JAPAN'S NEW RESIDENCY RULES EMPHASISE INCREASINGLY MERCENARY ATTITUDE TO FOREIGNERS

Japan recorded 42.43 million foreign entries in 2025, a record and the first time the annual total passed 40 million, according to the Immigration Services Agency. About 98 percent were short-term visitors, mostly tourists. But is Japan really falling in love with the "gaijin" or is it just the hard currency that they bring?

The answer is possibly contained in the new revised guidelines for permanent residence, issued by the same Agency on October 1, 2026. These greatly restrict the route by which foreign-born residents can stay indefinitely and work without restriction.

The contrast is built into the policy. Visitors are welcomed in growing numbers; a weak yen and more flights have supported the recovery in tourism since the pandemic. Yet permanent residence is being made harder to obtain.

Applicants are now expected to show household income continuously at or above the average for Japanese households of the same size. No fixed yen threshold has been published but the authorities have indicated that they will use official household-income surveys. Kyodo News reported that average household income was about 5.75 million yen in 2024. 

Screening of applicants will also weigh projected pension benefits against the level payable after 30 years in the employees' pension program, and, from April 2027, Japanese-language ability at the level of an "independent user" will be a requirement. From that date, applicants generally must already hold the maximum period of stay, in principle five years.

Spouses of Japanese nationals or permanent residents, who could previously apply after three years of marriage and one year of residence, will need five years of marriage and three years of residence. The permanent-residence application fee rose the same day from 10,000 yen to 200,000 yen, which in inflation terms is a mere 1900%!!!

The economic logic is highly selective. Labour shortages and low fertility have pushed foreign-worker and foreign-resident totals to new records. There were 4.13 million foreign residents at the end of 2025, including 947,125 with permanent residency and thus access to public funds. Tourism brings money but without any of the potential costs of settlement.

The revised guidelines state that applicants must be judged capable of "supporting themselves" in the future. Meanwhile spouses and others exempt from the income test on humanitarian grounds may be assessed negatively if believed to be a potential drain on the public purse.

But why such an apparently schizophrenic and, daresay, mercenary approach? Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has treated management of the foreign population as a priority, citing public "anxiety" and a sense of "unfairness." Also, another problem is that the "gaijin" conflates all foreigners in one category, from Westerners, who tend to be viewed positively, to people from South East Asia, who are often overrepresented in petty crime, and Chinese and Koreans who may retain dubious links with their totalitarian homelands.

 

Eriko Suzuki, a professor of immigration policy at Kokushikan University, told the Mainichi Shimbun that the new standards emphasize national interest over human rights and will make life planning harder for people who hope to remain. She argued that foreigners are also consumers and members of local communities, and that restricting permanent residence in this way could discourage the workers that Japan needs to keep to consider their options.

Maybe the way to solve this problem is to get all those tourists clogging up Shibuya Crossing to put in at least a week's work in a care home for the elderly before being granted their tourist visas!