SNA (Tokyo) — I teach Political Science at the university level. In my first lecture every semester, I try to convince skeptical students why they should bother studying Political Science at all.

I argue that understanding how power flows through political structures will help students enfranchise themselves in a democratic system. If they don’t, other people who understand the system better will use it to their advantage instead.

But this assumes one major fundamental: that they can participate in the democratic system at all. Fortunately, most of my students are citizens, so they can vote. Given how abysmal youth voter turnout generally is, I consider it a major educational outcome if they bother to. Persuading people that their vote matters is the bare minimum a civics class can accomplish.

If I have the opportunity in higher-level classes to proselytize further, I encourage them to engage in community building, such as organizing into interest groups and consolidating power into voting blocs.

My real converts consider running for local office, thereby embedding themselves within the very power structure itself. Political power, especially for minorities in any society, is rarely surrendered without a struggle. We need more diverse views in office as demographics change the makeup of future majorities.

That’s how democracy is supposed to work. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that Japan’s Non-Japanese Residents and Visible Minorities still have trouble grasping. As a result, they are letting the Japanese government deprive them of their potential as a political force in Japan.

Getting Beyond the “Guestism”

A lot of the issue is that, as I have written before, many of Japan’s minorities believe they really don’t have the ability—or even the right—to shape Japanese society. They convince themselves that they are merely “guests” in Japan (not taxpayers and residents) and therefore have no say in how they’re treated by public policy.

After all, they’re in Japan by choice, and if they don’t like the way things are, they should go “home.” They’ve internalized the narrative that Japan is not “home” and foreigners don’t belong here.

This dehumanizing mantra is well-established and reinforced on a daily basis. Less considered are the underlying political structures enforcing it. It’s hard to have a stake in a society when it might be booting you out shortly.

Official permission to work, i.e., visas, is generally only one to three years in duration, sometimes non-renewable, and often tethered to a specific job sponsor. This means many Non-Japanese can’t change jobs without losing their visa and risking going to jail as overstayers. Employers, of course, are happy with this situation, leveraging this vulnerability to abuse and exploit Non-Japanese workers even further. Thus all the incentive structures are there to make Non-Japanese life in Japan temporary and miserable.

But consider one more disenfranchising mechanism: the larger scheme to make sure Non-Japanese never coalesce into interest groups and voting blocs.

In other societies, minorities, newcomers, and immigrants cluster in like-minded regions where they can create communities: Harlem; Chinatown; the Navajo Nation; Little Tokyo; Little Armenia; Little Saigon; the Dearborn Muslims; New York’s Jewish communities; the Castro District; the proposed states of Jefferson and Deseret; and the majority-minority states of Hawaii, California, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, and soon Georgia.

Once people reach a critical mass in a population, they can foster entire social movements, even elect representatives and become an unignorable political force.

Preventing Residents from Becoming Voters

But Japan makes sure Non-Japanese never reach a critical mass. Whenever we hear about, for example, Chinese buying up land in an area, out come the politicians stoking fear about Chinese becoming the local majority and “seceding from Japan.” Essentially, the logic is that more foreigners means less Japan, and if Non-Japanese ever get power over Japanese, Japan is lost. That’s especially visible when Non-Japanese are officially denied administrative roles in any public sector positions.

Then there’s simply getting rid of Non-Japanese Residents by not renewing visas en masse. Clean house and ethnically cleanse. The lost historical Iranian, Filipina, and Brazilian communities in Japan are a testament to that.

But even without a critical mass, power within a democracy is granted to people who can vote, so Japan makes sure Non-Japanese Residents never become part of the electorate.

Japan still has no official immigration policy to encourage Non-Japanese Residents to become Japanese citizens. Further, whenever Japan announces an expansion to any working visa program, politicians at even the highest levels of government are quick to clarify this does not mean these migrants will become immigrants. The very word “immigrant” (as in a person) isn’t an established concept in Japanese policymaking circles.

This situation seems unlikely to change, despite the recent resumed mass migration into Japan. Japan’s Non-Japanese Registered Resident population reached a record high of 3.4 million in 2023, up more than 10% over the previous year.

Yet the government has made it more difficult over the past two decades to go from a one-year visa to a three-year one, not to mention obtain Permanent Residency.

The numbers reflect this. Although the largest group of Non-Japanese Residents are Permanent Residents, their numbers only grew about 3% in 2023.

Then there’s the issue of actually taking out Japanese citizenship, as this author has. Yet the number of people who have naturalized on average over the past decade is less than 1,000 per year, and on a general downward trend.

No wonder. After years languishing in nasty jobs and jumping through so many visa hoops, getting Japanese citizenship is often a very arbitrary process, with applications rejected even for parking tickets and “cultural incongruities.” There’s also favoritism shown to applicants from countries with richer economies and lighter skins; not to mention the identity sacrifice of forcing people to give up their birth nationality.

Immigrant Power and Politicians in Japan

Consequently, the only Non-Japanese groups in Japan that have accrued any political power are the Zainichi generational “foreigners.” They’re the Japan-born descendants of the former citizens of empire, who have lived in Japan for more than a century yet are still “foreigners.” Also known as the “Oldcomers,” they have formed lobbying groups such as Mindan, Mintoren, and Soren. Then there are also historical and indigenous minority groups such as the Buraku Liberation League and the Hokkaido Utari Association. They all have managed to move the needle on how minorities are portrayed in the media.

But in terms of shifting real political power, there is no substitute for getting the vote and a seat at the policymaking table. And that means overcoming it all to become a citizen and get elected to office.

That happens, even in Japan. Perhaps the most visible case was Finland-born Marutei Tsurunen, who not only served in his local town council in Kanagawa Prefecture from 1992, but also two terms in the National Diet from 2002 to 2013.

Others have since followed. Decades ago US-born Anthony Bianchi and Canadian-born Jon Heese won back-to-back city council seats in Inuyama and Tsukuba respectively. Bianchi has since retired, but Heese (whom I have interviewed for this column before) has since graduated up to a prefectural-level elected position.

We have also seen incumbents such as Bolivian-born Noemi Inoue, elected in 2011 to the Tokyo Sumida City Council; Syria-born Nour Eldin Sultan, elected in 2021 to Shonai Town Council in Yamagata Prefecture; and Uzbekistan-born Babakhodjaeva Orzugul, elected to a seat in Tokyo’s Setagaya City Council in 2023.

Notably, all of them won their seats quite easily, some even getting the highest number of votes of all candidates running, despite the fact that their fellow Non-Japanese Residents cannot vote for them. Bravo!

A reporter recently asked me if this meant change in Japan was afoot.

My answer was that yes, this is not something we’ve seen before, and Visible Minorities claiming the right (and the structural power) to be Japanese is a positive change. I think anyone who wants to see the change has to be the change, and they’re doing that.

How did they win so handily? My theory is that given Japan’s single-party democracy, I think the Japanese electorate are hungry for any hope of change. Something different. Newcomer Immigrant Japanese can be precisely that. So, for once, being seen as an outsider in Japan can be an advantage.

This theory also holds when you consider the opposite example: When lawmaker Tsurunen didn’t offer his constituents anything new beyond having blue eyes (seriously, that was his slogan), he got voted out. They realized he was basically running more for himself than for them. So you really have to be the change, not just look it.

Finally, the reporter said, “I think Heese, Orzugul, Inoue, and Sultan offer interesting insights into the shifting demographics of Japan. But none of them are Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino—the four groups who make up the most non-Japanese residents. Do you think it is easier for certain types of Non-Japanese to gain power and acceptance in the country?”

My answer was this: “I don’t know. There is certainly a hierarchy of treatment based upon the country of origin and skin color in Japan, especially in naturalization processes. But certainly people of Chinese and Korean ancestry have been elected in the past. Probably when other ethnic groups aren’t overworked, underpaid, and restricted to unstable visa statuses, we’ll see more of them naturalizing and running for office.”

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