The number of foreign residents in Japan hit a record 3.8 million at the end of 2024. That figure marks an increase up 10.5% from the previous year, according to immigration authorities – but still makes up just 3% of the country’s total population.<\/p>\n
Tourist numbers also hit an all-time high of about 36.9 million last year, according to the National Tourism Organisation.<\/p>\n
Sanseito has seized on the growing unease over immigration, blaming the ruling LDP for policies that have allowed more foreigners into the country.<\/p>\n
Anti-immigration rhetoric often surfaces in countries dealing with a weakening economy, says Mr Hall. <\/p>\n
“Misbehaviour and bad manners by some tourists” have added fuel to the fire, creating an impression of a “big foreign problem”, he adds.<\/p>\n
“[Sanseito] tapped into the frustration over immigration and the perhaps unwarranted feeling that immigrants were rising too much in number,” he says.<\/p>\n
Japan has traditionally been wary of immigration, but faced with an ageing population, the government had eased immigration laws in recent years in an effort to boost manpower. <\/p>\n
Some Japanese people have been frustrated by the influx of foreigners and have blamed them for rising crime and inflation, among other things.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, less than a week before the election, authorities set up a new committee aimed at easing citizens’ concerns, pledging to shape a “society of orderly and harmonious coexistence with foreign nationals.”<\/p>\n
But it now appears to have come too late – and Sanseito’s ascent may signal a turning point in Japan’s political landscape.<\/p>\n
“I think for years now, people said Japan doesn’t have a populist right, or doesn’t have a populist far right,” says Mr Hall. “But I think [the result] has proven that there is a possibility for this to happen in Japan, and it’s probably here to stay.”<\/p>\n
However, Mr Nishimura notes that it has been “notoriously hard” for populist parties to firmly establish themselves as a presence in Japanese politics because of the “fickle” electorate. <\/p>\n
“If they see that a party they supported isn’t living up to their expectations, they will revert to the established choices or move onto newer alternatives.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of foreign residents in Japan hit a record 3.8 million at the end of 2024. That…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-279506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}