As someone who loves traveling to Japan, *please* tax me for it. Don’t let it being awesome ruin itself through tourist volume! Particularly for the Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto trio. I would happily pay more and help Japanese society out a bit. Congestion pricing works, take the money and do something useful with it.
I’d be happy if Japan were made more expensive for tourists because then the locals and a few privileged bastards like me would have it all to ourselves heheh
Travel to a foreign country is a luxury good so I don’t see any issue with adding a premium to it if it improves the experience. If they’re smart about it, they’ll add it only for the peak seasons and drop it for the other times.
The problem isn't the absolute amount so much as the concentration and bad behavior. The bad behavior the just needs more enforcement (globally). But for the concentration, you have both the carrot and the stick. For the stick, taxes, as suggested here make sense. But for the carrot: I think they can do a ton more. There are many interesting places in Japan outside the mainstream and also many interesting times year to go. There are many festivals few outside Japan are aware of. These can be promoted and incentivized to spread things out.
When I go, I personally choose not to use the duty free consumption tax exemption for tourists, because I think tourists who use the infrastructure should also pay for it. Many Chinese tourists come,specifically for shopping and the tax exemption is a draw.
Free language classes aren’t, themselves, a garanter of fluency or integration: Sweden’s been offering them for decades, but the classes are only as good as the teacher (who are often terrible or just phoning it in) and they’re predicated on the assumption that immigrants will attend language schooling full-time for 12-18 months upon arrival, instead of, you know… working.
Which isn’t really something that makes sense for the higher-skill immigrants you might want to attract, especially as cost-of-living makes it pretty unrealistic to go without income for a year or two! To accommodate those folks, you need weekend and after-hours courses and remote learning, which are, of course, logistically challenging to organize.
The idea of making the courses dual-use as networking with locals seems great, in theory, but how would this actually work in practice? Japanese professionals are famously overworked already! Why would they give of their precious little free time to hand-hold some foreigners? Swedes don’t work as much and immigrants basically don’t exist to them, except as a problem, occasionally. There’s certainly no cosmopolitan networking occurring at these language classes or in any other mediated setting!
It seems more feasible that there could be on-the-job mentorships or programs for companies motivated by a labor shortage wherein the mentors were actually incentivized to do it. Maybe pair that with subsidized language programs on-site at companies after hours?
I don’t think a lot of integration policies or initiatives—in Europe, in particular—are really gamed out very rigorously, and the devil is really in the details. The programs that exist tend to put the responsibility/blame on the troublesome foreigner for learning a rote version of local cultural norms, a grab-bag of civic facts, and some language—but little is asked of the hosts. And what motivation do locals have to step up? And that’s even true for the people whose job it is! As stated, though many of the professional language teachers are motivated and engaging, many and perhaps most aren’t—the role is genuinely tough and the pay/status is low so the simple majority are treating it like “just another service sector job,” like maybe working as an eldercare aid. So these challenges would need to be addressed realistically to actually execute on such a program with positive outcomes.
The US successfully assimilated a massive immigration wave in the 1800s and are in the process of assimilating a massive immigration wave from the 1980s/90s without any of that. We don't have any of the violence and riots or any of the outrageous mass sexual assaults or pedophile rings that characterize European mass immigration.
This is, of course, not by design, but by the dumb luck that we live next to culturally and religiously similar latinos, and not Muslims like Europe does. The same brain dead progressives that launched European mass immigration here in the US would have let them in too if they came. But Japan isn't run by brain dead progressives, and they are focusing on immigration from other Asian countries, so I suspect it will work out more like American immigration than European.
The claim that the United States assimilated its historical waves of immigrants without experiencing violence, crime, or social disruption is both inaccurate and ahistorical. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrant communities in the U.S. were frequently and often *primarily* associated with crime, disorder, and moral panic—fueled by the same factors you see in Europe today: poverty, poor/segregated urban conditions, and populist xenophobic media coverage. Irish and Italian neighborhoods were linked to gang violence and organized crime; Chinese immigrants were accused of spreading vice and were targeted in violent pogroms such as the 1871 Los Angeles massacre and the 1885 Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming. Nativist fears about immigrant criminality and cultural incompatibility led to widespread discrimination and legal restrictions, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which codified ethnic quotas based on racial hierarchies.
Immigrants were also central to the radical political movements of the era. German, Italian, Jewish, and Eastern European immigrants helped lead major labor uprisings, often under socialist, syndicalist, or anarchist banners. The 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago—a defining moment in American labor history—involved German immigrant anarchists. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Russian Jewish immigrants, were linked to bombings and even attempted assassination. The 1901 assassination of President William McKinley was carried out by an anarchist of Eastern European descent, further fueling anti-immigrant hysteria and government crackdowns like the Palmer Raids of 1919–1920. So the notion that America was somehow uniquely immune to immigrant-linked unrest or extremism is a selective retelling of history.
Furthermore, the idea that Europe’s current immigration challenges stem from “brain dead progressives” is politically inaccurate. Many of Europe’s major immigration policies were implemented or expanded under conservative or centrist governments. Germany’s Gastarbeiter (“guest worker”) program that brought in millions of Turks began under conservative governments in the 1950s–60s and continued for decades. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a center-right leader, oversaw Germany’s decision to accept large numbers of Syrian refugees in 2015. In the UK, immigration from Commonwealth countries accelerated under Conservative governments, including under Churchill and Macmillan. In Sweden, the center-right government in the early 2010s made decisions that allowed for high levels of refugee intake (the Conservative PM implored Swedes to “open your hearts”)—long before the Social Democrats returned to power and quickly clamped down on the intake in response to backlash. Immigration has often been driven by economic needs and post-colonial obligations, not simply by left-wing ideology.
This idea that people migration happens because bleeding hearts want it to out of stupidity or naïveté or something is nonsensical. Immigration happens a because of both *demand* for immigrants among countries with declining demographics and labor shortages (AKA the entire Western and developed world, now including Japan) and *supply* of people desperate to leave untenable economic or political conditions.
And political efforts to stop immigration are always extremely difficult if not impossible: just look at how shiftless the post-Brexit efforts to reduce immigration were in the UK—the opposite occurred, with immigration spiked ever since they left the EU! So far, despite its fevered rhetoric and draconian methods, the Trump Administration has actually deported fewer illegal immigrants than was the average under Biden in the US! And what about that Bug Beautiful Wall!? It remains rhetorical only. None of this is from lack of trying: the truth is that it’s just not an easy fix to stem immigration if that supply and demand is there! Not the least because there are always perverse incentives to not *really* do what it takes: why isn’t Trump’s ICE focusing on punishing employers and individuals that hire all this illegal labor, if it’s such an emergency issue? Just make e-verify universal and clamp down on anyone who breaches and viola, the demand-side factor is gone, right? Oh yeah, that hasn’t even been attempted … because those law-breaking employers are ironically often the Republicans’ wealthy, donating base! You saw this dynamic revealed when Trump suddenly decides that farms and meatpackers hiring illegals is fine, actually.
Lastly, the idea that Latin American immigration to the U.S. is inherently easier to assimilate than Muslim immigration to Europe is reductive. The U.S. has long wrestled with the integration of Latino communities—who face obvious language barriers, economic marginalization, and cultural scapegoating, much like immigrant groups in Europe. Many Muslim immigrants to Europe come from former colonies (e.g. Algerians to France or South Asians to the UK) and both speak the language natively and share cultural affinities that are arguably closer than you’d see between a Spanish-speaking Cuban or Mexican and Anglophone American culture). The difference between the European and the American experience of integrating near-abroad immigrants lies not in some inherent cultural compatibility but in the longer timeframe and fewer post-colonial entanglements. Assimilation, whether in the U.S. or Europe, is always a long-term, multi-generational process—usually painful and politically contested in the short-to-medium term (and clearly even still, with our current MAGA politics). History shows that no society integrates newcomers without conflict, and painting one region as successful and another as a failure based on present anxieties is historically and politically misguided.
I am anti mass migration but if you don't think there's a difference between integrating immigrants from Latin America vs from the Muslim world you're delusional.
Although the problem with MENA immigrants in Europe is perhaps not so much down to their Islamic faith as to their high propensity for cousin marriage and the related "kin first" mentality that is at odds with the modern nation-state.
(And notably, geography likely means that Muslim immigrants to Japan will be mostly Indonesian or Malaysian, which are not part of the "cousin marriage zone" created by the 7th-century Arab conquests that stretches roughly from Morocco to Pakistan inclusive.)
Michael Cook, a scholar of Middle East and Islamic studies, wrote the book Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective.
He is no anti Islam polemic but he shows that Islam is much harder to secularize than Christianity or Hinduism. Mohammed was a military and political leader not just a religious leader like Jesus.
Muslims can be secular (I know several proudly secular Muslims) but it's not a natural part of the religion.
This is a large part of why I find the reports of exceptionally low immigrant crime in the US somewhat unconvincing. Either the United States has immigrants committing significantly fewer crimes than citizens, in contrast to both its own history and the rest of the world, or the US has poor data collection, due to both its federal structure and citizens' expressed desires.
As Jake said, immigrants are people and therefore there's therefore a diversity of experience dependent on their context. Oftentimes, immigrants are coming to the United States from Mexico, Honduras, et al to *flee* organized crime.
But, yeah, if you end up in a high-crime part of a city where gangs rule the block and there are limited other legit options, you might even be forced into it. So there's a HUGE difference between the experience the child of a Pakistani professional in Naperville, IL and the experience of another child-of-immigrants living in low-income area of Chicago's Southside. Similarly, people who move to grittier Newark, NJ are statistically much more likely be drawn into crime than people who move to leafier Edison, NJ.
Also, you have to consider that a tiny percentage of people do serious crime and that violent crime is VERY concentrated. I was born in Washington, DC, which, at that time, was the murder capital of the United States. But in all the years of living there I never experienced crime. That's because you could draw a line through the city map and basically 80% of the crime is in the East and 20% in the West (where I lived). You could get more surgical and break out just a few neighborhoods where almost all the gang activity was (almost entirely in Wards 7 and 8 near the Anacostia River). Places that most people who weren't born there had never been to and would never go.
These are also not neighborhoods you would move to as an immigrant for the basic reason that there isn't local employment or decent schools there, the things that even low-income immigrants want. Instead, immigrants to the DC-area now move to the Virginia or Maryland suburbs directly, where even in less fancy areas they can find cheaper housing combined more economic opportunities and little crime. Fairfax County, VA is 35% foreign-born and Montgomery County, MD is 33%. DC itself is only 14% foreign-born and those immigrants who do live in DC don't live in Ward 7 or 8, but instead fast-gentrifying places like Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights, and Petworth. This pattern is reflected all over the United States: the immigrant experience is a suburban experience. That's something that isn't really reflected in the rhetoric around immigration at all.
Another analysis is that most crime occurs in pockets of poverty stricken, gang prominent areas. Sometimes this occurs from immigration, or ethnic enclaves, or just a concentration of the economic underclasses. This seems true across many different countries and situations. If you go into any American city - most the crime is concentrated into a few key areas.
At various times in the US history immigration has channeled into this ghettos and other times (or concurrently, but in different places) has not. Likewise the baselines for native populations has varied.
There are large disparities between different groups in the US in the amount of crime they commit, so averaging them all together to compare against immigrants seems intellectually dishonest.
The US had large anti-immigrant riots in Philadelphia in 1844; St. Louis in 1854, Cincinnati and Louisville in 1855; Baltimore in 1856; Washington, D.C., and New York City in 1857; and New Orleans in 1858. The "American Party", based entirely on the single issue of anti-immigrants, became a viable third party.
Then there were the many anti-Chinese riots. The Rock Springs massacre where 28 Chinese immigrants were murdered and 78 homes burned. The San Francisco riot which lasted 2 days. The Seattle riot.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which made it illegal for Chinese to immigrate. The Asiatic Exclusion League. The California Alien Land Land of 1913 that made it illegal for Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Korean farmers to own land. The 1907 Gentleman's Agreement that limited Japanese immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 that banned all Asians from entering the US.
"The programs that exist tend to put the responsibility/blame on the troublesome foreigner for learning a rote version of local cultural norms, a grab-bag of civic facts, and some language—but little is asked of the hosts."
That's how it should be. You immigrate to a place it's your job to learn and fit in. If that's not your bag, then maybe don't immigrate.
This is a common attitude but it assumes that: 1/ immigrants benefit from immigration more than the host country 2/ immigrants don't have other options 3/ immigrants come as supplicants and 4/ host societies even really have the option to turn down immigration.
Firstly, it's important to note that throughout history there are copious examples of kingdoms, empires, and countries *recruiting* high-value immigrants instead of "suffering" or "indulging" them. French Huguenot Refugees, Venetian Glassmakers, and Jewish Diaspora were the Early Modern equivalent to "S.T.E.M." workers today. The American Industrial Revolution was sparked by a British citizen named Samuel Slater who emigrated illegally around the time of the Constitution. And remember "Operation Paperclip," when the US government facilitated the cushy emigration of almost 2,000 Nazi scientists to the US right after WWII, including the famous Wernher von Braun? This continued throughout the Cold War, with Miami Cubans just one of many well-known examples of the US rolling out the red carpet for immigrants, many of whom made very few efforts to learn and fit in. Host countries then as now knew that immigrants can be extremely valuable assets and that even in the midst of geopolitical crisis, they could chose to go elsewhere. The Soviets (and the British) were very upset that the Americans were pulling all those scientists out of Germany before they got the option to themselves.
Even when you're talking about "low-value" immigrants, the historical expectation of the immigrant to be responsible for integration has often been very low. My Swedish wife has Swedish-American family spread all over the Untied States, and the first wave of them were actively recruited and often never bothered to learn or speak English upon arrival. I own several original Swedish-language newspapers that serviced the 19th and early 20th Century ethnic enclaves in places like Illinois and the Dakotas. My wife's relatives a century ago attended Swedish-language Lutheran Churches, lived in Nordic-style log cabins (yeah, that most American thing actually came from Finland), and often engaged in Social Democratic or Socialist politics, just like back home.
For the curious, there's a fascinating and excellent pair of Swedish movies from 1971-72, "The Emigrants" (Utvandrarna) and "The New Land" (Nybyggarna) available with English subtitles, that covered this experience. As those movies (and my wife's own family history documents), those Swedish immigrants absolutely weren't always welcomed with open arms or 100% happy about their new home, and their experience in 1895 or 1925 really wasn't that different to a Mexican-American living in a Latino-majority, Spanish-dominant community in Southern Texas or a Syrian "New Swede" living in public housing in Stockholm today. Nativists then, as now, despaired that the strangers in their midst would ever be "truly American" (or Swedish). And yet the great-grandchildren of those original Swedes, in the case of my wife's family, did quite well in The New Land and are (perhaps ironically) voting for Trump!
And I'm going to make a bold prediction that the balance of demand and supply is going to tip even further to favor the immigrant in the 21st Century, despite xenophobic backlash, undermining the premise of your comment further. Why? Demographic collapse! Everyone just needs more people! That labor crunch is most acute in places like Japan or Italy or Canada today. But it's even affecting the United States. And this is going to mean that, like it or not, host countries are going to start competing more and more for both "high-value" and "low-value" immigrants, alike, the 2030s equivalent to 17th Century Venetian glassmakers and 19th Century Swedish dirt-farmers. Americans are going to look South of the Border and Europeans are going to look South of the Mediterranean with ambivalence, for sure, but will have to grow to see their Latin American or African neighbors as a much needed shot in the arm. Without them, the developed world will face a bleak future of the elderly outnumbering children, chronic labor shortages, and social program collapse. And at that point, will we be asking if the much-needed healthcare aid or doctor is trying hard enough to fit in?
In Japan students visas require basic language proficiency (JLPT N4) and work visas for some occupations (like nursing, which Philippines has an export market in) and hospitality and construction also require it. Companies that sponsor visas also require language skills, and do provide training after arrival.
In my experience, immigrant workers I’ve talked to in hotels and convenience stores all had basic Japanese fluency, and most English as well. These were immigrants from Nepal, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and other places, which all have great economic incentives to emigrate to Japan, so I assume that either through visa selection or motivation the people who studied the language the most got in, or at least are the ones in customer facing jobs (these were at places ranging from the Family Mart in Nagasaki station, to the Ritz-Carleton in Fukuoka)
Well that would reduce visitors from Thailand and China and other countries that Japan requires tourists to have visas, but EU, Australia, US and Canada don’t need visas now.
Only a few tourist attractions like Himeji castle have higher fees for non residents, but it isn’t widespread and probably unevenly enforced since I doubt locals enjoy having to show ids. And same would be true of Noah’s hotel tax suggestion, hotels are now only supposed to require passports only of non-resident foreigners, but they don’t want to burden locals, so they only ask for passports of guests who have non-Japanese names, aren’t fluent or who don’t have the right look. This in practice means, as happened to me in the past, permanent residents have to carry passports, even though legally they aren’t required to show them. One Japanese woman with a Korean name sued a hotel for this practice, but I don’t know what the outcome was. Hotels are very accommodating to locals, many let you check in without a credit card or ID and you just pay cash when checking out - but they never allow this for guests that don’t appear Japanese. So collecting a non-resident hotel tax (not on foreign bank accounts, since it would be avoidable by paying cash) would be covered under the same passport requirement, but there would be many complaints from resident foreigners.
Note that Japanese hotel taxes are pretty low, there is a 400¥ accommodation tax, a 300¥ furo tax if the hotel has a hot spring, and then bigger hotels typically add a 2000¥ combined service and tax charge, but I think it’s mostly not tax.
Last year there were some ramen shops that implemented a foreigner “tax” by putting expensive options on the menu like seafood ramen with a small crab leg thrown in for 3500¥, which no local would pay for, but rich tourists think it’s a good deal - which it is because can you get even a basic ramen in California for under $24 including tax and tip?Ramen shops typically charge only around 500¥ for ramen, and these businesses depend on high turnover, and while locals eat and leave in less than 10 minutes, tourists come in and take photos and linger too long over what is really fast food.
Those are fair concerns. Some countries do entrance fees without requiring you to go through the entire visa process. You might also open yourself up for reciprocal fees, but could structure it in such a way that maybe no one will feel slighted by it.
The overarching point I was trying to make is that if over tourism is a problem then just tax the tourism to both reduce it to a manageable level and capture some of that value, but the implementation of it will be important.
I am starting to wonder if these hard-right swerves are a feature rather than a bug of post-industrial societies facing demographic decline (which is to say pretty much all of them). The peculiarities of Japan's terrain, culture, and socio-politics seems to have buffered it for a while but no amount of insulation lasts forever.
Japan had a lot of problems this year. Rice shortages, rising prices, a series of high-profile incidents involving foreign investors and refugees, and another summer of climate change. I do agree that tourism plays a part in this, but for a different reason than you raise. Even in the heart of Kyoto, where the flood of outsiders is truly out of control, I sensed little friction with visitors (this was confirmed by several cabbies I spoke to there last week.) Rather, I think young folks in particular see this big influx of people who look a lot like them going wild on vacations they can't afford themselves, and it makes them angry about their situation. Most seem smart enough to blame it on their leaders rather than the visitors. But obviously not all.
It's hard to tell at this early stage if Sanseito's success simply reflects their drawing out fringe voters who would normally have sat things out (almost 60% of the eligible population voted in this election, compared to just over 50% usually), or an actual movement. It's scary stuff either way, but regardless, the issues Japan is facing as a hyperaging post-industrial society aren't going away anytime soon.
It just seems that when industrial nations transition into service economies, and begin ageing and shrinking, those left behind grow frustrated and angry at being left out, and those who prosper grow angry at having to do less with more. A certain percentage snap and begin lashing out at convenient targets, whether opposition parties or minority groups or immigrants, or all three. Can you name a Western post-industrial society that isn't wrestling with this problem to some degree?
The demographic situation that may lead to young males voting for radical change could be from the large and increasing percentage of old people, who then naturally vote in their own interests. As in other countries where the conservative backlash is strong, women don’t seem to be as much behind it. In US and maybe Europe young males seem to resent that women have more opportunities, disproportionately enroll in college, and are more selective in dating partners, but I don’t know if these trends are similar in Japan.
Great article. As a Westerner who has been living in Asia (currently Thailand) for the past two decades I've noticed that not only has the number of tourists been increasing but their behavior has been getting worse. There has always been a subset of tourists who come and insist on making trouble but recently it seems hardly a day goes by without a viral story about a (usually Western) foreigner starting a fight, destroying property, or simply acting like an entitled ass towards locals. I think this partly reflects the post-Covid breakdown of social cohesion at home, where people are just nastier and less considerate than they used to be for reasons I don't understand. Another big problem is social media and the "influencer economy" where wannabe influencers perform outrageous stunts in public for clicks (like that idiot on the train in the video Noah shared), to the annoyance of the local population.
As someone who grew up in Osaka in late 90s to 00s and lived in Tokyo in 2010s, I can’t stress enough how touristy it became!
And unlike Rome, we haven’t built the infrastructure to accommodate all tourists- like Kyoto has seen some tourist issue for long time but it still was limited to “tourists from Tokyo”
And Kyoto’s public transportation is not built to get around - it is rather designed to go to Osaka for commuting (Hankyu, Keihan and JR are basically all going to Osaka. The only exception is Kintetsu that is going to Nara). And there’s no way that busses that go to those touristy areas are suffice. Oh, don’t get me started how Kyoto station is outside of downtown Kyoto or the touristy places for the weird train aversion in Meiji era - (downtown Kyoto, Karasuma and Kawaramachi on Shijo Street is about 1.5-2 miles north of Kyoto station)
In fact, a half of my high school classmate went to Kyodai (Kyoto University) but their primary transportation is a bike.
I wish Kyoto had built more public transportation but building subways in Kyoto is very challenging - too many historic stuffs in the ground!
As a temporary resident staying in Kyoto the public transit situation is definitely suboptimal. I usually take the bus to get from one side of the city to another, but compared to Tokyo it takes forever. At least it makes the city feel a bit slower and more peaceful than Tokyo and Osaka. I feel a bit guilty about contributing to the absurd overtourism going on here, but especially in the quiet area where I live it is quite pleasant.
Having spent most of the past decade in Japan I think it’s definitely the tourism: these days most foreigners that Japanese interact with are tourists, and virtually all of the “bad behavior” from foreigners is by tourists (as you point out, the vast majority of foreigners living in Japan make a concerted effort to follow Japanese social norms). Why not charge a significant tourist tax (>US$100) for visiting? It could easily be levied via being added to airline fares for visitors who don’t have a visa or a Japanese passport. Not only would it raise tax income, it would also result in a change in mix of tourists and (hopefully) less anti-social behaviour.
I think something that doesn't go remarked on enough re: the implications of Japan's ageing population is not just its impact on labour supply, but how it hits aggregate demand. An increasingly elderly population doesn't just work less. It tends to consume less - except, of course, in certain sectors, like healthcare.
This is key to explaining both the economic offsetting impact of immigration and tourism. Immigrants who come to Japan, or any other country, aren't just workers. They are also consumers, who have to buy all manner of goods and services as part of their day-to-day lives. Similarly, when you have an ageing population that's going out and buying less, bringing in tourists to provide revenue for businesses that would have otherwise catered to working adults also becomes an imperative.
In debates over immigration, this is something you virtually never hear brought up, either by proponents of immigration or opponents.
One reason is that criminal law is strict, suspects can be held incommunicado for long periods for interrogation without lawyers allowed and using threats and sleep deprivation, and if arrested the conviction rate is 99%. If questioned by the police just touching the cop (as in trying to push past them) can trigger this detention, and potential violators know this.
The 99% conviction rate always comes up but doesn't mean much.
Most places have extremely high conviction rates because prosecutors generally don't bother bringing cases unless they have very high confidence of winning.
The US Federal government has a 99.6% conviction rate. Only 0.4% are acquitted.
Israel's conviction rate is 93%.
England's conviction rate is 85%. The national average of the states of the US is over 80%.
Japanese law is one where the accused have the burden of proof they are innocent, opposite that of Anglo Saxon law. So Japanese is not all paradise if you fall afoul of the law.
I have to laugh, as this is inescapably special pleading. The challenges and solutions described apply exactly to every other place with immigrants and/or tourism.
Don’t get me wrong, these are all good suggestions. But the idea that only Japan should be exempt from the fate of Niagara Falls is transparently silly. You literally compare the cherry blossoms to Venice and NYC. Venice and NYC have to be Venice and NYC!
Next up: why NIMBYism is okay in Japan, and only in Japan.
I liked the part about how limiting immigration was ok for Japan, because of how culturally homogenous it is. Take a drive out to Kansas or any other place that's against immigration - pretty homogenous there too!
One thing that’s struck me about coming here to Japan is how much more like West it is increasingly becoming, in ways both good, bad and neutral. On the one hand it has an enormous number of unique traditions and cultural products, both new and old, going strong as ever, but it is also increasingly obsessed with Western fashion, brands, music, food and, unfortunately, politics. It seems like Japan has had an unusually apolitical culture for a long time, which is part of why the basically ideology-less LDP has stayed in power for so long. But that seems to be quickly changing. That was probably made inevitable by the recent immigration and tourist waves (which in turn were made inevitable by the aging population), even if the amount of immigration is still, by Western standards, tiny at this point (though it may not stay that way). Similar problems produce similar reactions, it seems, no matter the country.
Hasn’t Japan been obsessed with Western brands and culture for a long time? Things like denim mastery, Ivy League fashion were decades ago, weren’t they?
I don't think we can view mass migration outside the context of elite failures that have damaged western societies recently. What are the odds that it is another elite failure and that the economic/social science research justifying it is garbage? It certainly seems to be the cause of many of our political issues right now. What is the chance that mass migration will down as one of the biggest manmade disasters in human history?
You think mass migration is going to rank up there with the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Irish Famine, the Bengal Famine, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, the Albigensian Crusade, etc etc etc?
I think it has the potential - maybe not in total deaths, but how damaging it could be economically and socially. The changes made through mass immigration are permanent. If there are major issues, it will be extremely difficult to fix them. This isn't a policy that can simply reversed. Imagine how destabilizing a single civil war in a country such as the UK would be to the world order, and then imagine what will happen when other countries realize they are in the same situation with no way out.
A co-worker and his wife went to Sweden to visit the wife's relatives. He was the NASA representative to NATO at the time. In conversation the relatives mentioned the "Italians" who ran an ice cream shop down stairs. The "Italians" were part of a group who came in during the Napoleonic era. Italians reminds me of a walking tour of Boston with my brother in law. We walked from Back Bay to Paul Revere's house and back. I remember hearing more Italian spoken than Murikan.
A couple of points, Noah. Are you perhaps overestimating/being a bit premature about the importance of this result, i.e., that of Sanseito? I mean, look at the results:
What seems to have happened, more than anything else, is a significant loss by the Komei and a a mix up of the opposition parties. It is true that the Sanseito increase is significant, but it's not even the largest opposition and from my (somewhat limited) understanding, it's not uncommon for these parties to rise and fall?
To be clear, I'm not super familiar with Japanese politics, but I do get the impression that people are seeing too much of a backlash here. Not no backlash, there's definitely some of that (especially towards tourists!), but the size might not be as large as the reaction seems.
Also, per our discussion in real life, it would be excellent if Japan had more easily accessible language classes, for sure, and that could be a very important policy. But it's possible to have significant integration even if your Japanese isn't that great, as long as opportunities are there, something we disagree a bit in.
For now, with the mass migration that's happening, Japanese companies need to be more open to people with more limited Japanese skills. We're not talking huge numbers here, yet, but there's going to be significant amount of wasted skills if they aren't more flexible than having the usual JLPT N2 requirements. I.e., accept more workers with something a bit lower for positions where Japanese doesn't have to be that high, accepting the trade-off between language skills for other skills (and give workers a chance to improve their Japanese as time passes, that's fine).
As immigration number grow, the current inflexibility is going to be a growing issue...
As someone who loves traveling to Japan, *please* tax me for it. Don’t let it being awesome ruin itself through tourist volume! Particularly for the Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto trio. I would happily pay more and help Japanese society out a bit. Congestion pricing works, take the money and do something useful with it.
Agreed.
I’d be happy if Japan were made more expensive for tourists because then the locals and a few privileged bastards like me would have it all to ourselves heheh
Travel to a foreign country is a luxury good so I don’t see any issue with adding a premium to it if it improves the experience. If they’re smart about it, they’ll add it only for the peak seasons and drop it for the other times.
The problem isn't the absolute amount so much as the concentration and bad behavior. The bad behavior the just needs more enforcement (globally). But for the concentration, you have both the carrot and the stick. For the stick, taxes, as suggested here make sense. But for the carrot: I think they can do a ton more. There are many interesting places in Japan outside the mainstream and also many interesting times year to go. There are many festivals few outside Japan are aware of. These can be promoted and incentivized to spread things out.
When I go, I personally choose not to use the duty free consumption tax exemption for tourists, because I think tourists who use the infrastructure should also pay for it. Many Chinese tourists come,specifically for shopping and the tax exemption is a draw.
Free language classes aren’t, themselves, a garanter of fluency or integration: Sweden’s been offering them for decades, but the classes are only as good as the teacher (who are often terrible or just phoning it in) and they’re predicated on the assumption that immigrants will attend language schooling full-time for 12-18 months upon arrival, instead of, you know… working.
Which isn’t really something that makes sense for the higher-skill immigrants you might want to attract, especially as cost-of-living makes it pretty unrealistic to go without income for a year or two! To accommodate those folks, you need weekend and after-hours courses and remote learning, which are, of course, logistically challenging to organize.
The idea of making the courses dual-use as networking with locals seems great, in theory, but how would this actually work in practice? Japanese professionals are famously overworked already! Why would they give of their precious little free time to hand-hold some foreigners? Swedes don’t work as much and immigrants basically don’t exist to them, except as a problem, occasionally. There’s certainly no cosmopolitan networking occurring at these language classes or in any other mediated setting!
It seems more feasible that there could be on-the-job mentorships or programs for companies motivated by a labor shortage wherein the mentors were actually incentivized to do it. Maybe pair that with subsidized language programs on-site at companies after hours?
I don’t think a lot of integration policies or initiatives—in Europe, in particular—are really gamed out very rigorously, and the devil is really in the details. The programs that exist tend to put the responsibility/blame on the troublesome foreigner for learning a rote version of local cultural norms, a grab-bag of civic facts, and some language—but little is asked of the hosts. And what motivation do locals have to step up? And that’s even true for the people whose job it is! As stated, though many of the professional language teachers are motivated and engaging, many and perhaps most aren’t—the role is genuinely tough and the pay/status is low so the simple majority are treating it like “just another service sector job,” like maybe working as an eldercare aid. So these challenges would need to be addressed realistically to actually execute on such a program with positive outcomes.
The US successfully assimilated a massive immigration wave in the 1800s and are in the process of assimilating a massive immigration wave from the 1980s/90s without any of that. We don't have any of the violence and riots or any of the outrageous mass sexual assaults or pedophile rings that characterize European mass immigration.
This is, of course, not by design, but by the dumb luck that we live next to culturally and religiously similar latinos, and not Muslims like Europe does. The same brain dead progressives that launched European mass immigration here in the US would have let them in too if they came. But Japan isn't run by brain dead progressives, and they are focusing on immigration from other Asian countries, so I suspect it will work out more like American immigration than European.
The claim that the United States assimilated its historical waves of immigrants without experiencing violence, crime, or social disruption is both inaccurate and ahistorical. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrant communities in the U.S. were frequently and often *primarily* associated with crime, disorder, and moral panic—fueled by the same factors you see in Europe today: poverty, poor/segregated urban conditions, and populist xenophobic media coverage. Irish and Italian neighborhoods were linked to gang violence and organized crime; Chinese immigrants were accused of spreading vice and were targeted in violent pogroms such as the 1871 Los Angeles massacre and the 1885 Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming. Nativist fears about immigrant criminality and cultural incompatibility led to widespread discrimination and legal restrictions, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which codified ethnic quotas based on racial hierarchies.
Immigrants were also central to the radical political movements of the era. German, Italian, Jewish, and Eastern European immigrants helped lead major labor uprisings, often under socialist, syndicalist, or anarchist banners. The 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago—a defining moment in American labor history—involved German immigrant anarchists. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Russian Jewish immigrants, were linked to bombings and even attempted assassination. The 1901 assassination of President William McKinley was carried out by an anarchist of Eastern European descent, further fueling anti-immigrant hysteria and government crackdowns like the Palmer Raids of 1919–1920. So the notion that America was somehow uniquely immune to immigrant-linked unrest or extremism is a selective retelling of history.
Furthermore, the idea that Europe’s current immigration challenges stem from “brain dead progressives” is politically inaccurate. Many of Europe’s major immigration policies were implemented or expanded under conservative or centrist governments. Germany’s Gastarbeiter (“guest worker”) program that brought in millions of Turks began under conservative governments in the 1950s–60s and continued for decades. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a center-right leader, oversaw Germany’s decision to accept large numbers of Syrian refugees in 2015. In the UK, immigration from Commonwealth countries accelerated under Conservative governments, including under Churchill and Macmillan. In Sweden, the center-right government in the early 2010s made decisions that allowed for high levels of refugee intake (the Conservative PM implored Swedes to “open your hearts”)—long before the Social Democrats returned to power and quickly clamped down on the intake in response to backlash. Immigration has often been driven by economic needs and post-colonial obligations, not simply by left-wing ideology.
This idea that people migration happens because bleeding hearts want it to out of stupidity or naïveté or something is nonsensical. Immigration happens a because of both *demand* for immigrants among countries with declining demographics and labor shortages (AKA the entire Western and developed world, now including Japan) and *supply* of people desperate to leave untenable economic or political conditions.
And political efforts to stop immigration are always extremely difficult if not impossible: just look at how shiftless the post-Brexit efforts to reduce immigration were in the UK—the opposite occurred, with immigration spiked ever since they left the EU! So far, despite its fevered rhetoric and draconian methods, the Trump Administration has actually deported fewer illegal immigrants than was the average under Biden in the US! And what about that Bug Beautiful Wall!? It remains rhetorical only. None of this is from lack of trying: the truth is that it’s just not an easy fix to stem immigration if that supply and demand is there! Not the least because there are always perverse incentives to not *really* do what it takes: why isn’t Trump’s ICE focusing on punishing employers and individuals that hire all this illegal labor, if it’s such an emergency issue? Just make e-verify universal and clamp down on anyone who breaches and viola, the demand-side factor is gone, right? Oh yeah, that hasn’t even been attempted … because those law-breaking employers are ironically often the Republicans’ wealthy, donating base! You saw this dynamic revealed when Trump suddenly decides that farms and meatpackers hiring illegals is fine, actually.
Lastly, the idea that Latin American immigration to the U.S. is inherently easier to assimilate than Muslim immigration to Europe is reductive. The U.S. has long wrestled with the integration of Latino communities—who face obvious language barriers, economic marginalization, and cultural scapegoating, much like immigrant groups in Europe. Many Muslim immigrants to Europe come from former colonies (e.g. Algerians to France or South Asians to the UK) and both speak the language natively and share cultural affinities that are arguably closer than you’d see between a Spanish-speaking Cuban or Mexican and Anglophone American culture). The difference between the European and the American experience of integrating near-abroad immigrants lies not in some inherent cultural compatibility but in the longer timeframe and fewer post-colonial entanglements. Assimilation, whether in the U.S. or Europe, is always a long-term, multi-generational process—usually painful and politically contested in the short-to-medium term (and clearly even still, with our current MAGA politics). History shows that no society integrates newcomers without conflict, and painting one region as successful and another as a failure based on present anxieties is historically and politically misguided.
I am anti mass migration but if you don't think there's a difference between integrating immigrants from Latin America vs from the Muslim world you're delusional.
Although the problem with MENA immigrants in Europe is perhaps not so much down to their Islamic faith as to their high propensity for cousin marriage and the related "kin first" mentality that is at odds with the modern nation-state.
(And notably, geography likely means that Muslim immigrants to Japan will be mostly Indonesian or Malaysian, which are not part of the "cousin marriage zone" created by the 7th-century Arab conquests that stretches roughly from Morocco to Pakistan inclusive.)
No it's Islam.
Michael Cook, a scholar of Middle East and Islamic studies, wrote the book Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective.
He is no anti Islam polemic but he shows that Islam is much harder to secularize than Christianity or Hinduism. Mohammed was a military and political leader not just a religious leader like Jesus.
Muslims can be secular (I know several proudly secular Muslims) but it's not a natural part of the religion.
Are you arguing that religious immigrants have to secularize in order to become usefully productive members of Western societies?
This is a large part of why I find the reports of exceptionally low immigrant crime in the US somewhat unconvincing. Either the United States has immigrants committing significantly fewer crimes than citizens, in contrast to both its own history and the rest of the world, or the US has poor data collection, due to both its federal structure and citizens' expressed desires.
As Jake said, immigrants are people and therefore there's therefore a diversity of experience dependent on their context. Oftentimes, immigrants are coming to the United States from Mexico, Honduras, et al to *flee* organized crime.
But, yeah, if you end up in a high-crime part of a city where gangs rule the block and there are limited other legit options, you might even be forced into it. So there's a HUGE difference between the experience the child of a Pakistani professional in Naperville, IL and the experience of another child-of-immigrants living in low-income area of Chicago's Southside. Similarly, people who move to grittier Newark, NJ are statistically much more likely be drawn into crime than people who move to leafier Edison, NJ.
Also, you have to consider that a tiny percentage of people do serious crime and that violent crime is VERY concentrated. I was born in Washington, DC, which, at that time, was the murder capital of the United States. But in all the years of living there I never experienced crime. That's because you could draw a line through the city map and basically 80% of the crime is in the East and 20% in the West (where I lived). You could get more surgical and break out just a few neighborhoods where almost all the gang activity was (almost entirely in Wards 7 and 8 near the Anacostia River). Places that most people who weren't born there had never been to and would never go.
These are also not neighborhoods you would move to as an immigrant for the basic reason that there isn't local employment or decent schools there, the things that even low-income immigrants want. Instead, immigrants to the DC-area now move to the Virginia or Maryland suburbs directly, where even in less fancy areas they can find cheaper housing combined more economic opportunities and little crime. Fairfax County, VA is 35% foreign-born and Montgomery County, MD is 33%. DC itself is only 14% foreign-born and those immigrants who do live in DC don't live in Ward 7 or 8, but instead fast-gentrifying places like Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights, and Petworth. This pattern is reflected all over the United States: the immigrant experience is a suburban experience. That's something that isn't really reflected in the rhetoric around immigration at all.
Another analysis is that most crime occurs in pockets of poverty stricken, gang prominent areas. Sometimes this occurs from immigration, or ethnic enclaves, or just a concentration of the economic underclasses. This seems true across many different countries and situations. If you go into any American city - most the crime is concentrated into a few key areas.
At various times in the US history immigration has channeled into this ghettos and other times (or concurrently, but in different places) has not. Likewise the baselines for native populations has varied.
There are large disparities between different groups in the US in the amount of crime they commit, so averaging them all together to compare against immigrants seems intellectually dishonest.
Immigrants commit less crime than Americans because *Americans* are unusually violent.
Americans are only unusually violent when compared to other modern first world countries.
The US had large anti-immigrant riots in Philadelphia in 1844; St. Louis in 1854, Cincinnati and Louisville in 1855; Baltimore in 1856; Washington, D.C., and New York City in 1857; and New Orleans in 1858. The "American Party", based entirely on the single issue of anti-immigrants, became a viable third party.
Then there were the many anti-Chinese riots. The Rock Springs massacre where 28 Chinese immigrants were murdered and 78 homes burned. The San Francisco riot which lasted 2 days. The Seattle riot.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which made it illegal for Chinese to immigrate. The Asiatic Exclusion League. The California Alien Land Land of 1913 that made it illegal for Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Korean farmers to own land. The 1907 Gentleman's Agreement that limited Japanese immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 that banned all Asians from entering the US.
I can't put my finger on it but there's definitely something about this which doesn't quite track.
"The programs that exist tend to put the responsibility/blame on the troublesome foreigner for learning a rote version of local cultural norms, a grab-bag of civic facts, and some language—but little is asked of the hosts."
That's how it should be. You immigrate to a place it's your job to learn and fit in. If that's not your bag, then maybe don't immigrate.
This is a common attitude but it assumes that: 1/ immigrants benefit from immigration more than the host country 2/ immigrants don't have other options 3/ immigrants come as supplicants and 4/ host societies even really have the option to turn down immigration.
Firstly, it's important to note that throughout history there are copious examples of kingdoms, empires, and countries *recruiting* high-value immigrants instead of "suffering" or "indulging" them. French Huguenot Refugees, Venetian Glassmakers, and Jewish Diaspora were the Early Modern equivalent to "S.T.E.M." workers today. The American Industrial Revolution was sparked by a British citizen named Samuel Slater who emigrated illegally around the time of the Constitution. And remember "Operation Paperclip," when the US government facilitated the cushy emigration of almost 2,000 Nazi scientists to the US right after WWII, including the famous Wernher von Braun? This continued throughout the Cold War, with Miami Cubans just one of many well-known examples of the US rolling out the red carpet for immigrants, many of whom made very few efforts to learn and fit in. Host countries then as now knew that immigrants can be extremely valuable assets and that even in the midst of geopolitical crisis, they could chose to go elsewhere. The Soviets (and the British) were very upset that the Americans were pulling all those scientists out of Germany before they got the option to themselves.
Even when you're talking about "low-value" immigrants, the historical expectation of the immigrant to be responsible for integration has often been very low. My Swedish wife has Swedish-American family spread all over the Untied States, and the first wave of them were actively recruited and often never bothered to learn or speak English upon arrival. I own several original Swedish-language newspapers that serviced the 19th and early 20th Century ethnic enclaves in places like Illinois and the Dakotas. My wife's relatives a century ago attended Swedish-language Lutheran Churches, lived in Nordic-style log cabins (yeah, that most American thing actually came from Finland), and often engaged in Social Democratic or Socialist politics, just like back home.
For the curious, there's a fascinating and excellent pair of Swedish movies from 1971-72, "The Emigrants" (Utvandrarna) and "The New Land" (Nybyggarna) available with English subtitles, that covered this experience. As those movies (and my wife's own family history documents), those Swedish immigrants absolutely weren't always welcomed with open arms or 100% happy about their new home, and their experience in 1895 or 1925 really wasn't that different to a Mexican-American living in a Latino-majority, Spanish-dominant community in Southern Texas or a Syrian "New Swede" living in public housing in Stockholm today. Nativists then, as now, despaired that the strangers in their midst would ever be "truly American" (or Swedish). And yet the great-grandchildren of those original Swedes, in the case of my wife's family, did quite well in The New Land and are (perhaps ironically) voting for Trump!
And I'm going to make a bold prediction that the balance of demand and supply is going to tip even further to favor the immigrant in the 21st Century, despite xenophobic backlash, undermining the premise of your comment further. Why? Demographic collapse! Everyone just needs more people! That labor crunch is most acute in places like Japan or Italy or Canada today. But it's even affecting the United States. And this is going to mean that, like it or not, host countries are going to start competing more and more for both "high-value" and "low-value" immigrants, alike, the 2030s equivalent to 17th Century Venetian glassmakers and 19th Century Swedish dirt-farmers. Americans are going to look South of the Border and Europeans are going to look South of the Mediterranean with ambivalence, for sure, but will have to grow to see their Latin American or African neighbors as a much needed shot in the arm. Without them, the developed world will face a bleak future of the elderly outnumbering children, chronic labor shortages, and social program collapse. And at that point, will we be asking if the much-needed healthcare aid or doctor is trying hard enough to fit in?
In Japan students visas require basic language proficiency (JLPT N4) and work visas for some occupations (like nursing, which Philippines has an export market in) and hospitality and construction also require it. Companies that sponsor visas also require language skills, and do provide training after arrival.
In my experience, immigrant workers I’ve talked to in hotels and convenience stores all had basic Japanese fluency, and most English as well. These were immigrants from Nepal, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and other places, which all have great economic incentives to emigrate to Japan, so I assume that either through visa selection or motivation the people who studied the language the most got in, or at least are the ones in customer facing jobs (these were at places ranging from the Family Mart in Nagasaki station, to the Ritz-Carleton in Fukuoka)
Seems to me that the problem of seasonality could be addressed with a varying visa price.
Want to go in cherry blossom season? 200% surcharge. Want to go during off season? A 50% discount.
Might take a bit to get the price and levels right but tourists would get the message it's cheaper to go at certain times and adjust accordingly.
Well that would reduce visitors from Thailand and China and other countries that Japan requires tourists to have visas, but EU, Australia, US and Canada don’t need visas now.
Only a few tourist attractions like Himeji castle have higher fees for non residents, but it isn’t widespread and probably unevenly enforced since I doubt locals enjoy having to show ids. And same would be true of Noah’s hotel tax suggestion, hotels are now only supposed to require passports only of non-resident foreigners, but they don’t want to burden locals, so they only ask for passports of guests who have non-Japanese names, aren’t fluent or who don’t have the right look. This in practice means, as happened to me in the past, permanent residents have to carry passports, even though legally they aren’t required to show them. One Japanese woman with a Korean name sued a hotel for this practice, but I don’t know what the outcome was. Hotels are very accommodating to locals, many let you check in without a credit card or ID and you just pay cash when checking out - but they never allow this for guests that don’t appear Japanese. So collecting a non-resident hotel tax (not on foreign bank accounts, since it would be avoidable by paying cash) would be covered under the same passport requirement, but there would be many complaints from resident foreigners.
Note that Japanese hotel taxes are pretty low, there is a 400¥ accommodation tax, a 300¥ furo tax if the hotel has a hot spring, and then bigger hotels typically add a 2000¥ combined service and tax charge, but I think it’s mostly not tax.
Last year there were some ramen shops that implemented a foreigner “tax” by putting expensive options on the menu like seafood ramen with a small crab leg thrown in for 3500¥, which no local would pay for, but rich tourists think it’s a good deal - which it is because can you get even a basic ramen in California for under $24 including tax and tip?Ramen shops typically charge only around 500¥ for ramen, and these businesses depend on high turnover, and while locals eat and leave in less than 10 minutes, tourists come in and take photos and linger too long over what is really fast food.
Those are fair concerns. Some countries do entrance fees without requiring you to go through the entire visa process. You might also open yourself up for reciprocal fees, but could structure it in such a way that maybe no one will feel slighted by it.
The overarching point I was trying to make is that if over tourism is a problem then just tax the tourism to both reduce it to a manageable level and capture some of that value, but the implementation of it will be important.
I am starting to wonder if these hard-right swerves are a feature rather than a bug of post-industrial societies facing demographic decline (which is to say pretty much all of them). The peculiarities of Japan's terrain, culture, and socio-politics seems to have buffered it for a while but no amount of insulation lasts forever.
Japan had a lot of problems this year. Rice shortages, rising prices, a series of high-profile incidents involving foreign investors and refugees, and another summer of climate change. I do agree that tourism plays a part in this, but for a different reason than you raise. Even in the heart of Kyoto, where the flood of outsiders is truly out of control, I sensed little friction with visitors (this was confirmed by several cabbies I spoke to there last week.) Rather, I think young folks in particular see this big influx of people who look a lot like them going wild on vacations they can't afford themselves, and it makes them angry about their situation. Most seem smart enough to blame it on their leaders rather than the visitors. But obviously not all.
It's hard to tell at this early stage if Sanseito's success simply reflects their drawing out fringe voters who would normally have sat things out (almost 60% of the eligible population voted in this election, compared to just over 50% usually), or an actual movement. It's scary stuff either way, but regardless, the issues Japan is facing as a hyperaging post-industrial society aren't going away anytime soon.
Interesting! How is it a feature??
It just seems that when industrial nations transition into service economies, and begin ageing and shrinking, those left behind grow frustrated and angry at being left out, and those who prosper grow angry at having to do less with more. A certain percentage snap and begin lashing out at convenient targets, whether opposition parties or minority groups or immigrants, or all three. Can you name a Western post-industrial society that isn't wrestling with this problem to some degree?
The demographic situation that may lead to young males voting for radical change could be from the large and increasing percentage of old people, who then naturally vote in their own interests. As in other countries where the conservative backlash is strong, women don’t seem to be as much behind it. In US and maybe Europe young males seem to resent that women have more opportunities, disproportionately enroll in college, and are more selective in dating partners, but I don’t know if these trends are similar in Japan.
My working theory is that women still have it bad enough in Japan that the angry men don't need a manosphere: https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/boys-vs-girls-japan-vs-america
Survey data hints that the gender divide is not as stark in Japan as other nations: https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/boys-vs-girls
Great article. As a Westerner who has been living in Asia (currently Thailand) for the past two decades I've noticed that not only has the number of tourists been increasing but their behavior has been getting worse. There has always been a subset of tourists who come and insist on making trouble but recently it seems hardly a day goes by without a viral story about a (usually Western) foreigner starting a fight, destroying property, or simply acting like an entitled ass towards locals. I think this partly reflects the post-Covid breakdown of social cohesion at home, where people are just nastier and less considerate than they used to be for reasons I don't understand. Another big problem is social media and the "influencer economy" where wannabe influencers perform outrageous stunts in public for clicks (like that idiot on the train in the video Noah shared), to the annoyance of the local population.
I've noticed a huge uptick in the same thing in Vietnam but there most of the animosity is targeted towards South Koreans behaving poorly.
Great article!
As someone who grew up in Osaka in late 90s to 00s and lived in Tokyo in 2010s, I can’t stress enough how touristy it became!
And unlike Rome, we haven’t built the infrastructure to accommodate all tourists- like Kyoto has seen some tourist issue for long time but it still was limited to “tourists from Tokyo”
And Kyoto’s public transportation is not built to get around - it is rather designed to go to Osaka for commuting (Hankyu, Keihan and JR are basically all going to Osaka. The only exception is Kintetsu that is going to Nara). And there’s no way that busses that go to those touristy areas are suffice. Oh, don’t get me started how Kyoto station is outside of downtown Kyoto or the touristy places for the weird train aversion in Meiji era - (downtown Kyoto, Karasuma and Kawaramachi on Shijo Street is about 1.5-2 miles north of Kyoto station)
In fact, a half of my high school classmate went to Kyodai (Kyoto University) but their primary transportation is a bike.
I wish Kyoto had built more public transportation but building subways in Kyoto is very challenging - too many historic stuffs in the ground!
As a temporary resident staying in Kyoto the public transit situation is definitely suboptimal. I usually take the bus to get from one side of the city to another, but compared to Tokyo it takes forever. At least it makes the city feel a bit slower and more peaceful than Tokyo and Osaka. I feel a bit guilty about contributing to the absurd overtourism going on here, but especially in the quiet area where I live it is quite pleasant.
Yeah, and the bus is so crowded as well!
Like the fact that there are only two subways for a city with that many visitors is lowkey insane - that said, I get why that happened…
Having spent most of the past decade in Japan I think it’s definitely the tourism: these days most foreigners that Japanese interact with are tourists, and virtually all of the “bad behavior” from foreigners is by tourists (as you point out, the vast majority of foreigners living in Japan make a concerted effort to follow Japanese social norms). Why not charge a significant tourist tax (>US$100) for visiting? It could easily be levied via being added to airline fares for visitors who don’t have a visa or a Japanese passport. Not only would it raise tax income, it would also result in a change in mix of tourists and (hopefully) less anti-social behaviour.
> In fact, I knew two such former gangsters in Osaka.
Are you hinting that substack is not your full time occupation.
Don’t check the subscription box for “An offer too good to refuse.”
I think something that doesn't go remarked on enough re: the implications of Japan's ageing population is not just its impact on labour supply, but how it hits aggregate demand. An increasingly elderly population doesn't just work less. It tends to consume less - except, of course, in certain sectors, like healthcare.
This is key to explaining both the economic offsetting impact of immigration and tourism. Immigrants who come to Japan, or any other country, aren't just workers. They are also consumers, who have to buy all manner of goods and services as part of their day-to-day lives. Similarly, when you have an ageing population that's going out and buying less, bringing in tourists to provide revenue for businesses that would have otherwise catered to working adults also becomes an imperative.
In debates over immigration, this is something you virtually never hear brought up, either by proponents of immigration or opponents.
> Its famously safe streets give women and children the freedom to walk around at night alone without worrying
Do you have a sense of why this is so, and what would it take for other places to emulate and get better.
One reason is that criminal law is strict, suspects can be held incommunicado for long periods for interrogation without lawyers allowed and using threats and sleep deprivation, and if arrested the conviction rate is 99%. If questioned by the police just touching the cop (as in trying to push past them) can trigger this detention, and potential violators know this.
The 99% conviction rate always comes up but doesn't mean much.
Most places have extremely high conviction rates because prosecutors generally don't bother bringing cases unless they have very high confidence of winning.
The US Federal government has a 99.6% conviction rate. Only 0.4% are acquitted.
Israel's conviction rate is 93%.
England's conviction rate is 85%. The national average of the states of the US is over 80%.
Japanese law is one where the accused have the burden of proof they are innocent, opposite that of Anglo Saxon law. So Japanese is not all paradise if you fall afoul of the law.
I have to laugh, as this is inescapably special pleading. The challenges and solutions described apply exactly to every other place with immigrants and/or tourism.
Don’t get me wrong, these are all good suggestions. But the idea that only Japan should be exempt from the fate of Niagara Falls is transparently silly. You literally compare the cherry blossoms to Venice and NYC. Venice and NYC have to be Venice and NYC!
Next up: why NIMBYism is okay in Japan, and only in Japan.
I liked the part about how limiting immigration was ok for Japan, because of how culturally homogenous it is. Take a drive out to Kansas or any other place that's against immigration - pretty homogenous there too!
One thing that’s struck me about coming here to Japan is how much more like West it is increasingly becoming, in ways both good, bad and neutral. On the one hand it has an enormous number of unique traditions and cultural products, both new and old, going strong as ever, but it is also increasingly obsessed with Western fashion, brands, music, food and, unfortunately, politics. It seems like Japan has had an unusually apolitical culture for a long time, which is part of why the basically ideology-less LDP has stayed in power for so long. But that seems to be quickly changing. That was probably made inevitable by the recent immigration and tourist waves (which in turn were made inevitable by the aging population), even if the amount of immigration is still, by Western standards, tiny at this point (though it may not stay that way). Similar problems produce similar reactions, it seems, no matter the country.
Hasn’t Japan been obsessed with Western brands and culture for a long time? Things like denim mastery, Ivy League fashion were decades ago, weren’t they?
The US had an apolitical era after WW2 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/07/24/this-1950-political-science-report-keeps-popping-up-in-the-news-heres-the-story-behind-it/), which ended in the 1960s. It might be that race/migration issues are the driver of political polarization.
What is the best time of year to go to Japan to beat the crowds and avoid burdening the locals?
I don't think we can view mass migration outside the context of elite failures that have damaged western societies recently. What are the odds that it is another elite failure and that the economic/social science research justifying it is garbage? It certainly seems to be the cause of many of our political issues right now. What is the chance that mass migration will down as one of the biggest manmade disasters in human history?
Zero chance.
You think mass migration is going to rank up there with the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Irish Famine, the Bengal Famine, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, the Albigensian Crusade, etc etc etc?
I think it has the potential - maybe not in total deaths, but how damaging it could be economically and socially. The changes made through mass immigration are permanent. If there are major issues, it will be extremely difficult to fix them. This isn't a policy that can simply reversed. Imagine how destabilizing a single civil war in a country such as the UK would be to the world order, and then imagine what will happen when other countries realize they are in the same situation with no way out.
A co-worker and his wife went to Sweden to visit the wife's relatives. He was the NASA representative to NATO at the time. In conversation the relatives mentioned the "Italians" who ran an ice cream shop down stairs. The "Italians" were part of a group who came in during the Napoleonic era. Italians reminds me of a walking tour of Boston with my brother in law. We walked from Back Bay to Paul Revere's house and back. I remember hearing more Italian spoken than Murikan.
A couple of points, Noah. Are you perhaps overestimating/being a bit premature about the importance of this result, i.e., that of Sanseito? I mean, look at the results:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/tags/166/
What seems to have happened, more than anything else, is a significant loss by the Komei and a a mix up of the opposition parties. It is true that the Sanseito increase is significant, but it's not even the largest opposition and from my (somewhat limited) understanding, it's not uncommon for these parties to rise and fall?
To be clear, I'm not super familiar with Japanese politics, but I do get the impression that people are seeing too much of a backlash here. Not no backlash, there's definitely some of that (especially towards tourists!), but the size might not be as large as the reaction seems.
Also, per our discussion in real life, it would be excellent if Japan had more easily accessible language classes, for sure, and that could be a very important policy. But it's possible to have significant integration even if your Japanese isn't that great, as long as opportunities are there, something we disagree a bit in.
For now, with the mass migration that's happening, Japanese companies need to be more open to people with more limited Japanese skills. We're not talking huge numbers here, yet, but there's going to be significant amount of wasted skills if they aren't more flexible than having the usual JLPT N2 requirements. I.e., accept more workers with something a bit lower for positions where Japanese doesn't have to be that high, accepting the trade-off between language skills for other skills (and give workers a chance to improve their Japanese as time passes, that's fine).
As immigration number grow, the current inflexibility is going to be a growing issue...