July 10, 2025

More and more political parties and candidates in the House of Councilors election campaign are showing hostility towards foreigners. Some political parties are competing with each other in expanding their xenophobic policies. A growth of the antiforeign forces attempting to gain the conservative class’s favor in the election will accelerate discrimination and division in society and will weaken the momentum for a reform of politics which continue to prioritize large corporations’ interests and maintain subservience to the U.S., something which the general public need to become fully aware of. The Japanese Communist Party expresses its firm resolution to oppose xenophobia and the far-right trend to endorse it.

Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru at a Cabinet meeting on July 8 announced a plan to set up a new organization, a command center for dealing with foreigners, in the Cabinet Secretariat. This plan is based on a proposal which the Liberal Democratic Party submitted to the government last month. In the proposal, the LDP demanded government measures to review the immigration and residency status management system, curb the number of refugee status applicants, strictly examine foreigners’ access to Japan’s public health insurance coverage, and ensure transparency in foreigners’ land ownership.

The LDP in its election platform states that it will speed up efforts to achieve a “zero illegal foreigners” goal by such means as strengthening measures to cope with overstaying foreign nationals on temporary releases. It also states that it will seek to review non-Japanese citizens’ use of the public health insurance program. The party’s PR section on its X account posted video footage which fuels hatred against foreign residents by introducing the “voices of people” like these: “The number of foreign residents disregarding Japan’s rules appears to increase” and “It is worrisome that more and more Japanese land has been purchased by foreign capital.”

The “Nippon Ishin no Kai” party has made an election pledge to “formulate a population strategy that prevents the rise in the ratio of foreigners to Japan’s total population and restricts acceptance of foreign nationals” due to what the party claims “the harmful effects, such as friction between Japanese and non-Japanese residents in some communities, of the uncontrolled increase in the number of foreigners.”

The Democratic Party for the People has pledged to “aim for the enactment of a bill to regulate the acquisition of land by foreigners.” It says it will “investigate the actual situation of social insurance coverage for foreigners and take measures to optimize the operation” of social security services. Initially, the party stated it would “review excessive preferential treatment for foreigners,” but has modified this to “optimize the operation of various public programs applicable to foreigners” after receiving criticism that the original pledge was too exclusionary.

The “Sanseito” party whose slogan is “Japanese First” clearly states in its election manifesto that it will “suspend the provision of public livelihood assistance benefits to foreigners” and will “ensure that (social welfare programs) are applied only to those who substantially serve Japan’s national interests.” The party has also promised to “strictly require foreigners to understand and comply with the cultural background of Japan.”

These exclusionary claims are gaining ground by taking advantage of people’s hardships, bringing about a division in the country. The root cause of people’s living hardships is the misgovernment of the LDP-Komei coalition. This government is responsible for the ongoing price surge and wage erosion. The claim that “preferential treatment for foreigners is a cause of people’s hardships” is completely false. In fact, the number of foreign residents receiving public livelihood assistance benefits has decreased over the past decade while the foreign population has grown to approximately 1.7 times its size of ten years ago.

Directing the vent of frustration toward foreigners will rescue the LDP-Komei government from bearing its share of blame for the so-called “Lost 30 Years”. The JCP has been fighting against racism and other forms of discrimination and working for a fundamental change in government policies. A JCP breakthrough will lead to reducing hardships in people’s livelihoods, eliminating discrimination, and preventing people from being unjustly divided.