxi drivers, and the growing number of elderly drivers, but to drive a new industrial growth cycle.

Nationwide use of autonomous driving could add the equivalent of about 3 million workers to Japan’s shrinking labor pool, according to Anno.

Will the Japanese auto industry take up the challenge? There are few signs of it yet, though Waymo and Japanese taxi company Nippon Kotsu are rolling out self-driving taxis in Tokyo now, showing the way.

AI agents should also reduce the severity of Japan’s shortage of software engineers by writing code and facilitating a fast-follower strategy to catch up with the US and China.

Prime Minister Takaichi, a former minister of state for science and technology policy, should be receptive to Team Mirai’s practical suggestions on making the best use of digital technology. AI is high on her list of strategic technologies that she intends to support via public-private investments.

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