Following the Liberal Democratic Party’s electoral landslide last month, the government has once again affirmed a familiar contradiction: Japan will expand its reliance on foreign labor while insisting it has no “immigration policy.”
This long-standing sleight of hand was crystallized during the creation of the ikusei shūrō training and employment system. In parliamentary deliberations before its passage in June 2024, the government stated plainly: “The introduction of this system is not intended to be an ‘immigration policy.’”
This logic has remained remarkably consistent across successive administrations. By relying on a 2018 definition by the Cabinet that equates “immigration policy” only with the permanent, large-scale settlement of families, the government maintains a persistent tatemae, or pretense: it can expand residency paths like the Specified Skilled Worker visa — which functions as a de facto immigration route — while flatly denying that any “immigration policy” exists. Semantics like this allow the state to procure labor while preserving the political myth of a homogenous nation, effectively inviting workers but ignoring the human beings.
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