The world's largest superconducting tokamak, JT-60SA, has successfully achieved its first plasma operation under the constraint of a low toroidal inductive electric field of 0.15 V m−1. A plasma start-up scenario, leveraging the effective confinement of electrons accelerated by the electron cyclotron wave, proved to be instrumental in reaching this milestone under the challenging conditions. The demonstration of plasma start-up using second harmonic electron cyclotron heating, with an applied toroidal electric field of 0.15 V m−1, strongly validates the feasibility of achieving first plasma operation in ITER.