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Hi Blog. I just got back from a tour in Japan and saw a lot of tourists. “Overtourism is becoming a hot topic. But it threatens to metaphorically “kill the golden goose”. I offer my perspective in my latest SNA column on how even local NJ Residents are falling into the fallacy that tourism is “spoiling” Japan, because countermeasures are threatening to encourage racial profiling against them. Read on. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
==================================
INTERNATIONAL TOURISM HAS BEEN GOOD FOR JAPAN
Short-sighted criticisms about Japan being “overtouristed” may spoil things. Don’t let the debate backfire into racialized policymaking.
SNA VM 67, June 19, 2025, By Debito Arudou
Courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2025/06/19/visible-minorities-international-tourism-has-been-good-for-japan/
Last month’s column was late because I just got back from four weeks in Japan. A luxury of academia is that in between semesters I can do long trips. As retirement looms, I’m finding ways to make life not only about work and column writing.
Interestingly, Japan is becoming part of that work-life balance. Like so many other Japan long-termers (such as Donald Keene and Alex Kerr), I’m finding myself living in Japan about twice a year. I like both Japan and US better when I can take a break from each, enjoying the best of both worlds.
The interesting thing I discovered this trip, as the US goes through another periodic isolationist phase, is that Japan in contrast seems to be becoming more accommodating. International tourism is making Japan into a more open society and an easier place to live.
JAPAN IS OLD AND BORING. EXCEPT FOR THE BOOMING TOURIST ECONOMY
When I first arrived in the 1980s, Japan was this forbidding, impenetrable, and “inscrutable” society hidebound to illogical systems. A place with a pervasive “culture of no,” where any new idea was shot down as “lacking precedent.” It certainly spent a lot of energy stymieing young, optimistic, reform-minded young people like me at the time.
But I’m aged 60 now, and finding Japan a lot more cooperative and friendly. Even sensible.
Granted, it helps that I’m fluent in the language, and Japan is inherently geared to serving old people who crave routine and predictability. It prides itself on public transport running on time, social welfare systems being reliable, and government policy being predictable and boring.
I really get that now. Given the decade of constant and wasteful spectacle generated by the Trump Era, not to mention a non-zero chance of outright civil warn in the US, I’m actually craving a boring government.
But one thing is certainly not boring about Japan: the tourist economy.
This, of course, is the product of decades of government programs. “Cool Japan,” “Yokoso Japan,” and “Omotenashi” have had their intended effect. Japan is becoming a major world tourist hub.
This trip I saw a lot of it. In addition to my regular flaneuring around Tokyo, I nipped out to Nagano, Osaka, Nara, Okayama, and Fukuoka. I saw firsthand how Japan is successfully coping with more diversity than ever before—while fighting its reflex to blame foreigners for everything.
JAPAN’S TOURISM IN PERSPECTIVE
The rate of growth of Japan’s tourism from overseas has indeed been startling, tripling from under 10 million to over 30 million foreign visitors in about a decade.
From that has sprung a lot of hoopla about Japan is becoming “overtouristed.” A quick Google will find much griping and sniping: overcrowding, traffic congestion, bad manners, garbage, luggage, noise, intrusive photography, etc. Some even call it an “invasion.”
That’s the blame reflex. But let’s keep things in perspective.
First, Japan is still a relative laggard compared to other countries. It doesn’t even make the top ten. According to World Population Review, the most-visited countries in terms of international tourist arrivals are predicted to be (in descending order, 2024): France, Spain, the US, China, Italy, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, Germany, and the UK.
Japan bubbles under at #11. No doubt those rankings will change as the US self-sabotages its tourist economy, but Japan’s numbers are still less than half the totals of each of the top five. And yet they somehow manage their foreigner “invasions” with a lot less grumbling.
Second, it’s important to note that most tourism in Japan does not involve inbound foreigners. According to Statista, more than 80% of tourism in Japan over the past decade has been domestic. So when you talk about a tourist in Japan, they’re overwhelmingly likely to be a Japanese.
That said, that looks to change. For the first time in 2024, record numbers of tourists from overseas made up nearly a quarter of all tourist expenditure, and tourism in general is now a significant part of Japan’s economy. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, successive record-breaking years of tourists now amount to an estimated 7.5% of Japan’s GDP.
This means after more than thirty years of economic stagnation, tourism is the one reliable source of growth and jobs. It’s forecast to account for one in ten jobs in the Japanese workforce by 2034.
RISING TO THE OCCASION WITH CLEAR ACCOMMODATION
Staying three weeks just outside Ginza this trip, I saw for myself the fruits of this tourism boom, and I think Japan is handling it pretty well.
Ginza’s streets and shops were crowded as usual, but this time there was enough ferment of foreign languages around me to make me feel I was back in Europe. Non-Japanese (NJ) were navigating trains, subways, and the shinkansen, and I saw no apparent source of concern. The NJ staff in the name-brand shops and convenience store counters were normal to the point of mundane.
Local businesses and facilities seem to be coping just fine. Along all the major train arteries were multilingual maps and ticketing machines. Food menus, especially at the chain restaurants, were on iPads or via tabletop QR codes in at least four languages. No actual spoken interaction between customer and staff was required for people to get service.
That’s quite a change. Not so long ago, there were frequent cases of establishments with “Japanese Only” signs and rules. Their most common excuse for refusing NJ entry was the presumption of a language barrier. “We don’t speak foreign languages, so we can’t give foreigners good service.” So naturally they gave them no service at all.
Of course, exclusionism still happens (and people still send me “Japanese Only” signs occasionally). But from what I saw, businesses have found a workaround. As they will. The lure of the foreign tourist yen has been irresistible, and it’s knocking down barriers.
Now tourism looks likely to expand beyond the beaten paths. I saw phalanxes of foreign tourists in places as far-flung as Tsuruga. In the backstreets of Ginza, I saw lines around the block for boutique sandwiches and other fad foods that tourists told me they found on Instagram and YouTube. People aren’t just following the tour guide flags. They’re finding their own adventures. Which means the rising tide of tourist funds will incentivize businesses nationwide to lose their exclusionary rules.
BLOWBACK FROM THE LOCALS
Of course not everyone is happy, and one surprising voice of dissent I found were long-term NJ Residents I talked to.
They felt foreign tourists were spoiling things. Echoing the standard complaints that people worldwide always make about tourists (including Japanese tourists abroad a generation ago), they find fewer and fewer “unspoiled” places where they can escape crowds,
That’s why they too support some means to tamp down on foreign tourists. Such as dual pricing. Entry restrictions. Higher entry and exit taxes to deter the onrush.
I asked why they supported charging foreigners extra.
“Because they are causing extra problems. Places have to provide menus and services in other languages. That costs money. Foreigners should foot that bill.”
Me: “So I guess that means you’d be in support of a tax on handicapped people, because one has to provide extra ‘barrier-free’ services to them, yes?” Well, uh, no.
Me again: “And how would you enforce a dual pricing policy? Don’t you think that foreign residents of Japan—like you—and Japanese-citizen Visible Minorities would also wind up being charged extra just because they didn’t look ‘Japanese’ enough?”
They responded with the fact they faced dual pricing structures in other countries. To which I said, “Yes, but you were incoming tourists there. You might think differently if you were a resident of that country and charged more just for looking foreign.”
Some cited Hawaii’s “Kama‘aina” discount for Hawaiian residents as extra pricing for foreigners. To which I said, “But when I was a resident there, I too got the “Kama’aina” discount once I got my Hawaii driver license. So it wasn’t racialized enforcement. It was a matter of residency. It’s not the same system.”
Their grumble would then return to how the tentacles of foreign tourism were killing off their special Japan. Whereupon I noted that, again, most tourism in Japan is still overwhelmingly domestic, done by residents of Japan, including crowds and pollution. We basically hear about foreign culprits because they’re more easily targeted by media. Their retort was basically yeah but still.
That was generally how our conversations went. I politely left unspoken their sense of entitlement—how only they should retain the privilege of visiting a depopulated temple, shrine, or natural area. But if others might wish to have the same experience, that would spoil it. Lucky my friends got there first so they could close the door behind them.
HALF-BAKED ARGUMENTS AND PUBLIC POLICY
Unfortunately, the Japanese Government is falling into similar logical fallacies. Local governments are already instituting higher fees starting in July at some places (such as Hokkaido’s Niseko ski resort), where the policy rubric is “foreign tourist” vs “Japanese residents.” Again, where do foreign residents fall?
As the Japan Times noted on June 5, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is considering hiking the departure tax (currently levied on Japanese and foreign departer equally) only for foreigners. And it still lumps foreign tourist and NJ Resident together as a single unit. Worse, as usual, lawmakers are explicitly only considering the concerns of “the people (Japanese citizens)” in their policy rhetoric.
Even columnist Gearoid Ready (who generally goes out of his way to defend Japan government policies) in 2024 wrote a Japan times article entitled, “Japan really should charge tourists four times more” and make it a nationwide policy. But then he didn’t include himself as a resident of Japan, and didn’t discuss how this policy would personally affect him.
Again, this isn’t being well thought through. And it’s especially ironic that some of the strongest voices are from by reactionary NJ Residents who are potentially penalizing themselves.
Some of this understandable. With any social change there is going to be fallout and blowback. The point is to make sure that all parties have a voice at the table when crafting public policy to resolve problems. This should include locals, Japanese tourists, foreign tourists, and foreign residents. There should be conscious distinctions between each as interest groups.
It’s also important to remember why we are in this situation. The government and by-and-large the locals wanted this. And they got it. Now live with it and tweak it. Don’t make a xenophobic meal out of it.
The bottom line is that the tourism boom has been a net positive. It’s stimulating the economy, enriching both guest and host, made people more flexible about dealing with diversity, and made Japan more accessible and less inscrutable.
Most importantly, from my point of view, it’s torn down more “Japanese Only” signs than I ever could have.
The potential is there for this all to go sour. But this is what happens when you see foreigners as an economic entity but not a domestic political force. Time for that to stop.
And it’s especially time for NJ Residents not to shoot themselves in the foot by agreeing with discrimination against tourists. Because in many policymakers’ view, all foreigners are tourists. Change course. Because with the direction things are going, they won’t be part of the “Kama’aina” unless they push for it.
ENDS
======================
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25 comments on “My Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 67: “Int’l tourism has been good for Japan” (June 19, 2025), where I argue that short-sighted criticisms about Japan being “overtouristed” may spoil things, so don’t let the debate backfire into racialized policymaking”
Very interesting and thought provoking column, as per usual. I‘m glad that Japan changed in a way that „Japanese only“ signs are becoming increasingly rare, but the question is at what cost? Like we discussed here already, replacing them with dual pricing may be even worse since it actually financially rewards racist behavior. I agree with the notion that a lot of long term immigrants seem to jump on the bandwagon of hating on foreign tourists. This ties in with your column from a few years ago which stated that a lot of immigrants seem to look down on newcomers and pull the ladder up, rather than helping them. „The tourists/newcomers are spoiling my perfect Japan“ line has always been prevelant for some reason, and it‘s weird to me how so many people can‘t see their own hypocrisy, or realize how obnoxious they sound.
„ And it’s especially time for NJ Residents not to shoot themselves in the foot by agreeing with discrimination against tourists. Because in many policymakers’ view, all foreigners are tourists.“
This. Seems like a lot of people forgot what happened during the first 6 months of covid. I haven‘t forgotten. Permanent residents are just glorified tourists to the GOJ. They see the world as a „us Japanese“ vs the „gaijin“ duality. You should never support discrimination because it‘s just categorically wrong, but when it comes to Japan people are literally shooting themselves in the foot (well not „literally“, but you get my point).
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Also before this potentially comes up, no, I‘m not comparing the discrimination of foreigners in Japan to the holocaust, I just want to illustrate how easy it is to fall into the „not my problem“ trap. People rarely think about these things if they‘re not directly affected, but history sooner or later catches up to you. Discrimination is wrong, period. You‘re going to open a can of worms if you‘re going into this thing with the mindset of „as long as it‘s tourists, it‘s ok to racially profile them and charge them 4 times more“.
A lot of people are short sighted and also seem to have problems with collective memory (the covid thing I previously mentioned).
Anyways, I‘m sick of the tourist bashing, both by the public and media. As always, this column and website are a single light in the dark when it comes to online discourse about Japan.
—- Thanks for saying so!
Unfortunately, Japanese have a much harsher view of refugees than citizens in other countries and have done the least individually to help people who have fled their homelands (Japanese language reference here), so hopefully flexibility about dealing with diversity will at some point extend to this interest group as well!
The interviews literally read like propaganda during the WW 2 era!
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/06/3966f26205f0-feature-awakened-conservatives-in-japan-targeting-foreigners.html
And of course she‘s afraid of foreigns, even though they never did anything bad to her, or anyone in the community. Like I said multiple times, in Japan it‘s enough to simply exist as a visible minority in order to be discriminated against. The apologists never believe me, oh the irony!
Double irony that she has to resort to the good old „I have nothing against „good“ foreigners“.
Like Baud said, Japan doesn‘t deserve „good“ foreigners. Definitely not with a mindset like that.
I realize these are just the opinions of some random 2 „conservative“ women, but in my experience this is how the majority of the population thinks, they‘re usually just too afraid to say it out loud, hence the „they didn‘t want to give their real name“ part.
Here’s my two-yen: Gaijin numbers keep going up while wajin numbers keep going down, so the roaches (read: ultranationalists), sensing an opportunity to capitalize on FUD, are crawling out into the light in order to take their message to the people.
The good news is that what we’re seeing is a case of roach cannibalism (i.e., CPJ, Sanseito, et. al. winning over converts at the expense of the LDP):
And there’s more good news: roach growth is severely constrained by Japan’s electoral system:
But the bad news is how the roaches are going about their cannibalization business:
Here’s my advice for “awakened conservatives” who are drawn in by the siren song of the roaches: go back to sleep!
Follow-up on my prior comment regarding how the roaches are going about their cannibalization business:
DPP softens election wording seen as hostile to foreigners / 国民民主、公約の文言修正 「外国人排斥を助長」の批判に配慮か (Japanese language paywall version)
From the article:
While I am on the subject of roaches, take a deeper dive into their world here: FEATURE: Younger Japanese drawn to anti-immigrant populist Sanseito
I am hearing a lot of friends here in Japan agreeing with Sanseito approach “Japanese first”. this is going to be a major change in the next elections.
And as it turns out, here’s another roach-related article worth reading:
Voters afraid of ‘scary foreigners’ propel Sanseito before election / 参政党「日本人ファースト」への熱気 街で聞いた支持する理由と不安 (Japanese language paywall version)
JK, this woman’s thought process is bizarre:
A 66-year-old office worker, who happened to pass by the rally, gave a big nod of approval to Kamiya’s speech.
She explained that she experienced an immigrant-related problem when she was a foreigner living in Germany about 30 years ago.
“My family was attacked by a brute. They managed to escape, but immigrants are scary,” she said.
She said she didn’t want the number of foreigners in Japan to increase.
Japanese original:
通りかかった会社員の女性（66）は選挙カーを見上げ、神谷氏の演説に大きくうなずいた。
支持するのは、30年ほど前に住んでいたドイツで移民に関する問題に触れた経験から。「家族が暴漢に襲われた。逃げて大丈夫だったけど移民は怖い」と語り、日本で外国人がこれ以上増えるのは嫌だという。
So, as an immigrant herself in Germany 30 years ago, her family was attacked by either (she does not make it clear) an anti-immigration German, or a fellow immigrant in Germany. And her conclusion as a victim of prejudiced violence in Germany is to adopt this prejudice herself in Japan?
—- Saw that a lot in my research of “Japanese Only” businesses. Excluding manager sometimes cited an overseas incident of themselves being discriminated against. So naturally they felt justified to exclude when they were in a position to. A form of Karmic rebalance in their own heads, in precisely the wrong direction.
Racism rots brains.
@Mark in Yayoi:
To you and I, yes. In fact, it practically reads like a recipe from the ‘Karmic Cookbook’:
1. Rest your position on a single anecdote.
2. Hastily generalize to an entire group.
3. Inflate the danger by stoking fear.
4. Add a dash of cognitive bias and serve. Voil&a!
But to the person in question, be they an excluding manager or an obāsan OL, this line of emotion-based reasoning makes complete sense.
The danger here, of course, is that reasoning based on emotion rather than facts and logic can lead to prejudiced and discriminatory views, which can in turn lead to prejudiced and discriminatory action (e.g., supporting roaches).
@Dr. Debito, I think it’s actually the other way around:
Racism: the result of rotten reasoning.
In other news, becoming a refugee will become even harder , because an acceptance rate of 0,2% wasn‘t low enough I guess.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250702/p2a/00m/0op/006000c
And all of this just because the public feels „uneasy“ around foreigners, as stated by the justice minister.
About 150 people spoke out against Sanseito sexism and racism. Good!
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250708/p2a/00m/0na/012000c
The bad news though is that based on Sanseito‘s sucess, the LDP announced a cabinet team to deal with „problems concerning foreigners“.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250708/p2g/00m/0na/019000c
I don‘t see any real policy behind it, except to again police and discriminate against all foreigners. And again, no one is talking about how foreign workers are literally keeping Japan afloat, no, it‘s only about „bad foreigners“ causing problems.
Don’t always agree with what you write. You whinge too much about Japanese behaviour / attitudes in an increasingly intolerant world.
However, I have religiously followed you blog for the last 30 plus years.
This has to be one of your best articulated, argued and reasoned posts ever.
Your distancing from Japan, on a daily basis, has really cleared your mind of the stresses and strains of living with this collective irrational xenophobic mindset, whose most recent aberration has been this ‘over-tourism’ issue.
However, there will, very soon, be another issue on the same topic, which leads down the same rabbit hole of ‘Japan is for the Japanese only’.
As for me, after 35 years in Japan, this October, I will venture to ‘pastures more green’ and somewhere where myself, meeting a non-Japanese friend(s) in a park or sharing a beer outside 7-11, is not collectively thought of as being a criminal conspiracy.
Again, well written and reasoned article, and well done.
— Thank you for the kind words, and for reading Debito.org for all these decades.
NGOs also start speaking out against racial discrimination. Again, good, but how about a national law against it? NGOs wagging their finger is not going to stop these racists.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250709/p2a/00m/0na/018000c
Wow, what an oversight by nippon.com, at least they corrected it, but by then it was onviously too late.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250711/p2a/00m/0na/015000c
The funny thing is that the Supreme Court a few years ago ruled that foreigners have no right to public welfare, only kokumin. So even those 2,9% are at the mercy of local governments and will probably be dropped like a hot potatoe once Sanseito gains more power and pushes everyone else even more to the right.
So what happened to the plan of accepting foreign Harvard students?
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250712/p2g/00m/0na/019000c
The discrepancy between GoJ foreign policy and their actual policies they apply to foreigns inside the country is always amusing. In front of the foreign press they want to portray themselves as a modern liberal democracy that respects human rights (especially since Trump), but all their actual policies paint a different picture.
Honestly, I can understand why they would bet on that strategy 20 years ago, when you had a totally different media landscape and you could easily publish statements „for foreign consumpution“ and others for „the actual kokumin“.
But this doesn‘t work in 2025, where every single article can and will get translated into foreign languages. Why would anyone still chose Japan for their PhD? You‘ll have 0 support from the government during your research because you’re a foreigner, and you basically won‘t land a job because you‘re a foreigner.
Does the LDP really think that anime and geisha will be enough? Nevermind the fact that tourists are banned from Gion in general lol. (And yes, I know that students are not = to tourists, but they will still get racially profiled and will have to prove their visa status to some oyaji who‘s not even immigration or police).
To the Japanese media’s credit (NEVER thought I’d be saying that!), MBS and ABC went to great lengths to criticize the ultra-right dummies in the most polite way, by shoiowing how their playing “kick the gaijin” is just plain racism, and how the present administration is the cause for a great deal of the economic problems…never thought I’d see that coming.
Another day, another business with dual pricing (or rather only charging foreign tourists)!
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250717/p2g/00m/0na/049000c
Also love the last sentence which basically says „it‘s ok because it‘s happening in other countries too“.
I’ve reached peak “differential pricing” (gotta love the new euphemism!) — it’s no longer worth my time and energy to pick apart this fallacious logic. Instead, I now let AI handle this job So, for the remainder of this post, I’m turning over the virtual keyboard over to o4-mini:
Here are several points that undermine—and ultimately refute—the discriminatory logic behind charging only foreign visitors an admission fee:
Incentive Misalignment:
By charging only foreigners, the policy creates a perverse incentive: domestic visitors have no financial stake in preserving the site’s cleanliness, whereas foreign visitors bear a disproportionate burden without any guarantee that their behavior will improve.
Risk of Stigmatization:
Differential pricing based on nationality reinforces stereotypes and feeds into broader anti-foreign sentiment—especially fraught at election time. This not only harms the temple’s reputation but can also exacerbate social division and xenophobia.
Precedent Does Not Equal Justification:
It is true that some heritage sites (e.g., the Taj Mahal) have tiered pricing for locals and internationals. However, those schemes are typically justified by formal government-mandated policies, transparent accounting of how fees are used, and clear communication in multiple languages. Here, by contrast:
– There is no published breakdown of additional costs.
– Exemptions (e.g., long-term residents) raise questions about where lines are drawn.
– Key explanations are only in English, while Japanese visitors receive no on-site rationale.
Alternative, Non-Discriminatory Solutions:
Rather than charging by nationality, the temple could:
– Implement a small flat fee for all visitors, with clear signage in Japanese and other major languages.
– Introduce refundable deposits on drinking bottles or require guests to bring reusable water containers.
– Increase multilingual on-site staff or signage discouraging fireworks and litter, backed by enforceable penalties for violations.
– Partner with local tourism boards to run “leave no trace” campaigns in multiple languages.
Legal and Ethical Considerations:
Under international norms (and in many domestic legal systems), singling out individuals for different treatment on the basis of nationality alone can be deemed discriminatory. Even if not explicitly illegal, such policies conflict with widely accepted human-rights standards and best practices in intercultural hospitality.
In sum, while the temple’s operational concerns—extra cleaning, security, and maintenance—may be legitimate, imposing a special fee solely on foreign visitors is neither transparent nor fair. A more equitable approach would distribute costs among all who enjoy the grounds, paired with targeted behavioral guidelines and multilingual education or enforcement measures.
And another one!
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250725/p2g/00m/0et/039000c
Time to cue the AI!:
Prompt: Determine how the dual pricing model at Junglia Okinawa will be policed / enforced (i.e., how will staff distinguish between “visitors from overseas” and “those living outside the country”?). Refer here for details: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250725/p2g/00m/0et/039000c
Response (M365 Copilot):
„Atsushi Yoshinaga, a professor at Hanazono University who is an expert on welfare administration, said, “The high percentage of elderly households headed by South Korean and North Korean residents in Japan receiving welfare benefits is due to the fact that for a long time in Japan, foreign nationals have been systematically excluded from joining the national pension system, resulting in a large number of people with low pensions.”
So in short, Korean immigrants are poorer on average due to historical discrimination, and now Sanseito and co. want to take away the little money they get and even claim that foreigners somehow get preferential treatment.
And again, it‘s important to note that only Japanese citizens have a RIGHT to claim welfare. Foreigners are at the whim of local governments and as the Supreme Court ruled a few years ago, these governments always have the right to refuse by stating „because you‘re a foreigner“, even if you have PR and you were born in Japan (and worked there for 60+ years).
To sumarize, racist policies have led to Koreans being overrepresented and now the same racist policies are trying to exclude them again. We‘ve come full circle!
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15912215
I agree with JK, it‘s impossible to keep up with everything.
Remember that all of this is a reaction to a foreign population which makes up less than 3% of the total population. Meanwhile these people, especially Sanseito, sound like they‘re the minority.
Again, good luck trying to attract 800k foreign workers a year. India will overtake soon!
@Niklas thanks, for sharing; if you’re interested, the Japanese language version of this article can be found here: 外国人は生活保護を受け取りやすい? 厚生労働省「優遇はない」
Some excellent comments on this thread, most notably those regarding the ‘new’ Japan-first🙄 popularist parties.
First, as for tourism…
Since Japan doesn’t have an immigration policy, foreign residents with a stake in their communities are being lumped in together with NJ tourists who are in Japan for a holiday and having ‘consequence free fun’ on the trip of a lifetime. This represents not only a failing of Japanese policy, but also imagination. Having encouraged tourism to the max, they are unable to police the behavior of tourists, and are instead relieving their frustrations on resident NJ (since these are the only NJ whose behavior and quality of life they are able to police). It will not engender the degree of goodwill required to overcome the demographic timebomb Japan is facing towards.
And all these ‘Japan first’ loons; Trump’s insane and morally repulsive behavior and cognitive decline seems to slip under the radar in Japan where most regard him (even grudgingly) as a ‘strong man patriot who wants the best for his country, like Ishihara, who isn’t getting the straight dope on the importance of the Japan relationship due to Ishiba’s incompetence’.
Japanese are in for a shock when they go on holiday to LA and ICE sweeps them up and sends them to a third world concentration camp.
And even if the Japan first loons are fully cognizant of the reality of present day America, what are they gonna do?
As I said here years ago, Japan treats NJ like the guy torturing John Galt at the end of Atlas Shrugged; ‘Save me or I’ll kill you!’ is not an effective threat- NJ will not be brow beaten into saving the Japanese economy and Japanese social structures with their labour. NJ will need to be charmed, enticed, and respected, or they will simply leave *as they already have under every single foreign labour recruitment initiative in living memory in Japan*.
So what are the Japan first loons going to do if they get their hands on the levers of power? Are they going to organize immigration raids on elderly care homes and combinis to carry out mass deportations?
Ha! Go ahead and do it! I’ll be laughing my ass off at the massive self-inflicted own-goal!
There are no robots coming to do these jobs, and even if there were, robots don’t pay taxes nor buy products.
Fascism is a failed ideology. Presently it’s popular to to cherry pick the parts that emphasize the supposed superiority of the majority, but they ALWAYS forget how catastrophically this ideology failed before, and how much misery it caused everyone involved.
On NHK Sanseito had large crowds in Kumamoto and Fukuoka.
I don’t see as much interest in the other parties.
People say Ishiba is too moderate and there is an opening for the conservative vote.
Foreign people are working and paying taxes. When I last went to the pension office the man there bowed deeply to me.
The birth rate last year was below 1.2
There is a need for truck drivers, bus drivers, and construction workers. Without foreign workers who will do the work? Already work participation rates of the elderly and women is up.