Expats worried about xenophobic shift after Japanese elections
In Sunday's Senate election, the ruling coalition was punished, primarily in favor of the far right. This is a worrying signal for foreigners living in the archipelago.
Called upon to renew half of the House of Councillors (the equivalent of the Senate) on Sunday, July 20, the Japanese punished the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the country's main political force, allied with the center-right Komeito party, by causing it to lose its absolute majority. One of the main winners of this election was the far-right Sanseito party, created just five years ago, which won 14 seats, having won only one in the 2022 elections.
During an election campaign with xenophobic overtones, in an aging country with a fragile economy , the 3 million foreign residents (3.7% of the population) were easy targets for the most virulent parties. The government itself created a Foreign Resident Command Center on the Tuesday before the elections, tasked with identifying “crimes or harmful behavior committed by certain foreigners.”
In the English-language version of the business magazine Toyo Keizai, American journalist Baye McNeil notes that this body, whose name “suggests more surveillance than support,” is causing “unease within Japan’s foreign community” :
“The message is extremely clear: we are not seen as neighbors, but as problems to be managed.”
In the Japanese business newspaper, he also gives a voice to several of his worried compatriots, such as Earl Jackson, a former American soldier: “In the expatriate circles I belong to, it's a mixture of dark humor and anxiety... Some feel unable to speak out because they don't want to compromise their [expatriate] status.”
The Japan Times also relays the concerns of foreigners established in Japan, such as Simon Henderson, who came from Australia three years ago:
“I followed the election very closely. I feel like this is a pivotal moment for Japan […]. We work here, we pay our taxes here, we build our families here. But without the right to vote, we remain politically invisible.”
Anchored in its island culture, Japan was for two centuries a country with closed borders, only opening up commercially under the threat of American cannons in 1854. Since then, the archipelago has largely integrated into globalization and remains one of the world's leading economies. This election campaign is causing despair for one of the editorialists of the venerable Asahi Shimbun , founded in 1879: "When I understood that this wave of populism emerging in the world had arrived in Japan, I collapsed."
In Toyo Keizai, the American Marcellus Nealy, a musician and university professor who has lived in Japan for thirty-three years, cannot help but draw a parallel with Donald Trump's United States. : “If we rely on the experience of the United States, this path brings no benefit to the population… Tourism will decline, international businesses will have doubts and a significant amount of human capital will disappear.” This new ideological proximity is also accompanied by an economic rapprochement: on Tuesday, July 22, the United States and Japan managed to reach an agreement on customs duties.
