With the House of Councillors / Upper house elections happening this weekend, there's been a lot of talk about the future of the ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Last October, they lost the majority in the Lower House elections, creating a minority government. As a result, the LDP has had to make deals the opposition parties to get legislation through parliament. A loss in the Upper house elections is the last thing they want right now.
A lot of smaller political parties have been making their pitch recently in the lead up to the elections. What's unusual this time is that many of them are touting policies regarding foreigners. The short story is that many of these smaller parties are using foreigners as scapegoats for the country's failures in recent years.
One prominent minor party is Sanseito (参政党) who's catch phrase is "Japan first" (ironically, expressed as 日本ファースト). Among some of their policies is deporting those who are staying illegally - of which I have no problems with that. All that needs to be done is enforce the existing laws to deport staying illegally. My issue with parties like Sanseito is that their implication that foreigners are the reason for perceived increase in crime, as well as receiving special treatment when it comes to benefits like health.
Here's the thing though: the claims of foreigners leading to the increase in crime is false. Based on reports by the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), foreigners only make up a small percentage of national crimes. This page gives a pretty good summary of the situation in Japan. The TL:DR version of that report is that nationally, crime in Japan is low, foreigners only account for 6% of all crimes, of which most foreigner-related crimes fall under visa violations or theft, and the recent increase in crime is due to Japanese offenders. However, despite the facts showing that parties like Sanseito are full of it with this claim, a lot of Japanese voters are gravitating towards them, feeling like the LDP doesn't really care of their plights
I feel that painting all foreigners as the bad guys is quite a reach. Especially as there has been recent news about fraud committed by Vietnamese and Chinese living in Japan when it comes to taking exams like TOEIC or the JLPT. I found a recent article about a Vietnamese woman arrested, along with a recent video of Chinese students in Japan getting busted for proxy test-taking. In case you don't know what this means, basically someone pays somebody else who looks very similar to them to take the test on their behalf, including borrowing their residence card for ID verification purposes to pass the tests. Many need to take theses tests either to be able to get a job, or to even change their existing visa in to a better one that would allow them more work opportunities.
Unrelated, but when I was living in Kawagoe, near my station I saw a lot of warning signs in Chinese and Vietnamese (as well as Japanese), but never in English. It seems that this is because they are the ones causing problems in the area. Of course, parties like Sanseito can't single out specific nationalities out of fear of being accused of hate speech, but I mean, they're already on that slippery slope and are shrugging off all accusations of targeting their hate at foreigners.
It is concerning, though on the other hand, there are a lot of Japanese political parties out there batting for foreigners, and pointing the finger at the Japanese government for the country's failures. It is good to see that not everyone is falling for the "all foreigners are criminals" rhetoric that's being spouted. I just hope that common sense will prevail in this upper house election.
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