JAPAN is consumed by talk of a “foreigner problem”. The story goes that the country has been overrun by ill-mannered migrant workers, misbehaving tourists and opportunistic foreign investors. But Japan’s real problem is not that it hosts too many foreigners. It is that it has too few.
Foreigners moved to the centre of political debate after the upstart Do It Yourself (Sanseito) party rode a “Japanese first” platform to big gains in last year’s upper-house election. In October the panicked ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chose as its new leader Takaichi Sanae, who launched her campaign for the job by lambasting foreign tourists who, she said without evidence, had been “kicking” sacred deer in Nara, an ancient capital. In Japan’s polite political culture, this was nearly as provocative as Donald Trump’s false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating American pets.
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Since becoming prime minister, Ms Takaichi has proposed tightening the screws on foreigners in the hope of winning voters back to the LDP. Her administration has talked of crackdowns on people who overstay visas, taxes on tourists, restrictions on property purchases and caps on foreign labour. A package of measures may be put forward later this month.
Vilifying outsiders may make for good politics. But in the long run it is misguided. The true causes of voters’ frustrations are economic struggles. Cracking down on foreigners will not heal the underlying malaise. If anything, it will make it worse.
The backdrop is demographic change. Japan’s population is expected to decrease by 30% to 87m in 2070. Ms Takaichi’s mentor, the late Abe Shinzo, recognised that Japan needed to open up if it was to keep thriving. When he served as prime minister he let in more migrant workers and encouraged tourism. The number of foreign residents in Japan has doubled since 2010 to 3.7m. The number of foreign visitors has quadrupled over the same period, reaching some 40m last year.
Many foreigners live in Japan on temporary work visas. Such programmes are better than no immigration at all. But in Japan, where migrants are often treated as expendable cogs, not people who might settle and have families, such schemes hold back integration, which in turn causes tension. And as the foreign population in Japan has risen, mainstream politicians have often been reluctant to talk about it. That has helped populists paint the arrivals as a “silent invasion”.
Some popular worries reflect real problems that can be fixed. Stricter oversight of foreign investors who buy land next to sensitive sites such as military bases is wise. Imposing Japanese-language requirements for permanent residence is reasonable, too. Over-tourism has turned Kyoto’s best-known temples into mosh pits during cherry-blossom season.
But broader fears about social breakdown and loss of traditions are overstated. Japan is an island country with strong borders. It faces no surge of refugees from war or poverty. Its neighbours are either prosperous or North Korea, which locks its people in. Foreigners are only about 3% of Japan’s population; the average across the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, is 15%. And there is plenty of room for tourism to grow.
Japan already relies on foreigners in industries including hospitality, farming and nursing. Migrants help sustain many of the traditions that nativists fear losing: they catch and harvest the raw ingredients for Japanese cuisine; in some ageing rural communities they help carry portable shrines during festivals. Japan will need far more workers in the coming decades to maintain even modest growth. That is why business leaders and governors tend to favour admitting more foreigners, not fewer. As for curbing tourism, that would mean stifling Japan’s second-largest export, after cars.
Instead of discouraging tourists, Japan could lure more of them to the many beautiful places that are currently off the beaten track. (Even Kyoto has plenty of spectacular yet barely visited sites.) Instead of cracking down on foreign workers, it should design an immigration system that attracts and selects newcomers with useful skills, integrates them into society and ensures that they pay their fair share of health-care and welfare costs. The real problem is not foreigners. It is the failure to take advantage of one of Japan’s greatest strengths—that it is a wonderful place to live and work.
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