A group of politicians belonging to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party recently submitted a “letter of opinion” to the city assembly of Kawaguchi in Saitama Prefecture. In the letter, the group demands tighter police surveillance of immigrants in the city, some of whom are “committing crimes.” According to official statistics, Kawaguchi is home to some 40,000 foreign national residents, though not all possess resident cards (juminhyo) and some are said to be on “provisional release,” meaning their applications for residence or asylum are under review. 

The letter states that “many of these foreigners” have “good intentions,” but they tend to spend much of their time around “storage facilities for construction materials” and that some “drive recklessly.” Sometimes their actions result in property damage or personal injury. Fortunately, according to the opinion, the people who are injured have their own insurance, the implication being that they don’t need to demand that the people responsible for their injuries pay for their medical care. However, the letter also says that at least one of these incidents resulted in death. 

The solution, says the politicians, is increased police presence in the area. News outlets also report thefts and assaults in the area, and residents “who are not foreign nationals” are becoming fearful for their safety. These bad elements, says the letter, taint the image of foreign residents in general, so the city assembly should discuss the matter in earnest, specifically: increase police presence and crack down on criminal elements; increase patrols around construction materials storage sites; and boost citations of traffic violations and reckless activities. 

On May 12, the Asahi Shimbun published an article stating that the foreign resident population of Kawaguchi has increased 80 percent in the last 10 years, and as of April 1 it stood at 40,124 representing 104 countries or regions. That number accounts for 6.6 percent of the city’s total population. And while the overall number of foreign residents in Japan decreased during the pandemic, the number in Kawaguchi increased. The Justice Ministry says that in 2020, Kawaguchi had the highest number of foreign residents of any municipality in Japan after it surpassed Shinjuku and Edogawa Wards in Tokyo. 

In terms of nationality, the highest portion of foreign residents is from China (56.5 percent), followed by Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, and Turkey. Most of the people from Turkey are Kurds. Along with the number of Kurds living in nearby Warabi and Saitama city, there are some 2,000 Kurdish residents in Japan. However, Asahi assumes that there are more Kurds in Japan than the number registered with local governments. As pointed out in another recent Asahi article, one of the reasons for the relatively high number of Kurds is that the government of Turkey has cracked down on its Kurdish minority, forcing many Kurds to seek asylum abroad. And while these political refugees may prefer going to Europe or elsewhere, Japan is one of the few countries they can enter without a visa. As has been reported many times on this blog, refugees are not welcome in Japan, and even less so now with the passage of the revision to the Immigration Law. 

Regardless of the demands of local LDP politicians, Kawaguchi is addressing the needs of its foreign community. The city office employs 11 staff who speak Chinese, Korean, English, Vietnamese, Filipino, or Turkish. It also provides Japanese language classes run by citizen volunteers, including a self-run junior high school that has offered classes at night for at least 40 years. In addition, last August, the city established a website for mobile devices that explains the living situation in Kawaguchi in multiple languages, with videos demonstrating how to separate refuse and pay taxes.