Japan Needs an Immigration Debate, Not Social Media Myths

Fictional accounts of African 'home towns' and plans for a massive Indian influx are filling the vacuum without a proper national conversation.

- Gearoid Reidy

You might have read that Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was planning to "import millions of Africans and Kurds" into Japan—and that this is why he's stepping down.

Maybe you've seen the plans for Tokyo to designate special "home towns" within the country that will become free havens for African immigrants on special visas. Or perhaps the recently announced suggestion to bring in half a million Indians into the country?

There's a common thread to these stories: They're all complete fiction.

There's no mass immigration from the Global South into Japan, though you might not know that if you primarily consume your news on social media. But these stories fill a vacuum—the lack of a proper discussion on immigration. It's one that should be at the center of the race to be the next prime minister.

Perhaps because it's an outlier among developed nations when it comes to immigration, with foreigners making up just 3 percent of the population, these kinds of lies thrive on social media. The Japanese web has its own share, of course, but strangely much of this is in English—shared by people like billionaire Elon Musk, who said last week that Mr. Ishiba would go down as the "greatest criminal in the entire history of Japan" if he went ahead with his fictional mass migration plans.