Japan: Far-right parties play immigration card ahead of vote – DW – 07/18/2025
Far-right forces in Japan hope to capitalize on growing immigration concerns as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba brace for a tough election on Sunday.
The Japanese are set to vote for just over half of the 248 seats in the country's House of Councilors, the upper chamber of the Japanese parliament. Ishiba's LDP and the allied Komeito party need to win at least 50 of those seats in order to maintain their majority. But even this relatively low bar might prove to be too much amid LDP's tumbling popularity.
While the LDP is considered conservative, voters perceive it as moving to more centrist positions in recent years. Now, Ishiba is fending off attacks from unabashedly nationalist parties like Sanseito and the Conservative Party of Japan, whose immigration policies are similar to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) or Donald Trump's MAGA movement in the US.
Michael Cucek, a professor of politics and international relations at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, says part of the anti-foreigner sentiment is fanned by unruly tourists causing mayhem in the previously serene backstreets of Kyoto and other traditional towns.
"The weak yen has brought in tens of millions of foreign tourists and all the Japanese see is groups of tourists arriving with their suitcases in Air B&B apartments in quiet neighborhoods, being noisy and not following the rules on disposing of garbage correctly," he said.
There were a record 21.51 million tourist arrivals in the first half of 2025, an increase of 21% over the same period of last year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Officials are anticipating more than 40 million arrivals by the end of the year, with the nation on course to meet the government's target of 60 million foreign visitors annually in 2030.
Soaring numbers of tourists may help the national economy, but with Japan's strict cultural norms, many visitors breed resentment if their behavior is raucous, thoughtless or demanding. Such incidents are also invariably picked up by the Japanese media.
The media is also quick to report on crimes committed by foreigners living in Japan. Much was made of the arrest of a group of four Vietnamese who entered Japan on tourist visas in 2024 but spent the following two weeks traveling around the country stealing clothes from branches of the Uniqlo chain of clothing stores.
Elsewhere, foreigners have been accused of stealing cars for components, taking crops from farmers' fields, sexually abusing women and a plethora of similar offenses.
Defenders of immigration point out that Japanese businesses are crying out for labor as birth rates continue to drop and the number of elderly people grows. But Souhei Kamiya, founder of the far-right Sanseito party, says "Japan should not rely on foreign workers."
"Our position is that we will accept those with skills for fixed durations on the understanding that they are not immigrants and they must leave again after a fixed period," Kamiya said at a press conference in Tokyo two weeks ago.
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The politician also said that "Japan should be run by leveraging Japanese capabilities," and that the party will tolerate foreigners who follow the nation's laws and traditions, but those who ignore them have no place in Japan.
According to Kamiya, many foreign laborers who have been brought into Japan have quickly absconded from their approved work sites "and turned to criminal organizations to make money, such as through robbery."
"Japan's population is expected to drop from around 120 million at present, but even if it falls to 80 million — the same as Germany — then there will be enough people to maintain the country," Kamiya told reporters.
Yoichi Shimada, a lawmaker for the similarly right-leaning Conservative Party of Japan, shares many of Sanseito's positions and says one of his concerns is foreign nationals purchasing land and property in Japan.
"Rich Chinese are the biggest problem," he claimed. "They are buying land and apartments in Tokyo and around the country and that is a worry because it is impossible to get rich in China without the support of the Chinese Communist Party."
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"The Chinese government is deliberately colonizing Japan and that is a security threat," he told DW, insisting that there were records to show Chinese individuals or corporations buying land close to strategic military bases in Japan as tension grows between the two Asian nations.
Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, says Japan's far right has been "inspired" by the success of Trump's "America First" campaigns, with Sanseito even mimicking that slogan with its own "Japanese First."
"These right-wing groups' positions are in many ways the same as the MAGA movement and are based on the concept of Japanese exclusivity," she said. "The truth, of course, is that legal immigrants benefit the Japanese economy because of our well-publicized labor shortages — but these claims resonate with people who want to promote the purity or superiority of the Japanese race."
She took issue with the far right blaming immigrants for rising crime figures, pointing out that 10,963 foreigners were arrested in 2020, but that figure had fallen to 9,726 arrests in 2023. In the same time period, the number of foreign residents of Japan had increased from 2.75 million to 3.4 million.
"People are struggling with economic problems at home and it is easy to blame foreigners for the problems in society," Murakami said. "There is an economic downturn, prices are up, there is concern because of the US tariffs, but it is easy for people to take their frustrations out on foreigners."
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