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Japan’s Foreigners and the Four Worst Words
Subtitle: But I will say them. Because what Japan is doing to its foreign residents is all within character, and everyone should have seen it coming long ago.
By Debito Arudou. SNA VM 75, May 28, 2026, courtesy https://shingetsunewsagency.com/2026/05/28/visible-minorities-the-four-worst-words/
Frankly, given the state of the world, I’ve dreaded writing another column. Where to start anymore?
But a recent question from a reporter put my mind back in focus:
“Sanseito, which has promised to put ‘Japanese First,’ made a strong showing in the 2025 Upper House election. Some wonder why those who voted for the party were not aware that the slogan could promote discrimination and anti-foreigner sentiment. I would very much appreciate it if you give us your take on this.”
My answer was:
“After several decades of economic stagnation, and now a shrinking economy and falling wages, people are ever hungrier for change, any change. Sanseito profited from that like nationalist/populist movements and parties have done worldwide. It’s a cresting wave of anti-globalism and identity politics.
“I’m sure voters were perfectly well aware that ‘Japanese first’ would stoke discrimination. Now playing dumb about rising xenophobia is just, if I’m being gracious, a form of ‘buyer’s remorse.’
“But I actually doubt all that many voters in Japan are all that regretful beyond the ‘tatemae‘ (pretense) of expressing a simple ‘kawaisou‘ (what a pity).
“People have had decades to make anti-discrimination policies to prevent this sort of thing, but never really have. Because after all, the discrimination won’t affect most of them.
“Again, foreigners aren’t really seen as residents and neighbors in the ‘monoethnic’ Japan national narrative, so all this to me is within character. I’m more surprised a Sanseito-type party wasn’t as successful sooner.”
This brings us to me saying the four worst words in the English language:
I. Told. You. So.
THERE SHOULD BE NO SURPRISES HERE
The rise of Sanseito, and the competing downward spiral of policies to make foreign residents ever more miserable, are all part of a pattern.
Since the 1990s, pundits like me have warned that Japanese society has public policies with racism baked in. It’s so embedded that people reflexively accept a basic premise: That some people are entitled to power (e.g., Japanese in Japan), and those who “don’t belong here” will just have to settle for second-class status (e.g., you foreign residents). Some opinion polls have even said a large proportion of Japanese don’t believe foreigners deserve the same human rights in Japan.
But Japan’s foreign residents should have seen it coming. There’s a long history to cite:
More than a century ago, a generation of colonized foreigners in the Greater East Co-Prosperity Sphere became subjects of the Japanese Empire. Many ethnicities collaborated, fought, and died for the Emperor in Japan’s wars. Then after World War II, they were summarily denaturalized and disenfranchised, losing their right to vote and participate in Japanese society, many becoming the card-carrying Zainichi generational foreigners.
That set the template. As Japan prospered in its Postwar boom, “Newcomer” foreigners invited into Japan’s burgeoning labor market fared no better, finding themselves on revolving-door labor visas and exploited under government-sponsored human trafficking systems. Even the “good foreigners” (the racially bonafide “Nikkei Japanese” laborers from South America, given instant de facto Permanent Residency) were summarily booted in the 2009 economic crisis.
Today, under late-stage cultural capitalism, the ruse is now to get quick money from foreigners who are even more temporary — tourists. But that plan has soured under its own success, with crowds of foreigners being blamed for all manner of social ills. This has provided political leverage to the xenophobes who no longer have to hide their intentions anymore. In comes Sanseito, encouraging a Liberal Democratic Party to compete with policies making life for foreigners as miserable as possible.
That means all you foreign residents who devoted your lives to Japan by marrying, paying taxes, investing in homes, becoming gainfully employed and starting companies, having kids, taking out Permanent Residency, and contributing to Japanese society like everyone else: Your status is now tenuous.
You face new “Permanent” Residency statuses that require twice the time, with application fees that have risen tenfold — conveniently too expensive for many lower-wage long-term residents. And it’s no longer “permanent” — it can be revoked in an instant if you miss a tax payment.
You also face ever-higher hurdles both in terms of arduous visa ladders (3-year visas are difficult enough to get, but 5-year visas will now be required for PR), “upper-intermediate level” N2 language tests, higher entry fees all around, and likely an extra “gaijin tax” as dual-pricing schemes and racial profiling wind up on your restaurant bills, as an automatic “seating charge for tourists.” After all, Japan’s policymakers make almost no distinction between foreign tourist and resident, so why should anyone else?
So where’s the outrage from those affected? It’s muted, because making life difficult for foreign residents has been so normalized that some of the biggest advocates are the long-term foreigners themselves. As I’ve written many times in the past, many promote “guestist” arguments, i.e., foreigners are the “guests” to the Japanese “hosts,” so don’t rock the boat. Or they depict the “bad foreigners” (as opposed to the “good ones”) as despoiling their Japan due to their illiteracy, deliberate misbehaving, or cultural-klutziness. Or they argue that Japan can run its society as it pleases and foreigners should have no say — anything else is a tantamount to cultural imperialism. Or that “shimaguni” island-country Japan just doesn’t know any better. Yada yada.
Nothing quite like denying your own right to exist in a society as an equal.
YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELVES
Activists like me have tried to warn you that things won’t get better unless you stood up for yourselves. I for one have written books and hundreds of columns on how Japan systemically excludes all sorts of people (not just foreigners), pointed out where the pressure points are for fixing these situations, and offered advice for how you can assimilate better. You can still read them at Debito.org.
But the reactions towards us immigrants trying to help Japan’s foreign communities have been counterproductive. Again, just speaking for myself, a solid number of readers generally concluded that people like me were just angry malcontents trying to self-aggrandize (if not capitalize) on human rights, or just decided to shoot the messenger for popping their bubble with uncomfortable truths.
So let’s pop another: It might be a relief to some that you don’t have to care about Japan’s political outcomes, or have any input into public policies that affect you. But now look what that got you — blame and public sanctions for things you didn’t do.
So after 30 years of cautionary tales culminating in the public policies we predicted, I think I’ve earned the right to say those four words:
I. Told. You. So.
YOU COULD HAVE BEEN CONTENDERS
Another future was possible. There was arguably a window in the late 1980s when Japan was bringing in Non-Japanese as longer-term residents, and policymakers were thinking about how Japan could best assimilate itself into a globalizing economy by “internationalizing” its labor force. Companies were hiring foreign workers like us at the ground floor. We were learning Japanese and figuring out how power flowed for ourselves. Many of us assimilated into Japan on our own terms.
And we did good. Our generation of Japan specialists between 1985-1995 eventually paved the way for today’s widespread acceptance of “soft-power” Japanese (and Asian) cool cultural exports — including Anime, Manga, arguably even K-Pop bands. Not to mention more than a generation of JETs. Thankfully, the era of the “inscrutable Japanese” has gone the way of Reischauer.
Sadly, that time frame of expertise slammed shut, as Japanese society eventually realized that the “Bubble Era” of prosperity for all was a phase that would never return. Instead, people took their anxieties out on the easiest targets — foreigners — as most societies feeling real economic pain do.
This could have been ameliorated significantly if policymakers had taken our suggestions decades ago:
1) Create a national narrative where anyone could be a “Japanese” based on legal status, not physical appearance.
2) Create laws against racial discrimination, as both the Japanese Constitution and United Nations treaty require.
As you know, that didn’t happen. Now foreign residents have a generation of their children saddled with the same racial profiling that targeted them as parents.
What can you do about it now? You can rebel, settle into quiet second-class-citizen suffering, or leave. All options are such a waste of Japan’s talent and energy.
Or worse, you can become enough of a “self-hating gaijin” to have to constantly prove yourself to be a “real Japanese,” as Diet Member Kimi Onoda, Cabinet “Minister in Charge of a society of Well-Ordered and Harmonious Coexistence with Foreign Nationals,” does when she aims make herself look good by making you look bad..
That’s how we got here. These monstrous situations could have been avoided if Japan had taken the reasonable advice of treating people like human beings regardless of nationality and physical appearance. But no.
THE COMEUPPANCE IS COMING
Instead, Karma’s a bitch. Japan’s countryside is depopulating. Its economy keeps falling down the international GDP rankings, shrinking from senescence due to a lack of replacement birthrates or immigration. Its pension systems, as forecast, are going bankrupt. Its old people are living lives of penury as real wages drop for everyone and inflation does its damage. The slide in the international exchange value of the yen means foreign tourists get the bargains, while people living in Japan get trapped in a domestic spiral of decreasing buying power,
And it was all for naught. Unless Japan engages in ethnic cleansing (not impossible, given Sanseito), its foreign population will rise anyway as a percentage regardless just from natural attrition.
Again, everyone, Japanese and Non-Japanese, was told this was coming. As far back as the year 2000, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and the United Nations both said that Japan would need to import 600,000 foreign residents per year to maintain the current standard of living. Then two decades ago, prominent thinkers, such as Hidenori Sakanaka, warned that we were at a crossroads to becoming either a “Big Japan” (a regional if not a world power) or a “Small Japan” (an irrelevant geopolitical backwater), depending on whether Japan chose to treat its foreigners as guest workers or future Japanese citizens.
More than a quarter century later, it’s clear the “Small Japan” scenario is nigh.
We. Told. You. So.
Yet most of you acquiesced to this. If you also stood up for your rights as citizens, residents, and taxpayers, things might have turned out differently. But you didn’t.
Instead, most of you chose to ignore, marginalize, if not outright attack people like us. (I for one still get regular death threats.) Oh well. Ye shall reap.
So enjoy your sunset years within a sunsetting society. I too will enjoy Japan, like many other Japanese abroad, as a citizen but not as a resident. Because I did everything I could to become Japanese and it wasn’t enough. Given Sanseito-ism, it’s even less likely to be enough now.
Maybe now you’ll listen now. But I doubt it. Like any community you bought into but can’t leave (the MAGA personality cult comes to mind), it’s nearly impossible to admit you were wrong.
But I will still say it: I. Told. You. So.
ENDS
======================
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23 comments on “Debito’s Shingetsu News Agency Visible Minorities column 75: “Japan’s Foreigners and the Four Worst Words”, on how Japan’s recent public policies making NJ Resident lives more miserable is what happens when NJ continuously self-disenfranchise (May 28, 2026)”
Great article, and you’ve entirely earned the right to say ‘I told you so’.
The thing is that even now the apologists won’t be able to admit they’ve been wrong all along- they’re too deeply invested in opposing your point of view. It’s like a cult. When the proverbial ‘knock at the door’ happens to them, just like Greg Clark, they’ll just be paralyzed into inaction by the inability to comprehend that ‘it’s happening to them’.
But on the other hand, this is an inflection point. Japan has chosen this overtly punitive xenophobia far too late; it’s already dependent on NJ to keep is economy going, wipe its seniors’ butts, staff it’s combinis etc. Hurting these people is state suicide. It seems that just like right wing populist movements in the UK and USA, the populace have to learn their lesson by giving these politicians free-reign to demonstrate what an unmitigated disaster they are in order for people to see they’ve been conned.
Personally, I would have preferred the less gracious version: the buyer’s remorse isn’t about discrimination, but rather that ‘Japanese first’ has exposed the ‘honne’ (real situation) for all to see (i.e., that Japan is for wajin, and that NJ residents, no matter how long they’ve lived in Japan, are guests at best and problems at worst).
Great article Debito,
It has been a while since you wrote here about situation in Japan. My wife has PR in EU country and nobody target her or any other legal resident. They gave her rights to live and not to make her life miserable or threats her with revoking PR for non payment of insurance or tax when income is low.
PR cannot be revoked unless you have criminal charges or you are security risk for the country not for non payment of insurance. Unlike in Japan she is treated as Citizen. I remember when they told her at immigration office: “now you can take social help with PR because the only different with Citizen is that you cannot vote in national elections. You have strong status now”. We were laughing because she didn’t take PR for sake of applying for social help :).
Anyway, re-entry to EU is on the same terms as EU Citizens. No EES, no future European ESTA. immigration booth together for EU Citizens. No fingerprints etc. just show passport with RC and slide as any EU Passport holder.
Nowhere is green grass but comparing with Japan, Europe has grass greener. By the way, to those Japanese or foreigners who see Europe sinking or turned into Middle East etc. Well…it is safe and maybe only a few countries such as France ( Paris), Sweden ( Malmo ) or Germany ( Berlin or Cologne) are not nice anymore. Brussels is really like Middle East but during the day life goes on and is safe.
Cheers
“By the way, to those Japanese or foreigners who see Europe sinking or turned into Middle East etc. Well…it is safe and maybe only a few countries such as France ( Paris), Sweden ( Malmo ) or Germany ( Berlin or Cologne) are not nice anymore. Brussels is really like Middle East but during the day life goes on and is safe.
Cheers”
Wojtek, you’re perpetuating the same xenophobic misinformation and demonization as Japan First. JF sees you the same way you see Ay-rabs, Kurds and non-Christians, many of whom have been displaced by recent wars. Debito, please call out and correct this bozo.
I already did, asking for academic sources or figures from Wojak’s naive comment, but my comment was not allowed. Maybe the RIP Henry Novak part.
—- Sorry, I don’t remember not approving that comment. I can’t find it in my trash.
“Correct this bozo”. “The Bozone Layer- protecting the world from Japan’s harmful Nihonjinron effects” – Larsen cartoon, paraphrased.
Yup, it is very true: Japan was like this all along, and anyone who thought they’d “wise up” and cooperate, was getting set up for pain.
Sanseito gaining ground seemed like a knee-jerk reflex for Japanese: “when in doubt kick the gaijin for our ineptness and lack of speaking up;” it coming when tourism as an income source was proposed. Now resident foreigners with PR are treated like tourists even by people whose shops they frequented (happened to me and people I know), and at worst even by neighbors who “decide” they don’t remember their neighbor.
However, I would only say to Debito: the U.S. with its MAGA cult is outright declaring war and bodily harm on the marginalized such as myself, and sadly the self-destructive and frankly irreversible consequences of Japan’s choices seem less lethal than those “back home” to me as a Black American.
Japan wants to reduce the number of NJ taxpayers.
And also in today’s news, Japan loses a record number of taxpayers due to population decline;
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/05/29/japan/japan-population-largest-decline/
Like I said many times, this is state suicide. We are watching Japan decide to finish itself off rather than accept that it’s nihonjinron giron racial and cultural superiority myths are fantasy.
For the hard of thinking; robots and AI don’t pay taxes, buy products and services, or make babies either.
Totally agree. I want to see this as an opportunity here: the influx of inbound tourists will expose Japan true “honne” about xenophobia and their inner sense of superiority among a lot of western societies. this might trigger pressure from other nations to change their policies towards minorities – in time.
I would like to point out that the fee for permanent residence (PR) in the EU for spouses of European citizens or Nationals is reduced to about €85. For others, it costs about €250. Spouses of EU citizens in the Benelux countries receive a five-year initial residency permit. Normally, there is no extension, only permanent residence. Of course, one must be eligible. If PR is refused, which happens, one has the right to appeal. In any case, even if the appeal is lost, spouses of EU citizens cannot be removed, they can continue to live and work in the country that their spouse lives. They receive a five-year extension. It costs €85.
I wonder if spouses of Japanese nationals will be treated the same way or have to pay full price for an extension or PR. The Japanese government says that they follow other countries. In that case, consider the EU’s approach to this matter, where different laws apply to spouses of EU citizens. I don’t believe it will happen, as someone wrote above: “Japan doesn’t want foreigners”, including spouses of Japanese nationals.
The way things happens here is clever.
The government doesn’t need to be overtly discriminatory or say, “Stop coming.” All of these new rules and fees will discourage people from coming automatically.
Also, Japan is not an immigrant-friendly country. The idea that Japan will become like Europe is unfounded. ( by the way what they mean like Europe) The majority of people fly here. They already have control whom to allow in. They also decide who to give visas to and who not to
In the New York Times print edition from June 1st, a Sri Lankan and Chinese person were interviewed. Both have to close their restaurants even though they have customers. Both cannot renew their visas and are going to leave, despite paying taxes.
Business visa applications have dropped 96 percent.
Onoda is satisfied with this.
But this is the goal, isn’t it?
Reality is that NJ business owners are ‘growing the pie’ of Japan’s economy, but (just like in the UK) the government thinks that adopting far-right policies that *are seen to be* performatively cruel towards NJ, even if counter-productive, will ‘steal the thunder’ of the far-right (in Japan’s case, Sanseito).
This is about the LDP choosing (yet again) policies that harm Japan and the Japanese people because they are prioritizing their own political survival.
LDP; king of ruins.
Now for getting PR even if the Japanese spouse of a foreign resident is late in paying taxes or pension contributions that is grounds for denying PR. This is according to an immigration lawyer. Even just one time.
Too many Chinese and brown people operating restaurants are a threat. It reminds the Japanese that they don’t have the finances or the know-how to start a business. White people are okay. They like that the whites want to live with them. Japan has a sliding scale when it comes to their racism, but sadly with these new changes, the whites will be culled too.
A similar case occurred in a European country involving a Japanese spouse and a non-EU spouse, who were both third-country nationals. Each operated their own business, and both were probably successful. Although self-employment visas are initially issued for two years, the renewal was unfortunately refused, ( ldue to insufficient required income ?). Consequently, they were ordered to leave the country within one month. This timeframe is problematic given the current Entry/Exit System (EES). Even a one-day overstay results in being flagged as an illegal overstayer. I was surprised and felt sorry for them, individuals who had established their lives be suddenly forced to depart with such an unreasonably short deadline.
As I know they were about to appeal decision through immigration law office.
When comes to Tokyo, I see in one part of the city new established kebab shops, shops with products from India, Pakistan. Then next to those few is another shop with Vietnamese flag selling food products and then Indian/Pakistani very tiny restaurant. All of those shops are very small.
Are all those people on spouse visas or permanent? Or someone opened and they are employees?
French restaurant in Okachimachi only serving „local customers“.
https://x.com/miike_hrk/status/2064345405266219292?s=46&t=IzAIE8zz8O3iUXFc2Hpuew
Japan doing it again, using the culture of other countries (in this case a multi ethnic one), but of course failing to import any anti discrimination rules, or even basic decency that‘s in place in those countries.
Can somebody send this to the French Ambassy and ask them if they feel their culture is being represented in a good way?
Good commentary, could‘ve been me.
https://x.com/dadsweb67/status/2066425851277975867?s=46&t=IzAIE8zz8O3iUXFc2Hpuew
Imagine if the same thing happened during Halloween. Shibuya mayor would‘ve banned and closed everything.
I was quite disappointed with how a relative and I were treated in Japan as foreign tourists. I was with an elderly relative in her late 70s who has a knee problem and hence significant mobility issues, but not once in a week did anyone on the trains in Tokyo offer her a seat, in fact on a couple of occasions she was violently shoved during rush hour.
While doing a Google search on general disability issues and rights in Japan, I came across a scheme called the “Helpmark”, which is basically a red tag someone can display to signal they have a disability and in theory is distributed to anyone who asks for one, regardless of nationality, at Toei metro stations, among various other places.
Yet I asked for one of these at three different Toei stations, and at two the station attendants both said “Not available here” even when posters promoting them were on display in the stations, and at the third station the attendant actually said “they are only for Japanese citizens”.
I was getting a bit irritated by this point and decided to argue with him, saying that the rules state that anyone can request one regardless of nationality, but he wouldn’t budge, and when I asked for his name (because I couldn’t read the Japanese name on his tag), he refused to give me a name and ripped his tag off so I couldn’t take a photo of it.
I was quite taken aback that the station staff would act in such a blatantly racist manner towards someone who is evidently elderly with mobility issues.
They seem to have zero empathy for any “gaijin”, the idea of giving something to a foreigner seems to be so unacceptable to the Japanese mentality that they practically have a meltdown over it.
I found it quite hard to fathom why the Japanese station staff in general responded in such a negative and frankly racist way to what I think was quite a reasonable and simple request. I’m from the UK and frankly I can’t imagine transport staff here behaving in such an unprofessional and discriminatory way towards a disabled foreigner.
I couldn’t imagine actually living in Japan as a foreigner and having to deal with that sort of bigoted and hateful attitude day in and day out.
— I know people who got the “Helpmark” who are not citizens, so all of their assertions were incorrect. I personally got one for a friend with no problem at Jinbocho station. I’m sorry this happened to you. You got three times unlucky with the station staff, I would like to say, but I’m hearing a lot about these attitude problems these days. If you’re still in Tokyo, I’ll give more details if you need to know where I got my friend a “Helpmark” with no issues.
I can‘t believe I‘m not dreaming. International media finally calling out Japan for using the rising sun flag at sporting events:
https://x.com/globaltimesnews/status/2069090336560029965?s=46&t=IzAIE8zz8O3iUXFc2Hpuew
Only took them several decades.
“Bozo” here. :))
I correct myself. Writing my comment I have probably gone too far. It was unnecessary to add more. I did not mean to offend anyone, though I have already done. Sorry for this. Cheers
@Niklas
The Global Times operates under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily. It’s deeply nationalistic and often takes aim at the Japanese. I wouldn’t consider it anything more than a propaganda rag for the CCP.
Fair enough, I honestly didn’t even know they were Chinese, I just saw a lot of English speaking media post about it on twitter, including the Guardian. The Guardian just linked its 2019 article though, so I went with something more recent which mentions the World Cup without really checking the source. My mistake.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/01/japan-rising-sun-flag-history-olympic-ban-south-korea
While I disagree with Chinese nationalism (or any nationalism) which the paper promotes according to Wikipedia, I must say that the article I linked is correct though. It is a racist symbol and it is forbidden under FIFA rules, because FIFA only allows national flags. In 2022 when the flag was confiscated in Qatar Japanese right wingers complained on twitter about it, but there was no media interest back then.
But again, my mistake for not checking what the newspaper is about. I’ll refrain from linking them in the future of course.
The weak ¥ is hurting Japan Inc. ;
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2026/07/10/japan/weak-yen-not-japan-strength/
Japanese companies are struggling to find workers;
https://japantoday.com/category/national/over-70-of-accommodation-hit-by-labor-shortages-amid-tourism-boom-in-japan
And more NJ don’t want to be here than before;
https://japantoday.com/category/national/survey-shows-foreigners%E2%80%99-desire-to-work-in-japan-long-term-dropping-but-that%E2%80%99s-not-the-whole-story
And the government is wasting its time pushing its anti-NJ right wing agenda, making new crimes about the flag, and desperately trying to pass a law that discriminates against women born into the Royal family.
Prediction; Japan Inc. is about to give Takaichi (with her pink pen and made-in-Japan handbag) the push.