Japan

Intelligence for Better Decision Making

Japan Finalizes Sweeping Immigration Policy Reforms for 2026 Implementation

Nov. 6, 2025 | Demographics & Human Capital

Japan’s government is finalizing a comprehensive set of policies on foreign nationals in preparation for January 2026.

**On November 4, 2025, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi convened the first Meeting of Relevant Ministers on the Acceptance of Foreign Nationals and the Realization of an Orderly Coexistence Society at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence.**
She established a new interministerial council to strengthen central government oversight of foreigner policies and to promote a safe, secure, inclusive, and orderly society. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, Minister Kimi Onoda—who leads the coexistence efforts—and other relevant ministers attended.

**Takaichi emphasized that Japan needs foreign talent to address labor shortages driven by population decline and to support inbound tourism.**
At the same time, she acknowledged rising public anxiety and perceptions of unfairness over illegal acts and rule violations by some foreign nationals. The government pledged to respond firmly to those breaches while ensuring that law-abiding foreign residents do not suffer undue hardship, clearly separating these enforcement measures from any xenophobic agenda.

**Ministers received instructions to enforce existing regulations rigorously, administer related systems properly, and review rules on acquiring, using, and managing national land.**
The newly appointed Minister in Charge of Promotion of an Orderly Coexistence Society with Foreign Nationals will coordinate efforts across ministries, assess conditions on the ground, and drive continuous improvement of these initiatives.

**The cabinet also ordered an urgent development of basic concepts and policy directions to revise the “Comprehensive Response Measures,” targeting their presentation by January 2026.**
In parallel, the ruling coalition’s agreement between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party calls for a population strategy by the end of fiscal 2026, including numerical targets for admitting foreign nationals.

**Looking ahead to June 2027, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare will deny residency-status renewals or changes for foreign nationals who fail to pay national health insurance premiums.**
Health Minister Kenichiro Ueno plans to collect nonpayment data from medical institutions and share it with the Immigration Services Agency. As of the end of 2024, surveyed municipalities reported a 63 percent payment rate among foreign residents compared with 93 percent among Japanese citizens.

**Under the “Zero Illegal Foreign Residents Plan,” launched in late May 2025, officer-escorted deportations rose to 119 individuals from June through August 2025, up from 58 in the same period the previous year.**
Turkish nationals accounted for the largest group of deportees, followed by Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and Chinese. Since amendments to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law took effect in June 2024, authorities have deported repeat asylum applicants without reasonable grounds and individuals sentenced to over three years in prison. Despite record inbound arrivals—over 19 million in the first half of 2025—the number of overstayers declined to about 71,200 as of July 1, 2025, primarily Vietnamese, Thais, South Koreans, and Chinese.

**This intensified enforcement has uprooted children and families who grew up in Japan, including Kurdish ethnic Turks with legally resident relatives, and Japanese-educated children who face steep challenges reintegrating into their countries of origin.**
Affected students and families report fear, uncertainty, and difficulty adapting to unfamiliar social and linguistic environments.

**Human rights organizations and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations contend that the zero-illegal-residents plan infringes the rights of non-threatening foreign nationals and risks creating public misconceptions that tie irregular migrants to safety concerns.**
Refugee advocacy groups and Amnesty International Japan warn that the plan may hinder proper recognition of genuine refugees, encourage discrimination, and violate human rights.

**The interministerial council will continue its work on tightening immigration controls, reassessing access to social security and educational support, and addressing overtourism.**
It will also explore a “total volume regulation” to cap foreign arrivals and develop frameworks for admitting foreign workers with specific skills and expertise as part of the broader overhaul of foreigner-related policies.

Takaichi Faces Diet Scrutiny Over Cabinet Picks and Outlines Policy Priorities in First Debate

Nov. 6, 2025 | Politics

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi confronted scrutiny over her recent cabinet appointments and laid out her policy agenda during her first formal debate in the National Diet.

**Opposition leader Yoshihiko Noda criticized Takaichi for elevating seven Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers implicated in a slush-fund scandal to positions as vice ministers and parliamentary secretaries.**
Takaichi defended her choices by emphasizing that each appointee had taken responsibility, offered detailed explanations of their involvement and committed to preventing any recurrence of the scandal. Noda responded that all seven traced back to the late Shinzo Abe’s faction, arguing their promotion reflected poor judgment and ongoing factional favoritism within the ruling party.

**During the Lower House plenary session on November 4, Takaichi apologized for the damage to political trust caused by the scandal and reaffirmed her commitment to strict compliance with the revised Political Fund Control Law.**
She stopped short of calling for immediate tightening of regulations on corporate and organizational donations, instead proposing a consultative body this parliamentary session—an initiative tied to the coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party—to explore potential reforms to donation rules.

**On the proposal to reduce the number of House of Representatives seats by 10 percent, Takaichi urged each party to hold detailed internal discussions and seek broad bipartisan consensus.**
Noda accused the coalition of using seat cuts to delay funding reforms and divert attention from scandal accountability, and smaller parties such as Sanseito warned that slashing proportional representation seats could undermine emerging political groups.

**Takaichi then turned to her key policy priorities.**
She pledged to pursue constitutional revision by updating Article 9 to reflect international developments, introducing emergency clauses and holding a national referendum at the earliest opportunity. In response to heightened military displays by China, Russia and North Korea, she confirmed plans to establish a national intelligence agency under the coalition agreement, with enabling legislation slated for the next ordinary Diet session.

**Economic relief also featured prominently.**
Takaichi announced a refundable tax credit program that would deliver cash benefits or tax cuts calibrated to income levels and urged opposition cooperation to pass a 2025 supplementary budget targeting inflation and rising living costs. Leading a minority government, she signaled that cross-party dialogue would prove essential to enact these urgent measures.

**To strengthen longer-term growth, Takaichi convened the first meeting of Japan’s economic strategy headquarters and instructed cabinet ministers to draft policies for 17 strategic industries—from artificial intelligence to shipbuilding and defense—by next summer.**
She called for multi-year budget commitments to bolster supply chains and create a robust investment environment, assigning each sector a dedicated minister and forming an advisory council that includes senior business and labor representatives.

**On labor policy, Takaichi directed Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Kenichiro Ueno to review existing working-hour regulations in line with the LDP’s “Want-to-Work Reform” pledge.**
The review aims to give businesses greater flexibility amid labor shortages while safeguarding worker health, building on the penalized overtime limits set under the 2019 Work Style Reform laws and ongoing discussions between labor and management that began in January.

### IMPACT ANALYSIS
**From this Development, various impacts could cascade through the system, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the severity and criticality of the shocks.**

Domain	Causal Chain	Possible Outcome
Governance & Law	(Governance-effectiveness & corruption control ↓ → Corruption-perception index ↑ → Sovereign governance-risk spread ↑ → FDI net inflow (% GDP) ↓)	Higher sovereign governance-risk spreads and borrowing costs will likely drive down FDI inflows relative to GDP.
Governance & Law	(Campaign-finance transparency framework ↓ → Vote-buying / clientelism prevalence ↑ → Public-trust in elections index ↓ → Voter turnout ↓)	Resurgent clientelism and eroded electoral trust will likely depress voter turnout, weakening democratic legitimacy.
Governance & Law	(Party-funding transparency & audit laws ↓ → Regulatory-quality score ↓ → Ease-of-doing-business rank (legal pillars) ↓ → FDI net inflow (% GDP) ↓)	Diminished regulatory quality and weaker legal business frameworks will likely deter foreign investors, reducing FDI inflows.
Politics	(Referendum / initiative provisions ↑ → Snap-election probability model (%) ↑ → Policy-uncertainty index deviation ↑ → Investor political-risk premium ↑)	Heightened snap-election risks and policy uncertainty will likely raise investor political-risk premia.
Governance & Law	(State-of-emergency activation checks ↓ → Executive-decree issuance frequency ↑ → Policy-volatility index ↑ → Business-confidence diffusion index ↓)	More frequent executive decrees and policy swings will likely erode business confidence across sectors.
Governance & Law	(Security-sector governance laws ↑ → Security-force human-rights record ↑ → Public-trust index in national institutions ↑ → Sovereign governance-risk spread ↓)	Strengthened security governance and improved human-rights practices will likely narrow sovereign governance-risk spreads.

### BOTTOM LINE

- The promotion of seven lawmakers linked to a slush-fund scandal signals tolerance for tainted figures at senior levels of government, which will likely erode public trust and lower perceptions of governance quality, translating into wider sovereign risk spreads and a higher cost of capital for the state and corporates.

- Postponing immediate tightening of corporate and organizational donation rules in favor of a consultative body will probably preserve channels of influence for large donors in the near term, increasing allegations of clientelism, weakening campaign-finance transparency, and reducing confidence among foreign investors and civil-society watchdogs.

- The combination of perceived leniency on party funding and elevated factionalism inside the ruling party raises the probability of regulatory downgrades in governance indices, which is likely to dampen foreign direct investment and encourage investors to price a larger political-risk premium into Japanese assets.

- Takaichi’s pledge to revise Article 9 and pursue a rapid national referendum raises the odds of high-profile national votes or snap political contests, which will increase policy uncertainty, complicate long-term corporate planning, and prompt investors to demand higher returns for Japanese exposures.

- Proposals to add emergency clauses to the constitution to streamline executive action create a credible pathway for more frequent decree-based policymaking, which would heighten policy volatility and reduce business confidence unless robust checks and sunset clauses are legislated.

- Committing to create a centralized national intelligence agency can improve Japan’s security architecture and lower security-related sovereign-risk premia if the enabling legislation includes strict oversight, transparency, and parliamentary review; conversely, a rushed or opaque process could spark civil-liberties concerns and public backlash that amplify reputational damage.

- The announced refundable tax-credit program and push for a 2025 supplementary budget provide near-term tools to alleviate cost-of-living pressures, but passage is uncertain under a minority government and may be delayed or diluted without cross-party bargaining, which would blunt the program’s immediate effect on consumption.

- Assigning ministers and creating a strategy for 17 strategic industries with multi-year budget commitments can materially strengthen supply chains and attract private investment if the policy package includes credible, sustained financing and clear metrics for ministerial accountability; insufficient funding or unclear delivery timelines will limit results.

- The directive to review working-hour regulations to increase employer flexibility addresses labor shortages and could raise output, but relaxing protections without concrete health safeguards risks higher worker fatigue, labor disputes, and reputational costs for firms, so changes should be accompanied by monitoring, phased implementation, and negotiated protections.

- Debates over cutting 10 percent of House seats and reducing proportional representation are likely to intensify fragmentation risks for smaller parties and provoke legal and political pushback, making bipartisan consensus a necessary but difficult precondition to avoid judicial challenges and unintended weakening of emerging political actors.

- The most likely near-term pathway is a mixed outcome in which governance perceptions deteriorate modestly (due to appointments and delayed finance reform) while national-security measures and industry strategies receive bipartisan or coalition support; this dual trend will cause selective investor caution in politically exposed sectors while providing targeted opportunities in industries prioritized by the government.

- Practical actions for stakeholders are to: (1) investors should reweight sovereign and political-risk assumptions and ask managements for scenario plans that account for referendum and emergency-decree risks; (2) opposition parties and civil-society groups should press for binding, time-bound donation reforms and independent audits; (3) parliament should condition passage of intelligence- and emergency-related laws on explicit oversight and sunset provisions; and (4) businesses should delay large turnkey investments until budget and legal details for industry strategies and fiscal relief are clarified.

Monitored Intelligence for Japan - Nov. 6, 2025

News
Media
384

Government
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60

City/State
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132

Embassy
Releases
1

Foreign
Service
Advisories
0

Academic/
Think
Tank
14

Podcasts
0

Videos
0

Social
Media
0

Business
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1

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ＴＰＰ、２カ国が加盟申請フィリピンとＵＡＥ、連携に活路

TPP: Two Countries Apply for Membership - Philippines and UAE Find New Opportunities Through Cooperation

Tokyo Shimbun | Local Language | News | Nov. 6, 2025 | UndeterminedBizdev-Partnering

The Philippines and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) officially applied for membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on November 4, increasing the total number of applicants to nine. Their applications reflect a broader trend of countries seeking economic cooperation amid rising protectionist measures, such as high tariffs, by major economies including the United States.

If all 12 current TPP members agree to their accession, a working group will be formed to initiate negotiations. Prospective members must comply with TPP standards, which include tariff elimination or reduction across numerous products and the establishment of robust frameworks for intellectual property protection, environmental policies, and labor laws.

The TPP is expanding beyond the Asia-Pacific region, as evidenced by the United Kingdom's entry in 2024 and growing interest from the European Union in cooperation, signaling the partnership’s increasing global economic significance.

エンジニア志向の学生向けシリコンバレー派遣プログラム「LAUNCHPAD SILICON VALLEY」参加者募集開始

Recruitment Begins for Engineer-Oriented Student Dispatch Program LAUNCHPAD SILICON VALLEY

City of Kobe | Local Language | CityState | Nov. 6, 2025 | UndeterminedEmployment

Kobe City is launching a student dispatch program called LAUNCHPAD SILICON VALLEY aimed at expanding the local base of IT and digital human resources. The initiative seeks to create an ecosystem that cultivates next-generation digital talent in Kobe, targeting students who aspire to be globally active engineers or entrepreneurs using technology. The program involves sending selected students to Silicon Valley, a global center for IT innovation, for immersive experiences with local engineers, entrepreneurs, and tech firms.

Eligible participants include university students (including technical college fourth to fifth-year students and those in advanced courses), graduate students, and vocational school students who reside in or commute to Kobe City, with an intended group size of up to 12 participants. The program defines engineers broadly, encompassing technicians who utilize engineering and IT knowledge and skills across various fields.

The program schedule is tentative, with pre-training planned for February 18, 2026. The overseas trip is scheduled from March 8 to March 14, 2026, covering five nights in Silicon Valley, with meetings and departure arranged at local airports in San Jose or San Francisco. Participants will report their results by March 23, 2026.

The program takes place in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, with accommodations at the shared SAIGE HOUSE in San Jose. Planned activities include visits to institutions like Stanford University and tech companies such as Google and Apple, alongside discussions and exchanges with local students, employees, and Japanese engineers and entrepreneurs active in Silicon Valley.

There is no participation fee for the program; however, participants are responsible for travel expenses to Silicon Valley, local meals, overseas travel insurance (which is mandatory), ESTA fees, and related costs. Applications are open from November 4 to November 30, 2025. Selection will be based on document screening and web interviews, with notifications sent by the end of December 2025.

Interested students can apply through the specified website. The program is operated with funding from donations collected via the corporate version of the Furusato Nozei (hometown tax) system. Persol Business Process Design Co., Ltd. is listed as a donor company. For inquiries, contact information is provided for SAIGE House representatives.

Japan’s new leader is praised for an ‘energetic’ diplomatic debut hosting Trump

Asahi Shimbun - E | English | News | Nov. 6, 2025 | Shifting Geopolitical Alliances

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi received praise in parliament for an energetic diplomatic debut, which included hosting U.S. President Donald Trump shortly after becoming Japan's first female leader. Opposition leader Yoshihiko Noda acknowledged her energy and efforts to build a personal relationship with Trump but criticized her for excessive flattery, notably her plan to nominate Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. Noda questioned this move following Trump’s controversial suggestion to resume nuclear testing, a sensitive issue in Japan. Takaichi did not respond to queries about whether she would still proceed with the nomination.

Takaichi has also engaged with regional leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping and South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung, promising stable ties despite prior concerns about her hawkish views on wartime history and her visits to the contentious Yasukuni Shrine. She has since moderated her stance, skipping the recent shrine visit and making a symbolic donation instead. Her approval ratings have been strong, peaking around 80% after her diplomatic efforts, although her Liberal Democratic Party maintains low support of about 20-30%. The ruling coalition lacks a parliamentary majority, requiring opposition cooperation to pass policies.

On the domestic front, Takaichi’s government launched a ministerial meeting to address foreigner-related issues such as investment, land transactions, labor, and tourism, responding to public unease following a right-wing ethnocentric campaign. She emphasized a strong government response to illegal activities among foreigners while rejecting xenophobia. Additionally, Takaichi initiated a task force to promote economic growth through public-private investments in strategic sectors including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, shipbuilding, and defense. During Trump’s visit, she reinforced her image as a protege of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and aimed to usher in a "golden age" of Japan-U.S. relations.

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