Anti-foreigner sentiment takes root in race for Japan's next prime minister

All five candidates moot policies aimed at foreigners in response to xenophobic wave

- Walter Sim Japan Correspondent

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will have a new leader who will likely be the country’s next prime minister.

And whoever succeeds outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will likely respond to the expanding and deepening anti-foreigner sentiment among the Japanese by tightening laws on foreigners and immigration, going by their platforms for the party leadership election.

The harsh socioeconomic realities of depressed wages that fail to keep pace with inflation in the world’s fourth-largest economy are partially behind a wave of anti-foreigner sentiment that has been simmering in a country that sees itself as homogenous and where just 17.5 per cent of its citizens have passports.

A general unfamiliarity with foreigners and foreign cultures, fuelled by viral social media posts of misbehaving tourists and headlines of crimes committed by foreigners, feeds into toxic xenophobic sentiments — never mind that most foreigners are respectful and law-abiding.

Adding to these grievances are rumours that wages are suppressed due to an influx of “cheap” foreign labour.

While Japan’s foreign-born residents are at a record high, they number only 3.77 million, or 3 per cent of the population. Another 28.4 million foreigners have visited Japan in the first eight months of 2025, in another record. This is just shy of the total number of visitors to Japan in all of 2017.

The risks of resentment against foreigners taking root are evident in other Western nations, from the United States to France and Germany.

The ultra-right “Japanese First” Sanseito milked these feelings that have long been bubbling, taking a leaf out of foreign far-right playbooks en route to winning 7.43 million votes at the Upper House election in July when it warned of a “silent invasion” of immigrants. It had scored just 1.77 million votes at the last such election in 2022.