Dam break in Japan’s immigration policy: the 2018 reform in a long-term perspective

Abstract

The 2018 reform is a dam break in Japan’s immigration policy. Previously, for decades, the opening of the Japanese labour market for lower-qualified foreign workers was discussed without any comprehensive reform despite far-reaching proposals. This article discusses this change from a persistent standstill to comprehensive reform by analysing comparatively the frames and institutional setting in earlier immigration debates around 1970, around 1990, and around 2005 with the debate in the late 2010s. It argues that the persistent stalemate on the most hotly debated issue of immigration policy was due to the diversity of frames with very different policy implications and an institutional fragmentation in policy-making without any pivotal policy entrepreneur. The comprehensive reform of 2018 is the result of a window of opportunity by the conjuncture of a declining security frame as the main counterargument and by the centralization of decision-making in the core executive in the later years of the second term of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō (2012–20) on the level of institutional setting. Abe and his entourage were reluctant policy entrepreneurs who only realized the 2018 reform because of pressure and the absence of any other policy option. Still, they fundamentally changed the framework in Japanese immigration policy.

1. Introduction

In 2018, a new reform in Japan’s immigration policy introduced two new visa categories and a quota system for lower-qualified foreign workers. It also established the Immigration Services Agency (ISA) as a new government organization in charge of Japan’s admission and integration policy. The scope and speed of this reform is remarkable. While the Japanese immigration policy regarding lower-qualified foreign workers was marked for decades by a persistent standstill despite far-reaching proposals, the developments of the late 2010s comprised a fundamental reform that the government rushed through from first announcement to parliamentary adoption in less than a year. How can this transformation of Japan’s admission policy from a persistent standstill to comprehensive and sudden reform be explained? This article analyses this question by comparing the frames and institutional setting of the reform debate of the late 2010s to the three policy debates that took place around 1970, 1990, and 2005. By doing so, this paper elucidates the continuities and changes in immigration policy that have taken place during the past fifty years as well as the specifics of the window of opportunity in the late 2010s.

Conceptually, this article differentiates highly qualified versus lower-qualified foreign workers. This distinction is based on Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (Shutsunyūkoku kanri oyobi nanmin nintei hō; hereafter immigration law), which specifies a ‘positive list’ (Kondo 2002: 432) of job fields, for which foreign workers can get a working visa. All other foreign workers who do not satisfy these strict requirements of highly qualified workers are not eligible for a working visa status. This positive list system was for decades the central reference point in the immigration debates, and the official and oft-repeated mantra of the conservative establishment that Japan only accepts highly qualified foreign workers.¹

This explains why the 2018 reform is the ‘most significant change in Japan’s post-war migration history’ (Oishi 2021: 2259). According to well-established estimates (Bungei Shunjū 2008: 295), already before the reform and in clear contradiction to the valid immigration law, about 80 per cent of foreign labour working in Japan did not meet the requirements of the immigration law. Side doors for lower-qualified foreign workers resulted in a clear gap between Japan’s official immigration policy and its real immigration policy. By introducing the two new visa categories and a quote system, Japan’s front door for lower-qualified foreign workers has finally been opened and the fundamentals of its admission policy reformulated (Takaya 2023).

Throughout the reform, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō (2012–20) repeatedly maintained that this reform ‘is not an immigration policy’ (imin seisaku de wa nai) in the meaning of permanent settlement (Strausz 2021: 269). In fact, the new programme for lower-qualified foreign workers is mainly a guest worker programme that limits their stay to a maximum of five years and grants them no right to bring their families to Japan. However, contrary to Abe’s statement, through the 2018 reform lower-qualified foreign workers in construction and shipbuilding can unlimitedly renew their visas, which opens for them a path for permanent settlement and family reunification.

The establishment of the ISA in the 2018 reform shows the increasing strategic importance attributed to the admission and integration policy. It has the duty of planning and drafting basic and comprehensive policies, to directly assist the cabinet, and to coordinate among ministries and agencies in the immigration policy field. With a more autonomous ISA as an external agency, the defensive influence of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) might be reduced in immigration policy (for a detailed discussion, see Akashi 2020: 72–75).

Finally, the 2018 reform of the immigration law has handed much more decision-making power to the executive. In June 2023, the path for permanent settlement and family reunification has been expanded to nine additional industries (building cleaning, automobile maintenance, aviation, lodging, agriculture, fishing, food, and beverage manufacturing, restaurant business as well as materials, industrial machinery, electrical and electronic information-related manufacturing) (ISA 2023b). This important step towards a much broader permanent immigration policy for lower-qualified foreign workers is based on a cabinet decision without consultation and approval in the parliament. The executive branch also decides future quotas for lower-qualified foreign workers. In fact, in March 2024, it decided to more than double the entry cap of lower-qualified foreign workers to 820.000 in the next five years, 2024–8, and to add four new industries (ground transportation, rail, forestry, and lumber) to the programme (Yuasa 2024).

To sum up, the 2018 reform is not the ‘big bang’ in immigration policy in Japan. Japan has been for decades an immigration country and accepted, in contradiction to its immigration law and official immigration policy, well before the reform of 2018 lower-qualified foreign workers through side doors. Still, the 2018 reform is a dam break in immigration policy that not only opened the front door for lower-qualified foreign workers but has also established a path for their permanent settlement. It has also changed the institutional setting of immigration policy by establishing the ISA and handing much more power to the executive, which has already been used to significantly expand the new path to permanent settlement of lower-qualified foreign workers. The cabinet also introduced much larger quotas for them.

What is the contribution of this article to the state of research? Japanese immigration policy and its change over time have been examined in several comprehensive studies (Shimada 1993; Iguchi 2001; Akashi 2010; Chiavacci 2011; Strausz 2019), but none of them covers the 2018 reform. Scholarly analyses that discuss the 2018 reform from a long-term perspective of immigration policy development focus on the content of the reform and elaborate issues that have not yet or not sufficiently been addressed by the reform, hence not analysing the policy process in detail (Endoh 2019; Takaya 2019; Akashi 2020; Burgess 2020; Hamaguchi 2020; Strausz 2021). A few papers have addressed the actual policy process. Oishi (2021) discusses the discourses behind the 2018 reform and argues that the Abe government used the ambiguous meaning of skill for redefining foreign workers, which had before been categorized as unskilled, as work-ready and possessing certain expertise in reaction to national and regional demands. According to Shilipova (2021), the 2018 reform and other steps to liberalize the immigration policy under Abe can be explained as being part of his growth strategy (Abenomics) in the context of demographic decline and rising labour market shortages. Similarly, Song (2020) maintained that Japan’s demographic crisis and increasing demand for foreign workers by businesses are important, but also stresses that the leadership of Abe was another key factor for the 2018 reform. Still, all these contributions focus on the policy-making of the 2018 reform in its current context and do not analyse it from a long-term perspective. This paper addresses this research gap. It discusses and compares the frames and institutional setting of immigration policy during four phases of intensive labour immigration debates in the last fifty years. It will show the major changes on a discursive and institutional level and explain why in the late 2010s the decade-long deadlock was overcome and the front door for lower-qualified foreign workers was finally opened.

The analytical framework of this paper draws on the multiple streams approach of John W. Kingdon and his concept of ‘window of opportunity’ (Kingdon 1984; see also Zahariadis 2007). According to the multiple streams approach, windows of opportunity arise when policy entrepreneurs successfully couple three independent streams (problems, policies, and politics) in a public policy field (see also Cohen et al. 1972 for the original garbage can model on organizational decision-making). Without coupling, policy reform is not possible. However, the theoretical model developed for the analysis in this article differs fundamentally from Kingdon’s original approach for two reasons. First, Kingdon’s (1984) model is based on his analysis of transportation and health policy in the USA over a short period of four years (1976–9). Immigration policy is a more complex and controversial policy field than health or transportation policy and, as will be discussed in more detail below, is characterized by a fundamental disagreement on its objectives. There is no consent on a solution because there is no common understanding of what the problem actually is that needs to be solved. Therefore, the two streams of problems and solutions (or policies) have been combined into a first level of immigration frames. Second, Kingdon (1984) does not pay any attention to institutional changes in the policy fields due to the short period under investigation in his study. In this paper, Japanese immigration policy is analysed over half a century. The immigration policy field and its main actors have changed considerably over this long period. Therefore, the stream of policy (or policy-makers) and the policy field have been combined into a second level of institutional setting. Thus, this paper analyses Japan’s immigration policy over its four debates on two levels of analysis: (1) frames on immigration and (2) institutional setting of immigration policy. It argues that immigration policy was marked for decades by a discursive diversity of contradictory frames and an institutional segmentation that led to the deadlock in the admission policy. The frame diversity and the institutional fragmentation reinforced each other. However, in the late 2010s, a window of opportunity developed thanks to the decline of the security frame as the main counter argument to immigration reform in conjuncture with the institutional centralization through the establishment of a powerful core executive. Abe and his entourage were very reluctant and even unwilling policy entrepreneurs. They did not actively create the coupling but used the window of opportunity once they realized that no other policy options were available.

On a methodological level, this article is based on academic literature, mass media publications, opinion surveys, and qualitative analyses of primary sources like policy documents and statistics. For identifying the salience of the immigration issue in public debate and among policy-makers, it utilizes quantitative analyses of newspaper articles in Japan’s four major national dailies and the number of substantial policy proposals.

2. Immigration debates: five decades and four debates

In the second half of the 1980s, Japan was transformed into an immigration country (see Fig. 1). Before this, the slow growth of registered foreign residents between 1945 and 1985 was due to the demographic expansion of Korean and Chinese old comers who had moved to Japan’s main territories (naichi) from its outer territories (gaichi) during the colonial period and their descendants. Then, during the bubble economy years, new immigration started, and the rise of foreign residents gained a completely new dynamic. In fact, Japan has been among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) top ten destination countries (according to net migration inflow) for decades (OECD 2016: 320).

Regarding Asian migrants, in the two years before the implementation of the reform, Japan was already the main destination among advanced industrialized countries (see Fig. 2). Leaving aside the Great Recession of 2007–9, which led to a temporary slowdown in immigration, the growth of foreign residents has been continuous between 1985 and 2020 (see Fig. 1). This is an indicator that Japan is a country of immigration whose economy has a structural dependence on foreign workers beyond business cycles.

As said above, most of these new foreign workers are active in job fields not included in immigration law for working visas and came to Japan through three well-established side doors for lower-qualified workers: foreign students including language students, foreign interns, and foreigners of Japanese descendants (nikkeijin). The common saying in migration studies that ‘nothing is as permanent as temporary migration’ also holds true for Japan. Although new immigrants enter Japan with temporary visas, new inflows have resulted in an increase in long-term foreign residents, including many lower-qualified foreign workers.

In contrast to the nearly linear increase of foreign residents, public and political debate has been characterized by three periods of high intensity in the era of Japan as a new immigration country (see Fig. 3 and Table 1). When also including the discussions in the final years of Japan’s high growth period (1960–73), four policy debates can be identified as having occurred during the last fifty years.

The first debate started in the late 1960s and ended with the first oil price crisis and economic recession of 1973. As this debate was clearly smaller in scale and intensity compared to the three later ones, it is also called the ‘small debate’ (Chiavacci 2011: 78). In the later 1970s, refugee policy became an important topic in Japanese politics in view of the Indochinese refugee crisis, and in 1982, Japan joined the Refugee Convention and Refugee Protocol. The admission of foreign workers did not return to the national policy agenda for fifteen years, however.

In the second half of the 1980s, the beginning of new immigration led to a second debate about immigration and its desirability, which was on a completely new scale. The average number of articles on immigration issues per year in the four largest newspapers skyrocketed more than 10-fold, from about eighty per year in 1985–7 to about 840 in 1988–93 (see Fig. 3). A similar but less pronounced development happened on the policy-making level, with the number of substantial policy proposals per year more than doubling from the 1984–8 period to the 1989–93 period (see Table 1).

From 1994 to the late 1990s, the public debate on immigration did not completely disappear or fall back to the level it was before 1988, but a decline is clearly visible (see Fig. 3). The average number of yearly newspaper articles fell by more than half to about 370 in 1994–9. At the policy-making level, the drop was even more remarkable, with only one substantial reform proposal published in 1994–8 (see Table 1).

The turn of the millennium marked the beginning of the third immigration debate, which covered a long period of nearly ten years and can be divided into two phases. In the first, preliminary phase, the increase in public discussions on immigration was rather limited (see Fig. 3). The number of newspaper articles on immigration grew by only 30 per cent to about 400 articles per year in 2000–5. The second, more intensive, main phase saw an additional two-thirds increase to about 670 articles in 2006–10.

When comparing public debate and policy-making, the third immigration debate was much more intensive on a policy level than in the public sphere. While public discussions did not return to the levels of the second debate, the number of substantial policy proposals strongly increased and reached a new peak (see Table 1). Indeed, the latter grew exponentially during the preliminary phase in 1999–2003 compared to the period before and further increased during the main phase in 2004–8, attaining a level that was nearly three times as high as during the second debate. During the main phase of the third debate, a substantial reform proposal was published every second month. While the second debate was primarily a public debate, the third debate was more intensive among policy-makers.

In the following years of the early 2010s, the immigration debate remained at a certain level, even more so than in the 1990s. Still, in comparison to the period of the third debate, there was a clear drop in intensity, and newspaper articles on immigration fell by over 40 per cent to about 390 articles per year in 2011–3 (see Fig. 3). The reduction in policy-making was even more pronounced, with the number of substantial policy proposals in 2009–13 dropping to one-fourth of those in the period before (see Table 1). This interphase only lasted a few years, however, and from 2014 onwards, the fourth immigration debate began to take place. Even when leaving aside the two exceptional years of 2018 and 2019, the number of newspaper articles on immigration reached a yearly average of about 660 articles in 2014–7 and 2020–1 (see Fig. 3).

The years of 2018 (over 2,100 articles) and 2019 (nearly 2,600 articles) were on a different scale. Even in comparison to public discussion during the second debate, this was a 3-fold increase. The intensity of public debate during these two years is a good indicator of the scope and speed of the 2018 immigration reform that obviously caused very big waves in public discussions.

On a policy-making level, the number of reform proposals substantially increased during the five-year period of 2014–8 to 4.2 per year on average. This was still substantially lower than the main phase of the third debate a decade earlier, however, which had an average of 6.4 proposals per year (see Table 1). This discrepancy between the public and political debates is a good indicator of the substantially different characteristics of the third and fourth debates. The main phase of the third debate was very intensive on a policy level and marked by many proposals, some of which were far-reaching. None of them were realized, however.

In contrast, the fourth immigration debate was primarily characterized by the culmination of one fundamental policy proposal, which was formulated and implemented very quickly. This shows how the policy-making process changed between the third and fourth debates, something we return to when discussing the institutional setting of Japan’s immigration policy in the fourth section of this article. First, the frames in immigration policy are discussed in the next section.

3. Diverse and moving frames of immigration: from deadlock to prioritization

Ethnonationalism (minzokushugi) is generally identified as the ideational basis of Japan’s restrictive immigration policy, and especially of the preferential treatment of nikkeijin (e.g. Mosk 2005: 153–154; Burgess 2020). In academic publications, Japan is regarded in this dominant ethnonationalist perspective as a nation defined by its ethnic homogeneity and principle of descent or ‘right of blood’ (jus sanguinis). Such a perspective is much too simple, however, and does no justice to the complex immigration debates in Japan (see also Kalicki 2021). Ethnonationalism plays an important role in Japan’s immigration policy, but like in all other advanced industrial societies, immigration is a thorny issue debated hotly from very different and often contradictory perspectives. It is this diversity in frames of immigration rather than a predominance of ethnonationalism that is the main characteristic of Japan’s immigration policy on a discursive level.²

As Boswell (2007) argued so elegantly in her seminal paper, modern nation-states, including Japan, are confronted with the task of fulfilling different functional imperatives in migration to retain legitimacy.³ This functional diversity of states leads to contradictory frames of immigration and an imminent tension in the field of immigration policy. In the case of Japan’s immigration policy, we can identify four main frames.

The first frame is national identity and cultural self-definition. In this identity frame, ethnic homogeneity (tan’itsu minzoku) and ethnonationalism are the dominant ideas. Still, ethnonationalism is only one perspective on identity and nation among others in Japan’s nation-building process and modernity (Oguma 1995; Doak 2007). It became the dominant perspective in national identity and self-understanding from the 1970s onwards, especially among the conservative establishment (Aoki 1990; Oguma 1995: 339–361; Lie 2001: 130–136). Ethnic homogeneity was not only regarded as unique for Japan but was also stressed as a central factor explaining Japan’s economic success story based on closing ranks and the absence of ethnic tensions. Obviously, immigration and the incorporation of foreign residents into society is a challenge for a nation with such a mono-ethnic self-definition.

A second frame, and arguably the most important frame in the case of Japan, is economic development and the resulting social cohesion. In fact, this growth frame was and is the dominant frame in the self-understanding of the Japanese nation that unites as a social contract the conservative establishment and the population. After the defeat and destruction of World War II and the delegitimization of the former drive for military hegemony, Japan prioritized economic growth over military power in its reinvention and rebuilding (Yoshida doctrine) and tried to realize this target through continuity of industrial policy and state guidance from war years (Johnson 1982; Pyle 1992).

In 1960, this developmental path experienced a crucial redirection when the then Prime Minister, Hayato Ikeda (1960–4), introduced the principle of shared growth, a socially embedded variant of the Yoshida doctrine, with the Income Doubling Plan (shotoku baizō keikaku) in reaction to the rampant conflicts of the Mi’ike strike and the Anpo protest (Chiavacci 2022). Growth was no longer an instrument to restore Japan’s power but a tool for achieving general wellbeing and social cohesion. The conservative establishment and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) became the guarantors of economic growth, in which the hard work of the population would be translated into mass consumerism and general upward mobility.

After the bubble economy burst in the early 1990s, maintaining this social contract became much more complex in view of the increasing signs of social disintegration. Shared growth remains the most important pillar of the Japanese nation, however. For example, the economic strategy of Abenomics under former Prime Minister Abe was basically an attempt to return to the good old times of full shared growth (Ido 2017; Shibata 2017; Chiavacci 2021a). This social contract of shared economic growth, and not ethnic nationalism, is the most influential frame in immigration policy that led to Japan’s dual and restrictive immigration policy. Highly qualified foreign workers are welcome because they are believed to contribute to economic growth, raise productivity, and even produce additional jobs for Japanese workers, whereas lower-qualified foreign workers are said to become a welfare burden, deteriorate the working conditions of the native workforce, and even be a drag on increasing productivity. Especially through their negative effects on lower-qualified Japanese workers, they would undermine the social contract of shared growth and social cohesion.

National and public security is the third frame in Japan’s immigration policy. After 9/11, many studies identified a securitization of migration in Western advanced industrial societies (Faist 2006; Bourbeau 2011). In the case of Japan, however, security issues and public order played a central role in immigration policy much earlier. In the early postwar era, the ruling conservatives were confronted with a Korean minority that mainly identified with communist forces in Korea, and later with North Korea. During the early years of the Cold War, which was anything but cold in East Asia, Japan’s police repeatedly clashed violently with Korean residents who wanted to establish their own school system to maintain their cultural and political identity (Takemae 2002: 462–464). The conservative government at the time regarded them as a security risk and possible fifth column and denied them Japanese citizenship. Then Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru (1946–7 and 1948–54) made this view clear in Diet deliberation in October 1951: ‘There are not a few [Korean residents in Japan] who, whenever there is a protest, are involved and participate in local disturbances and so on’ (House of Councillors 1951; see also Tanaka 1995: 72–74).

In August 1952, the government moved the migration bureau from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to the MOJ with the goal of increasing state control of irregular immigration and foreign residents (Ikuta 1992: 24). As the ministry in charge, the MOJ retained a security perspective on immigration, and during the 1960s and early 1970s, it tried several times to reinforce immigration regulations to gain even stricter control over immigration and foreign residents (Akashi 2010: 69–72). In recent decades, the security frame remained of crucial importance, and fully controlling immigration to guarantee national security and public order continues to be a central goal in Japanese immigration policy.

The fourth frame in Japan’s immigration policy is foreign policy and international prestige. In the 1970s, Japan’s conservative establishment not only started to stress Japan’s unique ethnic homogeneity as a defining element of its identity and economic success story, but in a second and somehow contradictory turn, the same elite also envisioned a much more leading role for Japan in international relations in accordance with its increasing economic might (Gurowitz 1999; Chiavacci and Soboleva 2023).

To establish itself as a leading nation in the international community, however, Japan also needed to redeem itself as a model citizen complying with international norms including human rights in view of its past as an expansive and brutal military power. An exemplary person taking this international standing frame inside the conservative establishment was Sonoda Sunao, who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (1977–9 and 1981) and the Minister of Health and Welfare (1980–1) and had a leading role in Japan joining the Refugee Convention (Suefuji 1984). Although Japan’s foreign policy considerations and international standing is now less present, they continue to play a significant role in immigration policy-making.

Over the past fifty years, the relative importance of these four frames has changed, and the growth framework in particular has been reconceptualized fundamentally over time. The diversity of frames represents a continuity in the four debates. Nevertheless, the focus of the debate has moved from diametrically opposed arguments within the growth framework (first debate around 1970) to a very pronounced degree of diversity of all four frames (second debate around 1990) to contrast between pro-arguments based on the growth frame and contra-arguments based on the security frame (main phase third debate around 2005) to a prioritization of a reconceptualized growth framework over a weakened security framework (fourth debate in the late 2010s).

During the first immigration debate around 1970, the growth frame prevailed, but based on this frame, different actors developed diametrically opposed arguments (Akashi 2010: 72–76; Chiavacci 2011: 75–83). In the late phase of its high growth, Japan experienced an increasingly acute labour shortage, as indicated by the increasing ratio of job openings per applicant (see Fig. 4). It reached its Lewis turning point, and its former rural surplus labour was absorbed into the urban economy (Watanabe 1994).

After the normalization of the bilateral relations in 1965, South Korea proposed that Japan accept more Korean interns for skills transfer and development assistance. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Japan, which were forced to substantially increase salaries because of the labour shortage, were very open to this request (Ochiai 1974: 239–240; Yoshimura 2004: 227). Japan’s employer association (Nikkeiren) also called for an expansion of the foreign intern system as a measure against the acute labour shortage (Yoshimura 2004: 228–229). Other influential players of the conservative establishment like the Japan Productivity Center even started to float the idea of guest worker programmes to be able to maintain high growth following the successful example of the Western economies (JPC 1970).

However, labour unions were strictly against opening the labour market to foreign workers, and the Ministry of Labour (MOL) also strongly opposed such ideas (Utsumi 1988: 170). They all argued that the introduction of foreign workers would worsen the working conditions and salaries of Japanese workers and, hence, undermine the painstakingly built social contract of shared growth. Even more pronounced was the criticism by the New Left and its social movements at the time. For example, these activists denounced the plan to introduce more Korean health workers as interns in Japan as a form of forced labour, like the forcibly recruited Korean workers during the war years (KDSYK 1974; OISR 1989).

Since guest worker programmes had a positive image and seemed to be strictly controllable at the time, there was not much concern that an influx of foreign guest workers might impact national security or public order. Furthermore, around 1970, Japan experienced not only high growth and labour shortages, but it went through a high point in its postwar protest cycle with strong environmental movements against rampant pollution, a large national anti-Vietnam War movement (Beheiren), and an increasingly radicalized student movement from which violent terrorist groups emerged (Kajita 1990; Nishikido 2012; Chiavacci and Obinger 2018). In short, Japanese society was by no means seen as a haven of public safety and order at the time, as during later immigration debates. In view of the pronounced level of unrest and violence, how could foreign guest workers or foreign interns have undermined ‘public order?’

As discussed above, neither the identity frame of ethnic homogeneity nor the international standing frame was fully established around 1970. Hence, such perspectives were hardly mentioned during the first debate. Nevertheless, the conservative establishment was well aware that anti-Japanese resentments were growing in many Southeast Asian countries in the late 1960s. In view of Japan’s rising exports and direct investments, it was increasingly perceived once again as an aggressive power that wanted to dominate Southeast Asia, only this time economically and no longer with military force as in the war years. This criticism also included denouncing Japan’s foreign intern system as an instrument to exploit foreign workers as cheap labour. In 1974, these anti-Japanese feelings culminated in violent demonstrations and massive riots in Bangkok and Jakarta during the state visit of the then-Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei (Avenell 2018: 52). Japan was therefore in a delicate diplomatic situation during these years, which could only worsen with a massive expansion of the foreign intern system or an introduction of guest worker programmes.

The first oil price shock of 1973 led to a short but sharp recession and a sudden end of the labour bottleneck (see Fig. 4). The first immigration debate was over before it really began. Ideas of introducing a guest worker programme or expanding the foreign intern system vanished into thin air. In view of the strong international and national criticism, the MOL, the MOJ, and the Ministry of Health made the joint decision in 1974 not to accept foreign nursing staff as interns until further notice.

In 1983, before the second immigration debate had begun, an enhanced foreign student acceptance policy introduced under Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro (1982–7) unintentionally opened the first side door for lower-qualified foreign workers. One of Nakasone’s pet policies was the ‘internationalization’ (kokusaika) of Japan. Its aim was to enable Japan to assume a leading role in the international community in line with its economic strength.

As part of this goal, a plan for 100,000 foreign students was introduced to increase the number of self-financed foreign students. After finishing their studies and returning to their home countries, it was thought that they would function as a bridge for Japanese investment and bilateral relations (Tanaka 1995: 181–191; Akashi 2010: 83–86; Chiavacci 2011: 98–101). In accordance with this plan, the number of foreign students and Japanese language students increased, but many of these ‘students’ were much more interested in earning money than in getting educational degrees in Japan. Hence, a policy that should have increased Japan’s international outreach and influence, resulted in an internationalization of Japan’s labour market. Moreover, in the late 1980s, the bubble economy with its excess investments brought the labour shortages back (see Fig. 4). Although the manpower bottleneck did not reach the same level as in the early 1970s, the rising labour demand was not met by foreign students. In comparison to around 1970, Japan was now much more regionally integrated, foreign worker demand in the oil-exporting countries in the Middle East had fallen, and international migration had been re-established as a behavioural pattern in East Asia (Chiavacci 2021b). This resulted in a rapidly increasing number of irregular immigrants (see Fig. 5).

This sudden inflow of foreign workers and apparent loss of state control over immigration led to the second immigration debate.⁴ This debate was clearly reactive in character (Hachiya 1992), asking the question: How should Japan respond to the inflow of foreign workers? Should Japan open itself and its labour market more to foreigners as part of the internationalization drive introduced by Nakasone? Most importantly, should Japan start to accept lower-qualified foreign workers (called ‘simple workers’, tanjun rōdōsha at the time)?

In comparison to the first debate around 1970 but also the later debates, this second debate around 1990 was more diverse and all four frames were strongly present and influential in the controversial public and political discussions. The two clear lines of argument against accepting lower-qualified foreign workers were based on the security and identity frames. From the very beginning of the debate, an increase in foreign residents and especially the uncontrolled inflow of irregular workers was seen as a security problem. As early as 1987, the National Police Agency (NPA) started to devote a separate chapter in its police white book to foreigner crime, in which it established a link between the rising number of foreigners and increasing criminality (NPA 1987). The NPA created a narrative that foreigners, especially irregular immigrants, have a higher propensity to commit crimes including violent ones. Although these claims are not supported by careful analysis (Yamamoto 2004), the narrative became soon common knowledge.

From an ethnonationalist perspective, the inflow of immigrants was described as potentially disruptive to Japan’s cultural and social homogeneity. In view of the side door established for nikkeijin during the second debate, it is often assumed that this identity frame played a dominant role. However, an exemption rule for nikkeijin was absent in public discussions. Up to the 1990 immigration law reform, not one single article mentions nikkeijin as a possible solution to the high demand in the labour market in the over 1,500 newspaper articles on immigration published in the four leading national dailies. Only during the implementation of the law, nikkeijin became a topic inside the LDP and was presented as the solution to the immigration issue from an ethnonationalism perspective (Nojima 1989: 98):

The plan to actively absorb the nikkeijin as workers will certainly and quickly have an effect on solving the labour shortage. One important reason against opening Japan’s labour market is that admitting large numbers of Asians with a different culture and behavioural patterns could easily lead to discrimination and conflict and destroy the population structure of Japan as an ethnically almost homogeneous nation. But if they are nikkeijin, even if some among them do not know Japanese well, then this is unlikely to become a big problem.

The line of argument clearest in favour of opening the labour market to lower-qualified workers was related to foreign policy consideration. To fulfil its leadership role in the international community, and especially vis-à-vis developing countries in East and Southeast Asia, Japan should be like other advanced industrial societies and accept the inflow of foreign workers: ‘It is also necessary to consider Japan within the context of Asia. […] The time when Japan only needs to think about its own country is over. As an economic superpower, Japan also has responsibilities’ (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1988a; see also MOFA 1989). This line of argument as part of the international standing frame represented a continuity with the debate on human rights and refugee policy in the 1970s and early 1980s that had led to Japan’s accession to the most important international human rights treaties and the Refugee Convention (Tsutsui 2018; Chiavacci and Soboleva 2023).

The most influential frame remained arguably the growth frame, which, however, was again like in the first debate marked by opposite positions and contradiction arguments. SMEs and their political supporters argued that the time was ripe for opening the labour market (Hachiya 1992: 44). In view of the labour shortage, lower-qualified foreign workers were needed to keep the Japanese economy running. The economic advantages of an active immigration policy would outstrip the disadvantages. However, the perception of an active immigration policy had turned much more negative than in the first debate. Many feared that Japan could lose control over immigration like in the case of the guest worker programmes in Western advanced industrialized countries after the first oil price shock. This would have a negative impact on the native workforce and would undermine the social contract of shared growth. Not only the labour unions (Nimura 1992) and the MOL (1988), but also most large companies and Nikkeiren (1990: 38) took such a position:

The most important aspect of the foreign labour problem is that it should not be viewed solely from a labour supply and demand perspective. If we look at the experience of all other countries, it becomes clear that recruiting foreign labour because of a labour shortage is a fundamental mistake.

Employers were relatively clearly divided by size. For example, in the construction industry, which was suffering from severe labour shortages at the time, the SMEs pushed for the opening of the labour market, but the large construction companies voted against accepting foreign workers (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1988b). They argued that an inflow of foreign workers into construction would negatively impact working conditions in the sector and further increase recruitment problems by discouraging young Japanese workers from going into construction.

In the early 1990s, the controversy over immigration based on the growth frame became even more heated. The 1990 reform of the immigration law had no dampening effect on irregular immigration as had been hoped. On the contrary, in only two years, visa overstayers almost tripled from about 100,000 in 1990 to nearly 300,000 in 1992 (see Fig. 5). SMEs and their political supporters, especially inside the LDP, renewed and heightened their demands and political pressure for a more open admission policy for lower-qualified foreign workers. Proponents also argued with the security frame. In their view, Japan was no longer able to control the immigration pressure from outside with the existing policy framework. This loss of control over immigration let not only to worsening labour conditions but also undermined public order and security.

The large-scale surveys of the Cabinet Office (CAO) on the foreign worker issue provide insight into public opinion and the relevance of the four frames in the public eye. When respondents were asked in the first survey in 1988 about their attitudes to accepting unskilled workers, about half said they should be accepted under certain conditions, while about a quarter were against accepting them, and the remaining quarter expressed no clear preferences (see Fig. 6). In the next survey two years later, an additional response category (acceptance with no specific conditions) was introduced. The result shows that public opinion was now even more strongly in favour of a controlled opening of the Japanese labour market to lower-qualified foreign workers. About 70 per cent of the respondents were in favour of such a move. This increase is probably due to the worsening labour shortage and the sharp increase in irregular migrants.

Respondents who were of the opinion that unskilled workers should not be accepted were asked why. They were given a series of possible reasons from which they could choose as many as they wished. The reasons given can be assigned to the identity, growth, and security frame (see Fig. 7). In both surveys of 1988 and 1990, the security and growth frame were strongly on the mind of those opposed to lower-qualified foreign workers. Over half cited the risk of rising unemployment among the Japanese workforce and of deteriorating public security. While potential conflicts between foreign and Japanese residents on the local level were also a significantly shared reason, only a minority of about 15 per cent feared a negative impact on the working conditions of the Japanese workforce. The impact of the identity frame was much weaker for a negative view. Only a small minority of about 7 per cent (1988) and 11 per cent (1990) worried about the impact on Japan’s unique culture.

In the 1990 survey, those in favour of accepting lower-qualified foreign workers without any specific conditions were also asked about the reasons for their opinion. The growth and international standing frame played equally important roles with about half of the respondents hoping that the inflow of lower-qualified foreign workers would mitigate the labour shortage or be a form of support for foreign workers (see Fig. 8). In comparison to the first immigration debate, the perception of labour immigration had fundamentally changed among the progressive population from exploiting to helping foreign workers. Enhancing Japan’s internationalization and supporting developing countries were additional reasons that were mentioned by a substantial share of the respondents. Overall, the CAO surveys show that the growth, international standing, and security frames were more influential in shaping public opinion. Nevertheless, public statements and decisions, such as the exceptional treatment of the nikkeijin, suggest that the identity frame has received much more attention within the conservative establishment and the LDP than it has among the general population.

The collapse of the investment bubble led to a major downturn in the labour market (see Fig. 4), and the second policy debate ended rather abruptly (see Fig. 3 and Table 1). For some years, immigration and foreign workers were no longer pressing issues on the national political agenda or in public debate.

In the late 1990s, the topic of immigration returned, and the third policy debate started. This time, the trigger was not a labour shortage as the debate started at a very low point in labour market demand (see Fig. 4). Instead, the catalyst was a new forecast by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS) regarding Japan’s future demographic development. Over time, the IPSS downgraded the long-term total fertility rate (TFR) in every forecast because of an increasing gap between the intended reproduction behaviour of the population in the IPSS’s national surveys and actual reproduction behaviour (see Fig. 9). In 1997, the new IPSS forecast predicted that the TFR would remain below 1.6 in the long term, which meant that Japan would eventually struggle to finance its social security systems and run into a severe shortage of workers, especially young workers (Schoppa 2006: 152–153).

In contrast to the second debate, this time the debate turned proactive (Hirowatari 2005). In the late 1990s, when the third debate began, immigration was not an urgent current problem that had to be solved. Japan’s population was not yet decreasing and there was no labour shortage, but the labour market was deteriorating. Still in view of the new demographic predictions, policy entrepreneurs like Sakaiya Taichi started a new debate about a more open immigration policy, which they regarded as indispensable for Japan’s future. The third debate was dominated by the growth and security frames and was less complex than the second debate.

In an economic growth perspective, it was argued that due to its demographic transformation, Japan needed many more immigrants, including lower-qualified workers, to maintain its economic size, international weight, and level of wellbeing. Sakanaka (2004), for example, put it bluntly: Japan had to decide if it wanted to remain a big and important global player through immigration or to become a small and irrelevant country without immigration. With the renewed labour shortage in the new millennium (see Fig. 4), the debate gained further momentum, and far-reaching proposals were made by those arguing for a more open immigration policy, for example, for a new middle category of mid-qualified foreign workers to be accepted (HFPC 2006), for the introduction of a guest worker programme (LDP 2008a), or even for the transformation of Japan into a fully-fledged immigration nation (LDP 2008b). The growth frame had now a dominant narrative of needed immigration. While some, notably labour unions (Rengō 2004; IMF-JC 2006) and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) as the successor to MOL (MHLW 2004, 2006), continued to oppose the admission of lower-qualified foreign workers on the grounds that it would lead to a deterioration in the working and living conditions of Japanese workers, the arguments of the proponents became much stronger, describing them as an irreplaceable building block for the future of Japan’s economy and population (Sakanaka and Asakawa 2007). In contrast to the second debate, not only SME’s interest organizations (JCCI 2003) but also Japan’s leading business organizations dominated by its large companies demanded a more open immigration policy (Nikkeiren 2000; Nippon Keidanren 2004, 2007).

During the same years, however, a ‘moral panic’ (Cohen 1972) on crime developed in Japan. According to the detailed analysis of Hamai and Ellis (2006, 2008; see also Hamai 2004), a series of police scandals in the late 1990s let to media criticism and prompted the police to report crime in their statistics much more comprehensively than in the past. These new methods in crime recording resulted in a huge increase in official crime rates, which was picked up by Japanese mass media who started to publish much more on crime and its increase. As a result, the public perception of public security changed profoundly. While Japan was considered one of the safest societies in the world, the public perception was that a crime wave was sweeping the country. As part of this new general feeling of insecurity, victims’ support groups gained much more public and political attention. Politicians started to denounce the implosion of public security and introduced new legislation to counter the ‘rampant expansion’ of crime. Criminal justice policies took a turn toward punitiveness.

However, in sharp contrast to the public and political discourse, more reliable crime data like the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) showed that Japanese victimization rates remain very low in international comparison and reported even falling rates for most crimes.⁵ As Kawai (2004: 70–71) sums up: ‘The more one studies it, the clearer it becomes that the cause of the large increase in reported robbery is ... changes in the way the police have defined it’ (see also Johnson 2007; Miyazawa 2008). Public sentiments and political debates about crime have become completely out of touch with real development. From the late 1990s to the late 2000s, Japan was a textbook case of a moral panic (on crime), during which ‘reactions of the media, law enforcement, politicians, action groups, and the general public are out of proportion to the real and present danger a given threat poses to the society’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994: 156).

This moral panic on crime became very influential in immigration policy. In public and political debate, foreign residents, especially irregular foreign workers, were identified as one main culprit for the collapse of public security and increasing crime rates. As described above, the security frame had played a central role in immigration policy from the very early postwar period. At the very beginning of Japan’s new immigration, the NPA had established a link between immigration and increasing criminality, but during the third debate, its language became much stronger. The 1999 police white book denounced for example irregular immigration (NPA 1999: 17):

Among the undocumented immigrants who originally came to Japan for work purposes, many get involved in criminal activities, which are more profitable than illegal work. The large number of undocumented immigrants becomes a hotbed of crime by foreigners.

The security discourse became even more influential and deteriorating public security was the main argument against letting lower-qualified foreign workers into the country. In mass media reporting, foreigners were depicted as threats and potential criminals (Yamamoto 2010, 2013). The decade of moral panic on crime can clearly be identified in the mass media as the number of articles reporting on foreigners’ criminality increased and became much more common than articles discussing foreigners’ human rights (see Fig. 10).

The public perception of foreign workers as potential criminals was documented in several surveys (e.g. CAO 2004a, 2006), and the 2003 ISSP survey showed that it was especially pronounced in Japan compared to other countries (see Fig. 11). This perception also led to a more negative view regarding the inflow of foreign workers, which can be seen when comparing ISSP surveys of 1995 and 2003 and the CAO immigration survey of 2004 with the previous ones (see Figs. 6 and 15). The CAO immigration surveys also show a shift in public perception of the immigration issue (see Figs. 7 and 8). While the security frame and especially the perception of foreigners as a public security risk became much stronger in the 2000 and 2004 surveys, the potentially positive and negative view of immigration as part of the growth frame lost importance in the public perception in the third debate. At the time of the 2000 survey, there were no severe labour shortages, so respondents who favoured an open immigration policy were much less likely to see it as necessary from a labour market perspective (see Fig. 8). In the same survey, unemployment rose sharply, foreign workers were more likely to be perceived as a threat to the domestic workforce among those who did not want to admit low-skilled foreign workers, but by the 2004 survey, when the unemployment peak of those years had passed, the share of respondents who held this view had fallen sharply again (see Fig. 7). In the 2000 survey the share of respondents giving an identity frame reason had moderately increased among those rejecting lower-qualified workers, but they still remained a small minority. The influence of the identity frame is difficult to assess in the 2004 survey, as a completely new statement was used. However, even this much more open statement was only supported by one-fifth of those opposing a more open immigration policy. Nonetheless, the right wing of the LDP had not changed its negative view of opening the Japanese labour market based on an identity frame.

Overall, the security arguments prevailed. Despite intensive political discussions and far-reaching proposals, the front door was not opened for lower-qualified workers. On the contrary, border controls were increased, and new measures were introduced to reduce the number of irregular foreign residents in accordance with demands made through a security frame. Although ethnic nationalism played a subordinate role in the third immigration debate, it may have indirectly reinforced the perception of non-Japanese people as a security threat. The international standing frame retained a strong role in the second debate among those of the population in favour of an open immigration policy (see Fig. 8), but among policy-makers Japan’s international standing was almost completely absent during the third debate, due in part to the greatly diminished influence of MOFA that did no longer provide the director of the immigration office from 1999 onwards. However, the two minor reforms in immigration policy introduced during the third debate—measures against human trafficking and inclusion of foreign workers in Japan’s Free Trade Agreements/Economic Partnership Agreements (FTAs/EPAs)—were realized due to foreign policy considerations (Akashi 2010: 260–264; Chiavacci 2011: 237–264; Strausz 2019: 77–81).

The economic downturn after the Great Recession (2007–9) led to a fall in demand in the labour market (see Fig. 4), and the immigration issue was ousted from the political and public agendas (see Fig. 3 and Table 1). The extent to which Japan’s immigration policy debates are driven by the issue of lower-qualified foreign workers is discernible by the fact that at the low point of public attention to the immigration issue between the third and fourth debates in 2012, a new points system for highly qualified workers was introduced (Wakisaka 2022). As this reform was not controversial and generally accepted, it was not accompanied by much public or political discussion.

The constant economic growth of the 2010s led to an increase in labour demand and produced a labour shortage that reached a higher level than during the bubble economy (see Fig. 4); however, it was not only economic growth that drove this shortage but also demographic changes. Japan’s total population and its working-age population had begun to decline, and labour losses grew every year. A labour shortage due to demographic changes was no longer a future projection but a current reality. The increase in foreign students and interns and the stagnation of nikkeijin were good indicators of this new structural reality (see Fig. 12).

Although the government expanded the special rule for the nikkeijin to the fourth generation in the summer of 2018, the number of nikkeijin in Japan, which had strongly fallen during the Great Recession of 2007–9, continued to stagnate and never returned to its former levels. One important reason for this stagnation was that nikkeijin were primarily hired as a flexible industrial workforce indirectly through private work agencies, and as Japan’s export industries stagnated due to investment abroad, demand did not expand significantly. Foreign students (in the urban service sector) and foreign interns (in rural areas) are a much less flexible workforce that fills structural labour gaps, and their increase reflects the demographic changes. Forecasts for rural Japan became bleak, and the Masuda Report of 2014 made stark predictions about rural depopulation and extinction (Masuda and NSK 2014). This triggered intense public debates about the demographic situations and prospects of rural Japan.

In view of this new demographic reality, arguments for a more active immigration policy gained new urgency and led to the fourth immigration policy debate (see Fig. 3; Table 1). Business interests vehemently demanded an opening of the Japanese labour market in sectors with a workforce shortage (Nippon Keidanren 2016, 2018; JCCI and TCCI 2017). Nevertheless, the divide in the growth frame did not completely disappear, as the trade unions remained very sceptical about the admission of lower-qualified foreign workers (Rengō 2017: 4):

The easy and planless acceptance of foreign labour has a negative impact on domestic employment and working conditions due to the influx of low-wage workers and is also problematic from the perspective of ensuring the rights of foreign labourers. Therefore, it should not be carried out.

To weaken this divide, LDP forces in favour of accepting lower-qualified foreign workers streamlined the growth frame by creating a new conception of foreign worker admission policy within the LDP and the public (Higuchi 2023). The terminology for lower-qualified foreign workers had to be reconceptualized more positively (Kimura 2022: 13). In 2016, the policy paper of the Special LDP Committee for Securing Workers clearly demanded such a change (LDP 2016: 1): ‘When discussing the acceptance of foreign workers in the future, it is inappropriate to use the term “simple workers”. We should develop our ideas without using this terminology’. The more positive term ‘gaikoku jinzai’ (foreign human resources), which had been completely absent in the first and second debates, was introduced in the late years of the third debate and became dominant in a short time (see Fig. 13). ‘Simple workers’ did not completely disappear,⁶ but ‘foreign human resources’ was much more frequently used in public debate as well as LDP and governmental publications in the later years of the fourth debate, especially during the 2018 immigration reform itself.

This reframing of admission policy also included a redefinition of ‘immigration’ to weaken the opposition based on an identity frame as elaborated by Kimura Yoshio, one of the leading LDP politicians in favour of opening the Japanese labour market (Kimura 2022: 10):

Within the LDP to which I belong, there are people on the right, liberals, and those in the centre. However, when the term ‘immigrant’ is used, it commonly creates a huge commotion. Especially those on the right side get excited and take off their jackets. I established a special committee for foreign labour in the LDP about twenty years ago. However, as soon as the term ‘immigrant’ was used, people rushed in, and intense debates ensued. Engaging in this debate often deviated from the original purpose, which was honestly ‘securing labour’. (…)

(…) Therefore, we defined in a kind of non-definition ‘“Immigrants” as someone who possess permanent residency at the time of entry. Acceptance based on a residence qualification for employment purposes does not fall under the definition of “immigrants”’ [in May 2016].

This particular definition deviates fundamentally from the standard definition of an immigrant as someone who changes the country of residence for one year or longer, which is generally used by governments, scholars, and international organizations. Obviously, the main aim of the new definition was to eliminate the ‘immigration issue’ from the discussions about foreign workers.

Arguably even more important, the fourth debate was not only marked by reframed and reinvigorated arguments for opening the Japanese labour market to lower-qualified foreign workers but also by a substantial decline in the main counter argument during the third debate. In the late 2000s, the moral panic on crime ended in Japan, and the perception of public security became positive again and continued to improve (see Fig. 14). In parallel, reporting on foreigners became more balanced again (see Fig. 10), and the view of foreigners as criminals and a threat to public security weakened (CAO 2012). In international comparison, one might say that the perception of foreigners as potential lawbreakers normalized (see Fig. 11). Security being seen as less of an issue by the public made substantial immigration reform far less politically costly.

An expansion of the foreign intern programme as an alternative to opening the front door to lower-qualified foreign workers was not really feasible in the international standing and security frames. National and international criticism of the foreign intern system had continued, especially from the US government in its yearly reports on human trafficking, due to its connection to dept-forced migration and human rights infringements. The number of foreign interns had strongly increased in the late 2010s, but a further enhancement of the foreign intern system would have damaged Japan’s international reputation. Moreover, the programme was plagued by the disappearance of foreign interns who became irregular foreign workers. Expanding the foreign intern programme would have meant risking higher criminality, according to the conservative establishment’s narrative of irregular foreign workers as potential criminals.

As the CAO surveys on foreign worker issues were discontinued, a direct comparison of the relative prominence of the four frames in public perception during the fourth immigration debate with the three earlier debates is not possible. Still, a large survey of the national Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, NHK) in March 2020 provided us with an understanding of public opinion at the end of the debate after the reform. In the survey, both groups of respondents favouring and opposing increasing foreign residents in their residential area were asked about their most important positive expectations and negative concern regarding such an increase (see Fig. 15). Despite the end of the moral panic on crime, the results show that the security frame remained the strongest factor for a negative view of increasing foreign residents. The security frame was far more important than the identity frame or the negative impact on Japanese workers as part of the growth frame. The internationalization of Japan through the inflow of new ideas and culture was an important positive expectation, but the share of respondents identifying foremost a positive impact on one aspect of the growth frame was cumulatively higher. The survey also documents the shifts within the growth frame in public opinion, which coincide with the new emphases in the political debate. Little attention is paid to the risk of a negative impact on Japanese workers. By contrast, foreign workers are now also seen as a structural factor in halting population decline and reactivating the local economy.

Despite the new definition of immigration, ethnic nationalism remained relevant inside the LDP, and not all LDP parliamentarians welcomed the proposed introduction of a guest worker programme as they regarded it as the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of a socially and ethnically homogeneous Japan. Still, Abe and his administration had their party under control, and the reform proposal was pushed through internal LDP deliberation with minimal adjustments and tightening. To fully understand this development, we now need to turn to the institutional setting of immigration policy.

4. Changing institutional setting: from fragmentation to centralization

An analysis of the institutional setting in immigration policy over the last half-century shows discontinuities in the main actors as well as in the decision-making processes and their location in the polity. Just as the frames and their relevance have changed over time, the institutional setting has gone through fundamental transformations that are of crucial importance for understanding the policy field of immigration. In a nutshell, the arena of immigration policy-making in Japan has moved over five decades from the streets and social movements (first debate around 1970) to the administration and inter-ministerial conflicts (second debate around 1990) to the internally divided LDP (main period third debate around 2005) to the core executive and its top-down decision-making (fourth debate in the late 2010s).

During the first small debate around 1970, SME interest groups and some other actors in the conservative establishment were supportive of opening the labour market to foreign workers and tried to prepare the field for expanding the foreign intern system and introducing a guest worker programme. However, many in the conservative establishment remained sceptical of such ideas and had good reasons in view of the strong national and international opposition. The powerful labour unions, the MOL and progressive opposition parties categorically opposed any proposal of an active immigration policy. The social movements of the New Left criticized it even more vehemently as Japan’s abuse of power against its East Asian neighbours and staged disruptive protests. Similar views and allegations were also expressed abroad, particularly in Southeast Asia.

Given the shaky power base at the time, it hardly seemed like a good idea for the conservative establishment to embark on such a political experiment as recruiting foreign workers. As in other policy fields (e.g. environmental policy), the conservative establishment’s room for manoeuvre was limited by strong progressive forces and a forceful extra-parliamentary opposition on the streets. The first immigration debate ended with the economic recession without really gaining momentum, and we can only speculate how things would have developed without the oil price shock. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that a comprehensive opening of the Japanese labour market could have prevailed against such strong opposition forces. However, Japan’s postwar protest cycle ended in the mid-1970s (Kajita 1990; Nishikido 2012; Chiavacci and Obinger 2018). Social movements no longer played such a central role in later immigration debates. Labour unions remained a voice in subsequent immigration policy debates, but increasingly lost membership and influence, particularly during the third and fourth debates.

In the second debate, the locus of immigration policy moved from the street to the state apparatus. Institutionally, this second debate that took place around 1990 was marked by ‘bureaucratic sectionalism’ (Imamura 2006), and the irrelevance and even absence of many important players in the conservative establishment. In fact, the LDP, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), and Keidanren, allegedly the three most powerful actors of the conservative establishment (Stockwin 2003), played no leading roles in the second debate. The LDP had several working groups on the immigration issue at the time, but they only produced very general statements, like the importance of building a national consensus without a clear positioning of the party regarding the acceptance of lower-qualified foreign workers. For example, an internal strategy committee summarized as follows the basic LDP policy (quoted after Yomiuri Shinbun 1988): ‘Foreigners with specialized skills and abilities should be accepted as much as possible, but the pros and cons and problems of accepting simple workers should be fully and carefully considered’. Obviously, the LDP was unable to overcome the internal differences between its pro-acceptance SME wing and its anti-acceptance ethnonationalist wing. Moreover, the LDP was in disarray during this period, marked by political scandals and internal reform debates.

Keidanren, the most influential business association representing mainly large companies, was only conspicuous by its absence from the debate. It hardly spoke out on immigration issues, and if so, only very cautiously and with a wait-and-see attitude: ‘Simple workers should be carefully considered’ (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1989). At the very end of the second debate in May 1992, it finally published a position paper on this crucial economic question that, however, did not present any strong demands (Keidanren 1992). Similar to the LDP, this was a sign of a fundamental internal disagreement regarding immigration in Japan’s most important business interest group. Meanwhile, the MITI, supposedly the most powerful ministry in economic matters (Johnson 1982), was also at best a supplementary player that exerted no significant influence on the immigration policy-making process.

The main players in the debate regarding the acceptance of lower-qualified foreign workers into the country were other state institutions, such as the Economic Planning Agency (EPA) and the MOFA pro versus the MOJ and the MOL contra. Based on the international standing frame, the MOFA (e.g. 1989) was very much in favour of a big reform and opening of the labour market to foreign workers, including those who were lower qualified. The strong involvement of the MOFA in immigration policy might seem surprising, but it should not be forgotten that the immigration office had originally been part of the MOFA before it was transferred to the MOJ due to security issues with the Korean minority, and that the MOFA still supplied many staffers and the supervisor of the immigration office.⁷ Moreover, the MOFA had played a leading role in Japan’s accession to the international refugee regime in 1982 and continued to regard immigration policy as very important for Japan’s international prestige. The EPA (1989), based on its calculation of the benefits and costs of different options in immigration policy, also supported an opening of the Japanese labour market for lower-qualified foreign workers combined with a comprehensive integration policy as the most beneficial option available. The MOJ and the MOL were strictly against it, however. While the MOJ’s argument was primarily based on the security frame, the MOL took a labour market perspective and feared negative effects for the native workforce if Japan accepted lower-qualified foreign workers.

Overall, a pivotal state agency in immigration policy was missing, and the ministries showed a complete lack of coordination and cooperation. Their exchanges often involved them publicly criticizing each other’s proposals, and the policy-making process became a brawl of all against all. Despite their similar positions, the biggest public conflict was between the MOJ and the MOL. The MOJ viewed the MOL’s (1988) proposal to tighten control over immigration by using an employer permit system to hire foreign workers as an invasion of its own policy domain and reacted with full force and all the means at its disposal (Shimada 1993: 63–64). This forced the MOL to bury its proposal.

As a result of the fragmented policy-making process during the second immigration debate, the front door for lower-qualified foreign workers was kept firmly closed in the 1990 immigration law reform. While the job categories for highly skilled foreign workers were widened and some rules simplified to attract them, lower-qualified foreign workers remained unwelcome in Japan. In contrast to this reconfirmed principle, however, two additional side doors for the latter were introduced in the form of the expanded foreign intern system and the exceptions for nikkeijin.

These two new side doors were the result of the usurpation of ideas originally proposed by the MOJ and the MOL. The MOL (1988) floated the plan of enlarging the foreign intern system to support economic development in East and Southeast Asia and reduce the economic differences between Japan and the rest of the region. According to the neoclassic economic approach, this would also reduce migration pressure from the rest of the region to Japan. The MOJ had put forward the idea of an exception for nikkeijin (Kajita 1999: 147–153). The MOJ did not intend its proposal to be a labour market measure by introducing nikkeijin from South America, but to treat Asian nikkeijin, especially widows and children left behind in Manchuria at the end of the war in 1945, equally with the third generation of old comers in Japan.

In both cases, the proponents of admitting lower-qualified foreign workers reinterpreted and expanded these ideas so that they ran counter to the intentions of the original ideas. As a result, through a very complex policy-making process and against the resistance of the MOL and the MOJ, the two side doors for lower-qualified foreign workers were established (Koike 1996; Akashi 2010: 106–119; Chiavacci 2011: 128–133, 138–146). From this point on, there was a gap between official and real immigration policy in Japan, which led to a gap between official immigration policy and real immigration movements in relation to lower-qualified foreign workers. The ideational diversity and institutional fragmentation during the second debate made the development of a coherent strategy impossible.

Between the second and third immigration debates, important institutional reforms were implemented in Japan’s political system. A major administrative reform was adopted in 1997 and implemented in the following years until 2001. Through this reform, the leadership ability of the prime minister was strengthened by significantly enlarging the Prime Minister’s Office. The positions of parliamentarian vice-ministers were increased to give elected representatives of the people more oversight regarding the state ministries and to increase their influence on policy-making. The resulting shift in power from bureaucrats to politicians is well-documented (Muramatsu and Kume 2006; Takenaka 2006).

Accordingly, the main actors in immigration policy changed to politicians during the third immigration debate. In the preliminary phase up to the early 2000s, ministries and their working groups still made most of the reform proposals, but politicians became the leading idea providers in the main phase. In fact, the three most far-reaching proposals all came from working groups of LDP politicians or under their leadership, that is, a new category of middle-qualified foreign workers (Kōno Tarō), a guest worker programme with sectoral quotas based on labour market demand (Nagase Jinen), and Japan’s transformation into an immigration nation (Nakagawa Hidenao).

The main name absent from this list is Koizumi Junichirō, who during his long tenure from 2001 to 2006 skilfully used the new capabilities of the Kantei, the Prime Minister’s Office, but never put forward a substantial proposal for a more active immigration policy. On the contrary, with the moral panic on crime spreading, Koizumi came under increasing pressure from subnational conservative politicians like Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintarō (1999–2012) and others who severely criticized the passivity of the central government regarding criminal foreigners. Koizumi clearly reacted to this pressure and promised to make Japan again the ‘safest and most secure country of the world’ (LDP 2003: 4), by bringing down the number of irregular foreign residents, among other measures. In his second campaign pledge of rebuilding a safe country in the national 2003 Lower House election, he and the LDP promised the electorate (LDP 2003: 3): ‘We will restore security within five years. We will eliminate the critical situation of public safety in five years and reduce the number of illegal aliens by half in five years’. The prioritization of public security and the missing support of Koizumi was the main reason the far-reaching reform proposals remained unrealized during the third debate.

This did not change due to the increased involvement of business interest groups either. While the labour unions opposing an opening of Japan to immigration continued to lose influence, even in their main policy domain of the labour market (Imai 2011; Watanabe 2018), business interest groups gained more power under the neoliberal reform agenda in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, the fusion of the national employer organization (Nikkeiren) and Keidanren into Nippon Keidanren gave this new organization and the established big businesses it represents an even bigger say in national politics.

During the third debate, as described above, Nippon Keidanren clearly favoured a more open immigration policy due to an increasing structural dependence on foreign workers by export industries, which now occupied the leading positions in this organization (Nippon Keidanren 2004, 2007). In its 2007 proposal on immigration policy, Nippon Keidanren not only argued that foreign talent ‘is urgently needed for strengthening international competitiveness and revitalizing companies’ (Nippon Keidanren 2007: 2), but that lower-qualified foreign workers are also needed ‘to solve the chronic shortage … in the future in the manufacturing, construction, machinery assembly, shipbuilding, and other industries’ (Nippon Keidanren 2007: 7). Even this external pressure had no significant impact, however. The MOJ is a special bureaucratic unit among national ministries and sees its main role as maintaining and guaranteeing the rule of law. Therefore, it tries to keep its distance from the lobbying of politicians and business interest groups. As the executive did not directly intervene, the MOJ retained its veto power in immigration policy based on the security frame and was immune to the proposals of the business interest groups and their allies inside the LDP.

The shift from bureaucracy to politicians also did not reduce the complexity of the policy-making process or lead to a more coordinated policy process with clear strategic goals. On the contrary, as the LDP remained internally divided over the acceptance of lower-qualified foreign workers, policy-making sometimes became even more fragmented. A good example of this is the rapid shifting of the MOJ leadership’s position in the main phase of the second debate.

In September 2006, Nagase Jinen became the minister of justice and was the first politician who had developed expertise, experience, and contacts with private interests in immigration policy to assume this post and lead the MOJ. As a minister, he proposed the introduction of a guest worker programme with sector quotas (Nagase 2007). This meant that the MOJ might have to completely change its position concerning the acceptance of lower-qualified foreign workers, and a huge gap became apparent between the MOJ and its leader.

It would have been interesting to see how the inevitable conflict between the minister and his ministry played out, but soon after Nagase announced his ideas on immigration policy, it was revealed that he had served as an advisor to an organization that imported foreign interns and that his office had accepted donations from this organization in return for inquiring about the status of visa issuances to foreign interns (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 2007). In the wake of this scandal, Nagase was replaced as minister of justice by Hatoyama Kunio in September 2007. In his first media conference as a minister, Hatoyama was asked about the guest worker programme proposed by his predecessor and clearly stated that this had been a ‘private plan of Nagase’ that would not be considered or carried out under him (Asahi Shinbun 2007). Overnight, with the change of minister, the MOJ had reverted to its original position of a security perspective and strictly opposed the introduction of lower-qualified foreign workers.

Overall, the third debate was characterized by many and some far-reaching reform proposals. However, these proposals never saw the light of day, due to the counter position based on a security frame that became a central issue of the Koizumi government. The continued fragmentation of the policy-making process meant that the framework of immigration policy remained unchanged: official acceptance of highly qualified foreign workers only, and three unofficial side doors for lower-qualified foreign workers.

During the third debate, there was a large gap between the intensity of the debate (especially at the political level) and the very limited outcomes. Only two minor reforms were introduced, and both were primarily pushed through from a foreign policy perspective and realized under a centralized policy-making process. First, under Koizumi, many FTAs/EPAs were concluded with Southeast Asian countries that also included migration clauses for workers in some job fields. These special immigration rules, which meant a limited but still significant opening of the Japanese labour market to lower-qualified foreign workers, were strongly contested in Japan but eventually accepted. Koizumi clearly prioritized the conclusions of FTAs/EPAs, which were considered crucial to maintaining Japan’s leading economic role in East and Southeast Asia.

Second, due to international pressure, and most importantly pressure from the US government, Japan reformed its foreign-entertainer policy and strengthened its measures against human trafficking (Chiavacci 2020: 203–208). Entertainer visas were one type of working visa issued by the Japanese government under its immigration law for highly skilled foreign workers. In contradiction to the official definition of entertainer, however, most foreign workers with such a visa were not working as professional musicians or photo models but as sex workers in a broad sense.

These entertainer visas together with the foreign intern system were strongly criticized and linked to debt-bondage and human trafficking by civil society groups and international organizations. When the USA started to join this chorus, threatening in its 2004 report on human trafficking to downgrade Japan to the small group of countries that did even not fulfil the basic international standards (Yomiuri Shinbun 2004), the Japanese government reacted swiftly to avoid such embarrassment as Hosoda Hiroyuki, at the time Chief Cabinet Secretary, called it (House of Councillors 2004): ‘Even among embassies in Tokyo this [Japan’s restraint in anti-human trafficking measures] has become a huge topic. In other words, it is extremely embarrassing for Japan, and must be corrected, absolutely’. Accordingly, the government quickly introduced new legislation and policy measures to protect victims of human trafficking. As a result, the number of foreign workers entering Japan on entertainer visas plummeted from approximately 135,000 in 2004 to less than 50,000 in 2006 (Chiavacci 2020: 204). Even though these two reforms played almost no role in the public and political discussions on immigration policy at the time, because foreign policy is a top-down policy process in which the core elite pushes through policy goals against other interests, they were able to overcome the institutional fragmentation.

Koizumi’s successors, whether from the LDP or not, were in power for only about a year at a time and thus proved incapable of developing leadership. The institutional reforms seemed to have failed to create a new system of more powerful prime ministers with long-term tenures, and Japan’s governments were as unstable as ever. In 2012, however, Abe Shinzō and his LDP returned to power and stayed for eight years, making him the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s modern history.

Not only did Abe have a long tenure, but he was also able to secure much more decision-making power for himself and his core team (Nakakita 2017; George Mulgan 2018; Iio 2019; Takenaka 2021). Due to several political scandals, commentators started to question if the power concentration in the hands of the prime minister and the core executive under Abe had gone too far. Increasingly, the national administration seemed to function in a system of ‘anticipatory obedience’ (sontaku) towards Abe and his entourage, even if this meant that the bureaucrats were no longer fully following legal provisions and procedures (Iio 2019; Carlson 2020).

In short, the concentration of power in Abe’s hands was even more pronounced than under Koizumi, and the institutional framework was more ready than ever for the top-down introduction of immigration reform. For a long time during the fourth debate, however, Abe, as a member of the right wing of the conservative establishment, was anything but willing to do so. Due to a rapidly shrinking work-age population and a decent level of continuous economic growth, the labour market developed favourably and reached a new stage of labour shortages in 2014 (see Fig. 4).

Moreover, as mentioned above, the Masuda Report ignited intense public debates about rural areas’ demographic situations and prospects. Rural voters are a fundamental constituency for the LDP, and in September 2014, the Abe administration responded quickly to the report by adopting a new policy of regional revitalization (chihō sōsei) to increase the competitiveness of rural areas. The aim was to overcome stagnation in these areas and make them part of the nation’s growth again. The government also widened all three existing side doors for lower-qualified workers and introduced some additional loopholes.

In September 2015, Abe redrafted his landmark ‘Abenomics’ economic policy. This reorientation was a ‘social turn’ (Katada and Cheung 2018) and, in the face of demographic change, included new social policy goals of increasing fertility and supporting the elderly. Even during this new stage of Abenomics 2.0, however, Abe (2015) continued to maintain that immigration policy was not an option for his government:

Speaking about Japan’s population issues, there are other things we should do before accepting migrants, namely the dynamic engagement of women in society and the dynamic engagement of the elderly, and there are moreover various means we should still attempt for raising the birth rate.

Nevertheless, the pressure continued to increase on the Abe government. Ishiba Shigeru, one of Abe’s few remaining rivals within the LDP, publicly demanded a more open immigration policy, including for lower-qualified foreign workers, who were needed in the countryside (Yoshida 2015). The number of foreign students and foreign interns quickly increased from 2015 onwards (see Fig. 12), highlighting the increasing labour shortage (see Fig. 4). According to surveys, rural voters remained dissatisfied with Abenomics, which did not seem to reach rural areas (Chiavacci, 2021a: 40). SME business interest groups (JCCI and TCCI 2017) and Nippon Keidanren (2016, 2018) published proposal after proposal calling for a more active immigration policy to address the increasingly severe labour shortages.

After much internal deliberation, an Abe administration working group led by Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no alternative to immigration reform (Mainichi Shinbun 2018; Nihon Keizai Shinbun 2018). As Abe sought resounding victories in the upcoming LDP leadership election (against Ishiba) in September 2018 and the July 2019 Upper House election as a starting point for initiating constitutional reform, and needed votes from rural areas suffering from structural labour shortages, he pragmatically supported reform against his personal beliefs (Nonaka 2019). In Abe’s (2018) response to a critical question at a press conference about whether the comprehensive reform was not being rushed through, the motives for the reform and its speed become clear:

The reason why we all worked hard to pass it in this parliamentary session is that currently, the job openings-to-applicant ratio exceeds 1.0 in all 47 prefectures. Particularly in rural areas nationwide, small and medium-sized businesses are facing a severe shortage of manpower. Some people are starting to think that they cannot take on job orders because there is not enough manpower, or in some cases, they might have to close their businesses because they cannot gather enough people. Despite efforts to improve productivity and secure domestic talent, there is still a serious shortage of manpower in fields such as caregiving, agriculture, and construction. Therefore, this amendment aims to accept foreign workers who can immediately contribute, addressing the urgent challenges.

The core executive set in motion a well-oiled political machine that quickly pushed through the bureaucracy, LDP, and parliament the largest labour market liberation for foreign workers in decades. Abe (2018) continued to proclaim that the reform did not constitute an immigration policy: ‘I have consistently stated that this system is not about immigration policy, addressing concerns about it being perceived as such. (…) It is not the so-called immigration policy that many are worried about’. However, this was only true according to the LDP’s internal and very particular definition of an immigrant as a person holding a permanent visa at the time of entry into Japan (LDP 2016), as discussed above.

Abe and his entourage’s strong grip on the LDP at the end of his tenure as prime minister was vital during the deliberations of the reform by the LDP’s legal affairs committee in October 2018. As was to be expected, despite all discursive efforts to reconceptualize lower-qualified foreign workers in a more positive light and narrow the meaning of immigration beyond labour migration, the right-wing LDP politicians on this committee strongly opposed the reform by pointing to its potential negative impact on Japanese workers and public security. The growing turmoil in the meeting seemed to derail the reform and its timeline, but the MOJ official simply replied that the reform was the ‘wish of the Prime Minister (Abe) and the Chief Cabinet Secretary (Suga)’ (Asahi Shinbun 2018), which quickly silenced all the internal LDP opposition.

This top-down decision-making and the level of control exercised by Abe and his entourage on LDP parliamentarians is also documented in opinion surveys of politicians conducted in 2014 and 2019 (see Fig. 16). In 2014, the survey showed that the LDP was the most opposed to a more open immigration policy of all parties. After the 2019 reform, however, the LDP became the second strongest supporter of accepting foreign workers. Although the LDP’s coalition partner Komeito also showed a strong swing in opinion among its politicians from 2014 to 2019, the shift in the LDP was particularly notable. It is hard to believe that this change reflects new convictions among LDP politicians. Most likely, it shows how strong the grip of Abe and his core leadership on the party was. Virtually overnight, LDP politicians changed their official stance on immigration in accordance with the new party line dictated by Abe.

During the fourth debate, a window of opportunity was opened by a significant weakening of the security frame in conjunction with an institutional centralization. However, Abe and his entourage were reluctant policy entrepreneurs. Only after much internal deliberation and against their own convictions, they saw no other possibility than to seize this window of opportunity.

5. Conclusion

The long-term analysis of this article, spanning five decades and four debates, shows that a window of opportunity created by a conjuncture of an institutional centralization of decision-making and of a relatively declining relevance of the security frame as the main counterargument made the 2018 immigration reform possible. This reform was a dam break in Japan’s immigration policy, opening the front door for lower-qualified foreign workers.

At the level of frames, political actors and pundits used three frames consistently throughout the half-century: pro (international standing frame) or con (identity frame and security frame) of opening the Japanese labour market to low-qualified foreign workers. However, especially the security frame and the international standing frame changed in terms of their impact over the four debates. The international standing frame lost ground. The security frame became much more important in the third debate, before losing influence in the fourth debate. Over the whole period, the growth frame was the most influential. In fact, all debates can be regarded as a reaction to labour force shortages (see Figs. 3 and 4). Only the early phase of the third debate occurred without a labour shortage and was triggered by new demographic projections. The growth frame was also the frame with the strongest internal disputes with diametrically opposing positions, in which actors argued for or against an opening of the labour market based on this frame. From the first to the fourth debate, an increasingly positive assessment of the inflow of lower-qualified foreign workers developed in the discussions within the growth frame, but even during the 2018 reform concerns about the impact on Japanese workers remained (e.g. when the reform proposal was discussed in the LDP’s legal affairs committee). Still, the overall more positive view within the growth frame was surely an additional factor that contributed to the window of opportunity during the fourth debate.

This article contributes to a better understanding of the 2018 immigration reform, and particularly Abe’s role in it. While Song (2020) and Shilipova (2021) identified Abe’s economic strategy and his leadership as crucial factors for the reform, this article suggests that the Abe core executive was a reluctant policy entrepreneur. Abe and his team played obviously the central role in centralizing power but had no significant role in ending of the moral panic on crime. They used the window of opportunity to push through the reform, but they were forced by external pressures (labour market shortages, declining rural Japan, business interests, Ishiba Shigeru, etc.) to start the reform process. In this sense, the 2018 reform was not a part of Abe’s economic strategy, and his leadership had for a long time been delaying and even preventing influence on immigration reform. Until very shortly before the first declaration of intent, many agreed with the assessment of Milly (2018: 26) that Abe had other policy priorities and would not engage in significant immigration reforms. According to internal informants, Abe himself is said not to have really supported the reform, but to have given up his opposition against accepting lower-qualified foreign workers with the words: ‘I have no other choice’ (shikata ga nai) (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 2018).

Where does the reform leave Japan and its immigration policy? In recent decades, immigration policy has been a very delicate issue in all democracies. In fact, international surveys tend to show a negative public opinion about accepting more immigrants or foreign workers in advanced industrial countries (see Fig. 17). Lind (2018: 53) even argues that the non-emergence of populism in Japan, compared to the USA and Western Europe, is due in part to the fact that the government has maintained restrictive immigration policies and ‘deferred to public skepticism about immigration (rather than ignoring it, as did American and European leaders)’. However, surveys in Japan have reported a clearly favourable public view of the 2018 reform. For example, in a representative survey conducted by NHK in March 2020 after the introduction of the reform, a staggering 70 per cent of the respondents were in favour of increasing the number of foreign workers (Okada 2020: 80). It should also be noted that the views on immigration in Japan appear to have been less negative than in other major economies (see Fig. 17). According to the CAO surveys, a public consensus in favour of accepting lower-qualified foreign workers seems to have been fairly well established during the second and third debates (see Fig. 6).

The reform has been rightly criticized for focusing primarily on admission policy and not really generating a new approach to integration policy (Endoh 2019; Akashi 2020; Hamaguchi 2020). In fact, even after the 2018 reform, the share of the budget earmarked for integration measures remained extremely small compared to the funds earmarked for immigration control measures (Takaya 2019: 19–20). For shared growth to remain Japan’s social contract in the future, it must be reinvented to include immigrants. Still, the 2018 reform was the culmination of five decades and four debates on immigration policy marking the beginning of a new period in Japan’s immigration policy. Nippon Keidanren (2022: 3) even claims in its newest proposal on immigration policy that ‘with the establishment of the ISA in 2019, the government’s integration support has become full-scale operational, stimulating discussions and efforts to settle and accept foreign nationals as ordinary members of society’ and that only a clear vision is missing. However, as noted in the introduction, Japan’s integration policy needs not only a clearer vision but significantly more resources and concrete measures, especially at the national policy level. Moreover, the country has not been transformed by the reform into a nation that defines its ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) through immigration, and it will probably maintain a restrictive immigration policy that minimizes immigration to the level needed for generating growth and maintaining standards of living.

Japan has recently been described as an ‘emerging migration state’ (Hollifield and Sharpe 2017) and as moving ‘toward a liberal migration control’ (Kalicki 2021). We might even go one step further in our assessment and say that after the 2018 reform, Japan is now a proactive immigration state that is instrumentalizing the inflow of highly qualified and lower-qualified foreign workers. The reform opened the front door for lower-qualified foreign workers, and even without the centralization of decision-making power seen during the Abe administration, it has set a legal framework for future governments to increase immigration inflows to a completely different level in the future.⁸

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at several conferences. The author would like to thank his colleagues and three anonymous reviewers for their productive criticism and important comments, which significantly improved the quality of the article. All remaining errors and shortcomings are the sole responsibility of the author.

Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

References

Footnotes