日本の罠 2Japan Trap, Part 2

From media outlets across the ocean, or through the glowing rectangular portals in the palms of our hands, this phrase is repeated like an incantation. Politicians hurling aggressive rhetoric, demonstrations hoisting xenophobic slogans, and stacks of what are termed "hate books" piling up in bookstores. At a glance, it might indeed appear inevitable to conclude that this island nation is, quite literally, tilting to the right. However, for one who stands within the interior of this country, silently observing the daily rhythms of life, I cannot help but feel a fatal dissonance—a rupture with the real—regarding this unilateral and declarative discourse. If matters could be decided purely in black and white, nothing would be simpler.

But just as the preceding narrative of the West’s "shift to the right" proved, simplification is a fatal defect that causes one to misread the essence. Why is it that those who failed to gain insight into their own nations and regions, without a shred of reflection, feel entitled to summarily diagnose a distant country as "shifting right"? To invert the question: Is the Japanese populace truly shifting to the right?

What if the Japanese people are not shifting right, but rather, a specific segment is shifting strictly to the right? And what if that segment is, in fact, the political class? To phrase it differently: while the citizenry as a whole remains unmoved, only the politicians gripping the reins of power are running wild, veering sharply rightward. There is a crucial vantage point here. The entire Japanese populace, a scale of one hundred million, is not shifting. The shift is confined to a fraction of politicians and their kin.

However, even this definition of "right-wing" appears, to my eyes, exceptionally immature. For someone like myself, who has deeply contemplated the movements of the right wing that emerged during the Meiji era—the genesis of modern Japan—and who holds a certain reverence for the giants of that time, such as Toyama Mitsuru of the Genyosha or Uchida Ryohei of the Kokuryukai, the current so-called right wing is an entirely distinct entity, sharing only the name. It may sound strange to speak of a "genuine" right wing, but the current definition does not, to me, constitute a right wing at all. It is nothing more than a childish force driven by self-interest and the privatization of the system.

It is true that what is called anti-foreigner sentiment is rising domestically. Yet, rather than calling this a mere fact, it is, based on my visceral experience traveling across the country this past year alone, an inevitable outcome. Japan’s policy on accepting foreigners has been deployed without learning from the failures of Europe, pivoting on just two axes. The first is the intent of the economic organizations, known as Keidanren, which hold immense sway over the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). They seek labor that can be utilized cheaply; once that labor is summoned from abroad, their stance is one of indifference. The second axis is Western pressure. They forcefully assert that since they have accepted immigrants and refugees to such a degree, it is only valid for Japan to bear that responsibility as well. As a result, while it is generally said that Japan does not accept foreigners, it has ended up accepting a considerable number. Unlike Europe, which historically had contact with different ethnicities across the continent, Japan is a distant land with no historical contact or common ground with the immigrants or refugees in the sense that the West implies.

However, the rapid increase driven by these axes is a story of only the last decade or so. If one’s eyes are captured by this surface-level issue, the figure of the old-generation immigrants, who have quietly and steadily permeated the society to become an issue, remains hidden. In fact, the source of what can be called anti-foreigner sentiment currently occurring within Japan lies here. For instance, in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, Kurdish immigrants have gathered and are already in continuous conflict with the Japanese community. Because Kawaguchi is adjacent to Tokyo, one strongly senses, when speaking with friends in the capital, that anti-Kurdish sentiment is rising among Tokyoites through social media and other channels. Or, in parts of Aichi, Shizuoka, and Gunma, there are Brazilian immigrant communities from the post-war era that have become completely isolated from contact with the Japanese community. Furthermore, as the glory of the automobile industry begins to face its twilight, unemployment has surged, leading to an explosion in crime.

One could list countless such granular examples, but the same holds true for Tokyo, the metropolis everyone envisions. It is not well known to foreigners, but Tokyo is a relatively vast region composed of the central 23 wards, the Tama region, and the insular areas. The Tama region might be unfamiliar, but despite being part of Tokyo, it is a land rich in nature, with mountains and rivers. If you have the opportunity to stay in Tokyo for an extended period, I urge you to observe the disparities within these 23 wards. Sensuously speaking, just as London varies drastically in aspect between North, West, East, and South, something similar exists within these 23 wards.

Specifically, in Shinjuku Ward, which houses the entertainment district everyone visits, nearly half of the new adults are now foreign nationals (as of January 2025, out of 4,337 eligible individuals, 2,031 are foreigners). Limiting our view to the 23 wards, approximately 605,000 foreigners resided there as of the beginning of this year, reaching 6.1% of the total population of the city center. While Tokyo’s population continues to surge, one cannot overlook that foreigners are the central drivers of this growth. In fact, the population of Tokyo as of January 2025 is about 14 million, an increase of about 90,000 from the previous year, but about 74,000 of that increase—equivalent to 80%—is due to the increase in foreigners.

If one asks what is happening, the correct perspective on the recent reality of the unipolar concentration in Tokyo is not that masses of young people are moving from the provinces, but rather that foreigners, yearning for Tokyo, are flooding in. Indeed, I lived in Tokyo from 2010 to the end of 2017, and back then, it was not the case that foreigners were everywhere as they are now. The reason anti-foreigner sentiment is rising in Tokyo is surely not unrelated to this radical surge. In fact, 25 years ago, the number of registered foreigners in the entire 23 wards was 239,143 (the high number of unregistered individuals is also a problem), but in 2025, it has exploded to 605,506. In the flow of the "Lost 30 Years," Tokyo is no longer the Tokyo of the past.

Japan, and specifically the very confined area of the Tokyo 23 wards, is experiencing overpopulation. The problem is that an extreme trend of division is manifesting within this. This is well understood by looking at the percentage of foreigners in each ward based on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s announcements. Wards where there is no longer any recourse against the rapid increase include Shinjuku (13.5%), Edogawa (11.8%), Arakawa (10.5%), Taito (9.1%), and Kita (8.7%); in Shinjuku, one in seven people is now a foreigner. On the other hand, there are wards where Japanese people, averse to this foreigner-heavy situation, have flowed in, resulting in very low foreign ratios. These are Setagaya (3.0%), Nerima (3.5%), Suginami (3.8%), Meguro (4.0%), and Shinagawa (4.0%). In other words, Tokyo is already deeply divided within its small, dense 23 wards; to be more precise, it is becoming a mosaic.

And the reality is that this mosaic-ification of Tokyo is occurring on a nationwide scale at the regional level. Since the interior of Japan is already advancing toward a mosaic state, clashes between Japanese and foreigners in various places are inevitable. However, I have personally considered a point that differs greatly from the West, and that may lie in the perspective of "crime." Particularly in Osaka, where I reside, which has become the region with the most Vietnamese immigrants in Japan over the last decade (indeed, they are everywhere), their characteristic is that they are relatively slight in build and mild-mannered; thus, while petty crimes occur, crimes that precipitate a serious deterioration of public order are unlikely to happen. Of course, the future is unknown, and what I realized traveling around various places this year is that the main axis is rapidly shifting from the traditional Vietnamese immigrants to Pakistani and other groups. If the quality of crime worsens due to the change in immigrant regions, leading to a collapse in public safety, that would play exactly into the hands of the LDP regime.

In short, even based on my personal physical experience, the perspectives of Japan’s rightward shift or xenophobia often do not sit right with me. Rather, regarding the matter called the foreigner problem, including the reality of Tokyo’s 23 wards, my honest assessment is that for some regions, there are no longer any means to address it. That is how deeply the immigrants have already entered. What on earth is intended by this Japanese-style system that stuffs in numbers indiscriminately without considering the quality of immigrants, and then pushes all the problems onto the citizenry? This is what I wish to contemplate, without dancing to the tune of simple phrases like right-wing shift or exclusionism. By thinking about why the system has tolerated such things, I feel we can paradoxically foresee the risks that will arise.

One thing that must not be forgotten as the greatest characteristic of the Japanese people is the ethnic nature wherein, regardless of the scale of the populace, once they move significantly, they all move in the same direction. This has both positive and negative aspects. For example, the positive case is typified by the period of high economic growth. The entire nation united, grinding their bodies to dust in pursuit of the goal of "economic development," achieving the dramatic growth of the late 20th century. The negative case, conversely, is typified by the militarization driven by the runaway Army before the war. This nature itself has not changed even now; thus, if a major event occurs at a certain time, and the leaders of the regime can use it as a trigger to move the people in a certain direction, it could instantly result in the realization of precisely that rightward shift and exclusionism. Viewed from another angle, one could say they are currently crafting this "trigger." And the important thing is that the politicians themselves have neither the authority nor the decision-making power to do so. They possess only the authority to execute, as puppets, the decisions resolved behind them.

But suppose that while the politicians within the LDP regime create this trigger, they fail to possess the power to move the people all at once—what then? Actually, I consider that Japan’s future might head in this direction. In essence, this trigger will steadily be prepared under the LDP regime, and it is already a set course for Japan to revive nuclear armament (including rental from the US), rearmament, and conscription. However, if the LDP regime were to collapse here, or if the hegemony within the LDP were to shift significantly, and a previously unmarked figure were to suddenly emerge and display charismatic prowess, how would history move? We know that such things happen frequently in history. In other words, while the movements of the LDP regime can be read to some extent, this unmarked figure has likely not yet appeared as a politician, making them impossible for anyone to predict.

This is a rather rough speculation, but the reason I have set forth these preconditions at such length is that only by comprehensively considering them can we arrive at an examination of what intent has driven the LDP regime—which ended the Japan that began with the second Abe administration—to act as it has.

Think about it once more. First, since the incident in which Abe Shinzo was killed on July 8, 2022, the entities behind the LDP regime, which had been kept under a lid by his existence, have surfaced. Why was the primary figure among them the Unification Church, a religious organization headquartered in South Korea? And while the issue of a dissolution order for the Unification Church on the Japanese side seems to be occurring, movements premised on a dissolution order are also occurring on the South Korean side. What end does their dismantling signify? And who is urging the dissolution?

Second, was it truly only the Unification Church that stood behind the LDP regime?

By considering these two points, a startling vision of Japan comes into view. Japan, which appears on the surface to be enjoying tranquility and peace. However, its interior is the terminus of a colossal state system still bound by the chains of a certain era.

In yesterday’s article, I suggested an "invisible occupation" immediately following World War II; here, there is a Cold War-era system, alias "The Bastion Against Communism," stratified with this invisible occupation as its premise. And the true problem is that one of the organizations that was the master builder constructing this anti-communist bastion still survives, having changed its form. The existence of this organization, for whom the establishment of the second Abe administration was a cherished desire. Having lost their patriarch, Abe Shinzo, and appearing for a time to have lost influence over the LDP regime, they are now once again hoisting Prime Minister Takaichi and persisting tenaciously. It is as if they view the Takaichi administration as their final chance, beginning to broadcast hardline statements and performances through the Prime Minister.

The name of that organization is "Nippon Kaigi."

Japan’s post-war era shows no signs of ending.