Invasive species'? Japan's growing pains on immigration

Frustration with rule-breaking foreigners is something politicians should not ignore.

- Gearoid Reidy

Hello Kitty seems an unlikely trigger for an immigration debate.

But that's what happened in Japan this week, when Megumi Hayashibara, the prominent voice actress behind iconic characters such as Kitty and Rei Ayanami from the long-running anime franchise Evangelion, took to her blog to discuss the growing population of outsiders.

She called for a crackdown on rule-breaking foreigners, and criticised overseas students on free scholarships while locals paid for their education. The thrust of her post was a call for readers to vote. But her most cutting remark was a fear that local habits and Japaneseness itself might be lost if current trends continued, like the native crayfish endangered by an "invasive species" of crustacean threatening its natural habitat. (After online outrage, Hayashibara deleted the reference to crayfish.)

While it's hardly the protests in Los Angeles, California, her comments highlight how immigration is becoming a heated topic in a country where it has only recently become a feature. And it's one that the authorities should not ignore, as politicians elsewhere were content to do until fringe groups became seen as the only ones with the answers.

I wrote in 2022 about how Tokyo, long stereotyped as being closed to immigration, was accepting more foreigners than many realised. That trend continues, with immigrants nearly doubling in the past decade and a record 10 per cent jump in 2024. It's less the absolute level as the pace of change: foreign residents have gone from less than 1 per cent to more than 3 per cent of the population in the past three decades, and will reach around 10 per cent in 2050.