No Mass Immigration Please, We’re Japanese!

While Europe grapples with open-door policies veiled by abstract political debates on immigration reduction, Japan tells a different tale. Contrary to prevailing sentiments, a growing number of Japanese individuals now long for a return to lockdown measures.

When the pandemic began in March 2020, Japan slammed its borders shut. The rules were so strict that it was impossible even for Japanese people to return to Japan if they had been abroad at the time. Although this policy was amended to allow Japanese passport holders to return, those with working or even permanent visas could not. Japan remained this way until the summer of 2022, with full reopening only happening in April 2023. One poll showed that as many as 86 per cent of Japanese were opposed to this decision.

Oh, how those in the UK, US, and Europe must have wished for such a situation.

As the dreams of Brexit continue to fade beneath the incompetence and malice of those in Westminster and Whitehall, let us compare the fate of two islands off the coasts of their respective continents and how they've dealt with migration in the last few years.

Since well before the pandemic, the UK has been beset by French fecklessness, supported by Brussels mandarins abetting the transit of migrants onto British shores. Of course, all those doctors and nurses are needed to 'prop up the NHS'; the UK simply cannot rely on its native populace to fill the ever-growing vacancies. That would be unthinkable and outside of acceptable Civil Service thought. But what about Japan? What have the Japanese been doing to mitigate the demographic crisis they have been looking down the barrel of since the '90s?

As a Japanese politician said when asked about opening Japan to immigrants, “Immigrants become old too.” For the Japanese, as with the vaccine for the virus, Europe and America are their petri dish. They watch, observe, and document, then make a policy that works best for them. Anyone who is not blinkered or acting in malice can see that Europe, by kicking the problem down the road, is making what was once a pebble into a boulder. You do not have to be an England footballer to worry that soon, the gentlest tap will have you nursing a broken metatarsal bone. Maybe Sisyphus will turn up on the Dover shores soon and be able to lend a hand.

Those with good memories may recall that in November 2020, a senior member of Japan’s governing party said that he wanted Japan to be a multi-ethnic society in the future. This announcement sent shivers down the spines of those who lionise Japan as a bastion of basedness.

I am reminded of when a Roman general would hold his triumph that a slave would whisper in his ear, “Remember thou art mortal.” Perhaps the same needs to be done for Japanophiles: “Remember, Japanese politicians are politicians.”

Japan treats the recommendations from foreign governments the same way an average person handles pamphlets from the Mormons when we open the door to them by accident. We thank them, pretend we are busy, and then put the pamphlet in the bin. A good example would be the regular police raids on Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district. To outsiders, Kabukicho is Tokyo’s red-light district, but it is much more than that. There are bars, restaurants, and arcades, as well as clubs and parlours. Before major events like the Olympics or G7, the police make sweeps of the area, close a few clubs, deport a few illegal workers, and tidy up. Things are quiet, and once the major event is over, life returns to normal.

When PMs from Cameron to Sunak and a slew of home secretaries vowed to cut immigration, the Japanese government was doing the inverse. When the Syrians were fleeing the Assad regime, Europe took tens of thousands; Japan took six. Ukrainians in Japan have been given extensions to their visas and Japanese language lessons. With Ukraine no longer being The Current Thing, those Ukrainians may find their visas not being renewed in a few years before being politely encouraged to return home or go elsewhere.

Is Japan going to open its doors to migrant hordes? Highly unlikely. In 2014, Turks and Kurds rioted outside the Turkish Embassy in Tokyo. There were mass arrests. The same happened a few weeks ago over Israel and Hamas. Was there an outcry in defence of the rioters? No, there was an outcry that foreigners were brawling in the street in Tokyo, as a guest does not do that in the host’s house. Deportations are on the horizon.

Japan is now looking to open its visa program for lorry drivers as there is a shortage (sound familiar?). Is this a door to mass immigration? No, the visas are temporary. When combined with a new law that improves workers' rights by requiring employers to cover healthcare costs after three years (which wasn’t required before), it means that the drivers will likely be given three-year visas and then rotated out to avoid costs. This will continue until the Japanese have trained new drivers and increased the number of autonomous vehicles, thus reducing the problem.

AI is where we hit Japan’s secret hope. AI, or rather machine learning (ML), is not new. Japan has been tinkering with ML alongside robotics for everything from healthcare to hoteliers since the '80s. It is estimated that AI is going to cut a swathe through white-collar workers in a few years, leaving millions unemployed. ChatGPT has already helped people pass the BAR exam in the US, so Julius Caesar will not have to go for the lawyers after all. For the Japanese, that surplus populace can be retrained, and the foreigners will be asked to go home.

Will Japan go full multiculti? Not with the current crop of politicians and resistance to outside coercion. Much to the chagrin of Rupert Wingfield Hayes, the BBC’s former correspondent in Japan, Japan would rather dwindle than allow immigrants in. That Japanese politician was right when he quipped “Immigrants get old too.” Indeed, they do, and Japan is betting on ML to mitigate the need for them.