Under the banner of coping with demographic decline and promoting tourism, Japan has expanded its acceptance of foreigners.
The author argues that this is not merely an economic policy issue, but a grave national question affecting Japan’s medical system, education, public safety, legal order, and ultimately its very survival as a nation.
The Japanese government, he insists, must honestly explain to the public that this is fundamentally the same immigration problem that has already troubled many Western countries.
He also calls on the opposition not to evade serious debate on issues that concern the foundation of the state.
Against the backdrop of the Chinese Communist regime’s record of ethnic domination, and the dangers embedded in Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” and the Belt and Road vision, the essay warns that if Japan continues to weaken itself under the slogan of pacifism, it may one day lose its national identity altogether.
The central argument is clear: the foremost duty of a state is to protect the lives and property of its people, and that duty takes precedence over sentimental cosmopolitanism and beautified notions of “global citizenship.”

2019-03-19
This is a line that must not be yielded by even one millimeter, and one that takes precedence over the prettified platitudes of “global citizenship” and sentimental cosmopolitanism.

I am reposting below another chapter from the indispensable work by Rui Sasaki, a real journalist, following the chapter I published on 2019-02-19 under the title, “On Chinese internet sites, a supposedly plausible map of the Far East is being discussed in which, in the near future of 2050, western Japan has been incorporated into ‘China’s East Sea Province’ and eastern Japan into the ‘Japan Autonomous Region.’”
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
I do not completely deny the government’s policy of aiming to become a tourism-oriented nation by attracting 40 million foreign visitors and accepting 300,000 foreign students by 2020, at a time when domestic demand is cooling due to the declining birthrate and aging population.
However, the sight of the government and the ruling party loudly proclaiming ambitious targets, while the relevant ministries scramble to secure budgets and patch together the numbers, is far too shortsighted and driven by bureaucratic self-interest.
To say, “We brought in foreigners, and what happens afterward is not our concern,” will only make life harder for the young people who must carry this country into the future.
The Japanese government should stop concealing the truth and properly explain to the public that the problems now becoming visible are precisely the same immigration problems that Western countries are already struggling with.
An immigration policy that fundamentally calls into question the very shape of this country is being left to drift ahead in the absence of the nation’s citizens.
What I have come to feel through visiting the actual sites is the fact that, without the people even knowing it, the inflow of immigrants has effectively been unleashed.
The immigration issue that caused such controversy for President Trump in the United States is by no means someone else’s problem for the Japanese people.
Visible borders alone are not the only borders.
The countless forms of this country’s “soft” framework, including medical care, the education system, legal institutions related to public order, and much else besides, have already begun to show signs of fraying before foreign immigration.
I want the Abe administration to confront these issues head-on.
There is also the matter of constitutional revision.
There are many pressing challenges at home and abroad, but the priority of immigration, which directly affects the daily lives of the people, should by no means be low.
Criticism of the government is fine.
But the opposition as well should stop spending all its time hunting for scandals involving ministers, bureaucrats, and ruling-party lawmakers, and instead seriously debate in the Diet issues such as immigration that concern the very foundations of the nation.
“Population is a weapon.”
At a time when depopulated towns and villages, as well as housing complexes in the Tokyo metropolitan area, are being targeted amid severe outflows of residents and rapid aging, the words of Mao Zedong, once China’s supreme leader, resound with an eerie force.
Even in just the last 200 years, 50 states and regions have disappeared from the map.
Tibet, Uyghuristan (East Turkistan), Southern Mongolia (Inner Mongolia)—
So many nations lying close at hand have continued to be exposed to the danger of ethnic cleansing under the rule of the Chinese Communist regime.
On Chinese internet sites, a supposedly plausible map of the Far East is being discussed in which, in the near future of 2050, western Japan has been incorporated into “China’s East Sea Province” and eastern Japan into the “Japan Autonomous Region.”
For now, it is still no more than fantasy.
But it is also true that we live beside a dangerous neighbor indulging in exactly such waking dreams.
If the “Chinese Dream” spoken of by President Xi Jinping is meant to signify as well the territorial expanse of the Yuan and Qing dynasties, which swept across the Eurasian continent under the name of the “Belt and Road,” China’s modern version of a Silk Road economic sphere, then this is an extremely dangerous way of thinking.
For example, in 1995, when Chinese Premier Li Peng visited Australia, he told then Prime Minister Keating, “Japan is an insignificant country.
In another thirty or forty years, it will disappear.”
This was probably his true feeling, a mixture of jealousy and vigilance toward a country that, in the postwar era, achieved a miraculous economic recovery and contributed to the international community as a technological power and a peaceful nation.
If Japan, exactly as military giant China would like, goes on chanting slogans of anti-war peace, matching its steps with theirs, and feverishly devoting itself to weakening its own strength, then around 2050, just as they hope, the country called Japan may disappear from the world map and become a part of China, where its people are treated as second-class citizens.
The most important duty of a state is to protect the lives and property of its people.
That duty transcends ideology.
It is a line that must not be yielded by even one millimeter, and one that takes precedence over the prettified platitudes of “global citizenship” and sentimental cosmopolitanism.
To be continued.