Japan’s right is waging a war against immigrants. And it’s winning.
A recent survey from Sankei Shimbun of 1,000 men and women aged 17 to 19 found that 19.2% of them agreed that immigration is a “serious problem” for Japan. In response to such shifting, Japan’s government is doing everything it can to dissuade people from coming here.
For years, many Japanese have been happy to see foreigners in their midst. And, for the most part, I think that’s still true. Many are happy to have the opportunity to share Japanese culture with the world.
But the public is definitely souring on the increasing number of foreigners who visit and the ones who call Japan home. And the actions of Japan’s online right (ネトウヨ; neto-uyo) are a huge driving factor.
Japan’s right wing has successfully pushed a number of lies regarding immigrants. For example, they’ve pushed false narratives about “Muslim lunches” in Kitakyushu and people from African nations getting special visas.
These online lies have real-world impact. One survey last year showed that 64% of those asked believed that foreigners received “preferential treatment” from scholarship programs and other government-sponsored benefits, such as high-cost health care. In reality, the scholarship program that the online right was frothing about – the SPRING scholarship – was equally available to Japanese citizens, who constitute the majority (60%) of scholarship winners.
Most of these examples share a theme: greedy, scheming foreigners taking money from hard-working, tax-paying Japanese citizens. But that’s not enough. The right wing needs to do more than depict foreigners as greedy interlopers stealing money from Japanese citizens. It needs to paint foreigners as dangerous. A threat to public safety.
The right has successfully managed to do this, to an extent, with the 3,000 or so members of the Kurdish community in Saitama Prefecture’s Kawaguchi, blowing up a handful of criminal acts into some sort of existential threat to the nation. The problem for the neto-uyo is that crimes committed by foreigners are few and far between. Statistically, foreign residents don’t commit crimes at a greater rate than Japanese citizens.
To compensate for this, Japan’s right uses a tried and true fascist tactic: it makes shit up. A recent incident in Shibuya shows how the movement continues to take advantage of information voids to further its mission of hate.
