Conservative Politics and the Dilemma of Immigration in Japan

Abstract Conservative parties and politicians are often caught in a dilemma regarding immigration policies. Business interest groups and xenophobic populist forces both support conservative political parties but expect fundamentally different immigration policies. Japan is a rare case among advanced democracies that has experienced neither large-scale immigration nor the emergence of xenophobic populism. Yet, Japan’s conservative government, facing the reality of a rapidly aging and declining population, has begun to loosen immigration policy. We analyze the ruling party politicians’ policy positions on foreign worker intake and demonstrate that their views have shifted in a pro-foreign-worker direction, especially among legislators representing rural areas that have seen a sharp increase in foreign residents.