The regular “Thoughts in the Forest” column in the June 1st issue of Jinja Shinpō was by Yamatani Eriko, a member of the House of Councillors (the upper house of the Japanese Diet), and one of the two sponsored by Shintō Seiji Renmei and the Shinto community. It isn’t really about Shinto, but it is about foreigners in Japan and in the Shinto newspaper, so I am going to write about it.
The topic was the recent revision of the immigration control law, which has been a major issue. One of the focal concerns is that the fees for visas and renewal of status of residence will be raised by, roughly, a factor of ten.
That sounds, and feels, really dramatic, which is why it has been such a big issue, especially among resident foreigners who don’t have permanent residence yet. Ms Yamatani gives a bit of the background in the column.
Last year, about 42 million foreigners visited Japan, and about four million were resident. Compared to when the fees were last revised, in 1981 (yes, 45 years ago), that is five times as many residents, and 28 times as many visitors. It is also important to note that, after the rise, the fees will be slightly on the low side on a global scale, although only slightly. While I can’t say that I like the increases, the new fees are not unreasonable, in most cases, and 45 years really is a bit too long to leave them unchanged. If the fees had been raised by 5.25% per year, I suspect there would have been far fewer complaints.
Ms Yamatani talks about the issues raised by both the demand for workers and the arrival of people from outside the country, and the need for a strategic approach, observing that experiences in the US and Europe show that it is not easy to integrate immigrants without serious friction. That is a position I am wholly in sympathy with, because it is the immigrants who suffer when there is friction. While the western right wing really seems to have the wrong approach, I confess I am not terribly happy with the progressive left on this question either — it is all very well to say that the resident population should all be tolerant angels, but that doesn’t make it happen, and neither does calling them racist bigots.
So, the basic idea that Japan should think and take a strategic approach to accepting immigrants in order to avoid those problems is one I agree with. The devil, of course, is in the details. The last paragraph of the column gave me some hope in that respect.
Ms Yamatani reports that it is said that 8,431 foreign children were not attending school in 2024. Further, there are regions where half the pupils are foreign, and the supplementary Japanese language education cannot keep up. Even if the local authorities ask for support from the central government, there is not much budget for it, and local mayors and governors are expressing concern with the situation in ten or twenty years’ time.
I agree. This is something I worked on when I was on the relevant Kawasaki city committee, and it was clear that more resources were needed, and that serious problems were being stored up.
Ms Yamatani almost immediately goes on to say that the increased fees are expected to raise ¥69 billion to ¥92 billion (about $500 million) in fiscal year 2027, and that we should think strategically about how to spend the budget.
The context strongly suggests that she thinks at least some of it should be used to greatly improve educational provision for foreign children. In some contexts, this might be a way of suggesting support for immigrants without actually committing to it, but remember that she is writing for an almost purely conservative Japanese audience. If that is the sort of strategic thinking the government has in mind, I am in favour. Spending the income this way might even make the increased fees a good thing for foreigners in Japan, on balance.