41.5 percent of surveyed Japanese middle schoolers don’t think more immigration benefits society

This isn’t a cut-and-dry case of Japanese kids simply becoming more socially conservative, though.

Internationalism is becoming an increasingly discussed topic in Japan, as the country’s indigenous population contracts and its number of foreign-national residents increases. This shift is happening quickly enough to be noticed not only by adults comparing the current demographics to how they were decades ago, but by adolescents too, and a recent study shows that many of them don’t necessarily see Japan’s growing foreign population as a good thing.

University of Tokyo sociology professor Norihiro Nihei conducts a periodic survey of all students at 10 middle schools in Tokyo and the surrounding area in order to track changes in their attitudes regarding social issues. The students are presented with a series of statements, then asked whether they agree or disagree with them. One of those statements is “An increase in the number of foreigners living in Japan will bring many benefits to society,” and in the most recent survey, more than 40 percent said they do not agree.

The percentage of students disagreeing with the notion that immigration would be beneficial to Japanese society nearly doubled between the most recent survey, the data for which was collected in 2025, and the previous iteration of the survey, which was carried out in 2023.

That jump from 22.26 percent who didn’t see increasing immigration as a major positive for society in 2023 to 41.5 percent in 2025 is significant. Nihei is quick to say, though, that this doesn’t signal an across-the-board shift towards right-wing attitudes for young people in Japan. As a matter of fact, he asserts that the way the labels “liberal” and “conservative” are used in Japan and the English-speaking world don’t always perfectly align, and so he wants to put a finer point on how the survey is applying the terms.

For the purposes of the survey, Nihei examines what he describes as three indicators of liberal orientation: democratic orientation, tolerance, and autonomous orientation, which the study checks for by presenting a statement representing each. Among them, there were no dramatic drops since the previous survey.

There were, however, some large increases in agreement to statements that, within the scope of the study, Nihei cites as indicators of conservative or right-wing orientations of authoritarianism, patriotism, and xenophobia.

It might seem like an odd combination to have continuing extremely high-expressed support for accepting other people’s way of thinking and collectively deciding on the rules while at the same time having a jump in uncertainty as to whether or not more foreigners living in Japan is a good thing for society, but there’s one other factor the survey examines, which Nihei calls “rule strictness,” measured by the participant’s reactions to the statement “People who do not follow rules should be severely punished,” which 70.8 percent of respondents agreed with in 2022. In 2025, the percentage rose to 79.3 percent.

The idea of strict enforcement of regulations might seem like something from the conservative school of thought, and Nihei does recognize that such strictness could be seen as the opposite of tolerance, which he treats as a liberal value. However, in an example of one of the many ways conservative and social values may not consist of the same baskets of attitudes in one society as they do in another, Nihei says:

Taken together, the combination of, to borrow the survey’s terminology, continuing high tolerance at the same time that both xenophobia and rule strictness are increasing could be construed as reflecting a change in Japanese young people’s perception as to how willing foreigners are to follow Japan’s laws and social customs. Though Nihei’s report on the most recent survey’s results don’t delve into this issue, high-profile crimes such as theft and assault involving foreign perpetrators used to be few and far between, but have become not-uncommon occurrences in recent years, and could be contributing to a diminished image of foreign residents’ likelihood of integrating into the peaceful, orderly norms that have long been the default for most Japanese communities. That sort of stigma could be especially influential on Japanese children, who might not have any foreigners among their peers, as Japan’s foreign population has far more adults than minors, and so might not have any personal acquaintances to counteract the bad examples that become major news stories.

The survey being conducted in the Tokyo area could also be affecting the results, as one of the most commonly pointed-to concrete ways in which Japan could benefit from increased immigration is help in filling labor shortages and preventing population vacuums in smaller communities whose Japanese residents are moving to the big cities, but those aren’t problems that Tokyo and its immediate neighbors are really struggling with. The current state of the economy is also a likely factor in the growing skepticism about immigration among the surveyed middle schoolers. Proponents of increased immigration within the Japanese government have been advocating for expanded support for foreign residents to promote smoother integration into Japanese society. Unfortunately, this is occurring at the same time that rapidly rising costs of living and stagnant wages are putting the pinch on Japan’s middle and lower classes. Middle schoolers probably aren’t tracking consumer price indexes and sifting through government budget proposals, but many probably do have a sense that money is getting tighter for their or their classmates’ families, and so the idea of an increased focus on helping foreign residents coinciding with a decrease in their perceived willingness to follow the rules might not sit well with many of the survey participants.

It’s very important, though, to keep in mind that 41.5 percent of the surveyed middle schoolers saying they don’t think an increase in foreign residents will be beneficial to society also means that 58.5 percent of them, the majority, do think that increased immigration would be a good thing. In other words, xenophobia isn’t the default attitude among Japanese kids, and hopefully whatever factors are contributing to the bump of the needle in that direction can be resolved while that’s still the case.