During the Osaka Universal Exhibition, organized from April 13 on an artificial island (“The Ile of the Dream”), Japan will want to show that it is not only turned towards the future, but also open to the world. However, this is not self -evident in an archipelago where the relationship with the other remains complex. In October 2024, there were 2.3 million foreign workers there, three times more than in 2014. And the country wants to accommodate 820,000 skilled workers in the coming years to compensate for a shortage of labor estimated at 11 million workers by 2040.
To do this, Tokyo is counting on the directives implemented over the years, which draw a migration policy that does not mean its name. In 1989, Japan resolved to revise the Immigration Act to host a new population. The choice fell on nikkeijindescendants of Japanese who emigrated in 1908 in South America. The criterion of ethnicity was then obvious: they were supposed to integrate without problem.
The number of foreigners has almost doubled in twenty years
Then Japan created in 1993 the system of “technical trainees”, which targeted young people from developing countries to fill the lack of staff in SMEs and agriculture at a lower cost. But these measures were not enough and, in the 2010s, the government imagined the statutes of “skilled workers” in 12 sectors, including health, construction and agriculture, that of “highly qualified professionals”, reserved for researchers or senior executives, and the visa targeting graduates of a hundred high -level universities.
As a result, the number of foreigners has almost doubled in twenty years (3.8 million in 2024 against 1.97 million in 2004, out of nearly 125 million inhabitants), and their presence is now visible on a daily basis. Vietnamese or Indian behind the counters of supermarkets; Nepalese in restaurant staff and hotels, even very conservative Ryokan, traditional hostels. In a closed Japanese company, where nationality remains difficult to obtain – 8,800 naturalized in 2023, against 39,700 in France -, they find it difficult to integrate, and arouse increasing distrust. “In a context of demographic decline, foreign workers are essential to maintaining the economy and Japanese society. We will ensure that their presence benefits Japan without compromising our way of life, in particular the low crime rate”, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba promised, anxious to reassure an island Japan, and who wants to remain so.
The Head of Government had been arrested on March 31 at the House of Representatives by the deputy Sohei Kamiya, leader of the small nationalist formation Sanseeito, who pleads for a company placing “the Japanese first”. His intervention followed the arrest in February in Kawaguchi, north of Tokyo, a Kurdish for the sexual assault of a young woman – the case aroused a wave of hateful messages on social networks. Kawaguchi is home to an important Kurdish community, who came there to escape persecution in Türkiye.
All communities affected by discrimination
The Prime Minister had to recall before the Parliament that “favoring the Japanese to foreigners were akin to discrimination”. Before, however, adding that foreigners who do not respect the rules “cannot stay in Japan”. The head of government also castigated Japanese social security gaps, according to him lax, with people who get visas to take advantage of free care.
Very real, discrimination in hiring and housing used to concern Koreans and Chinese, the main foreign communities of the archipelago from the beginning of the 20th century. Then they targeted the Nikkeijin, who are not integrating as well as hoped. Today, no community is spared. Such a situation does not raise indignation in a country which perceives itself ethnically pure and whose political class remains attached to the law of blood and to the idea that the foreigner has only a utilitarian function and must adapt, under penalty of exclusion. A vision that explains the absence of anti -discrimination legislation worthy of the name.