SNA (Lecco) — Calls by business groups and the academic world have increased pressure on Japan to reconsider its overly strict border policies and to reopen the country to essential travelers, but for many of the foreign students who have been desperately trying to enter in Japan for the past two years, the damage has already been done.

The damage will not be limited to students: several prominent Japanese political figures have openly stated that the prolonged entry ban will damage Japan’s economy for the long run, reducing the country’s attractiveness to foreign businesses and workers in addition to future overseas students.

Japan’s entry ban is clearly out of step with most other nations, and has even led some commentators to describe it as Reiwa no sakoku (closed country of the Reiwa Era), comparing it to Japan’s pre-modern policy of isolation from the rest of the world.

Moreover, many experts have noted the lack of efficacy of the blanket entry ban as a public health policy. Indeed, the latest ban was justified as a measure to keep the Omicron variant out of the country, which it has signally failed to do.

But the hardships faced by the would-be international students needs to be kept in focus.

As preparations for study programs abroad require months, the serial delays in reopening the country has led many educational institutions to either hold their classes online (creating major inconveniences for stranded students due to time zone differences) or to simply cancel needed programs altogether.

International students and researchers have been left in a painful limbo for two years, which is the same amount of time ordinarily required for completing a language school’s entire curriculum or obtaining a master’s degree.

Furthermore, many students and researchers have been unfairly denied the scholarship money which they had won through hard work and sacrifice over many years of study, and leaving them without the means for continuing  their educations or launching their professional careers.

As the month of March approaches, so too do deadlines for the 2022 academic year. Japanese educational institutions have been forced to once again adopt the “cancel-or-online” modality for 2022 spring semester, making it the fifth consecutive lost semester for many young people. And, as always, the Japanese government refuses to clarify what its future policies will look like, leaving everyone guessing about whether they should hang on just a little bit longer, or else make the painful decision to give up entirely on studies in Japan.

For such reasons, even caring professors are now hesitant to promote Japan to their students. For many, there is no point in waiting for Japan to reopen when they could more productively shift their focus to other countries and start studying or researching right away. This raises the real prospect that Japanese studies programs around the world may be forced to downsize as enrollment demands from the younger generation start to dry up.

This in turn may lead overseas universities to downgrade the priority they might have placed on making bilateral agreements with Japanese educational institutions, since fewer students will be interested in the country and its language in any case.

Many students have suggested that South Korea could become the main alternative to Japan, leading to increased interest in Korean language studies. It is worth keeping an eye on whether or not Korean programs expand while Japanese programs shrink.

As we enter mid-February 2022, signs are increasing that the Kishida administration will bend to pressure and revise its strict entry ban in the near future. However, there are also strong grounds to believe that whatever new policy is announced will be far short of throwing the doors open to the roughly 150,000 students stranded abroad. The policy will probably once again be limited and partial, making no practical difference for many–perhaps most–of those still waiting.

For example, during the brief “opening” last November, foreign students were made able to apply for their visa only after obtaining an additional document that was never before required, and which was granted in what appeared to be a deliberately sluggish manner. Only a handful of students were actually able to enter Japan before reports of Omicron brought the portcullis crashing down again.

It is clear that whatever reopening takes place will be too little, too late for tens of thousands of overseas students. Only the future will tell just how dear the cost will be for young lives and for the Japanese nation as a whole.

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