Abstract In recent elections across major destination countries in the developed world, migration has become a major issue of political salience. Japan has traditionally been an outlier to the trend, but migration did become a major topic driving public opinion in the 2025 Upper House election. This article explores the overall political salience of migration in Japan, focusing primarily on how the ruling coalition managed public discourse as it pushed through major reforms over the past decade, why it lost control of the narrative in the recent election, and what this means for the politics of migration in Japan going forward.
Maximilien Xavier Rehm (Thu,) studied this question.