Comment by brigandish

From [1], in 2019:

> Resident foreigners totaled 2.22 million -- an all-time high and 1.76% of the population

That doesn't compare to the UK at all, or France. There's also no point in pointing at the inflow without the outflow, as the article points out:

> The number of immigrants to Japan minus the number of people leaving the country came to 165,000, government data released Friday shows.

So, if those OECD figures you supplied are correct, the inflow was dwarfed by the outflow which again is nothing like the UK or France - as a proportion of population or as a total. I'm not surprised. As that great reference, Wikipedia writes[2] (also using OECD figures[3], and in a much better format for comparison):

> Japan receives a low number of immigrants compared to other G7 countries.[9] This is consistent with Gallup data, which shows that Japan is an exceptionally unpopular migrant destination to potential migrants, with the number of potential migrants wishing to migrate to Japan 12 times less than those who wished to migrate to the US and 3 times less than those who wished to migrate to Canada,[10] which roughly corresponds to the actual relative differences in migrant inflows between the three countries.[9] Some Japanese scholars have pointed out that Japanese immigration laws, at least toward high-skilled migrants, are relatively lenient compared to other developed countries, and that the main factor behind its low migrant inflows is because it is a highly unattractive migrant destination compared to other developed countries.[11] This is also apparent when looking at Japan's work visa programme for "specified skilled worker", which had less than 3,000 applicants, despite an annual goal of attracting 40,000 overseas workers.

“exceptionally unpopular migrant destination” eh? Again, colour me shocked.

From [4], just the title should be enough:

> Japan’s Labor Productivity Lowest in G7

but it would still be misleading because that sounds *better than the reality:

> Japan ranks twenty-first for labor productivity among the 36 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Japanese work culture fits the cliché very well and trying to deny it is a stretch of gigantic proportions. What some bloke you met managing to build a career in Japan has to do with Japanese work culture not being deadeningly slow and moribund, only you will know.

[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan-immigration/Japan-im...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Japan

[3] https://data.oecd.org/chart/5StJ You can click on the link at the top and compare even better by having it highlight the parts you car about.

[4] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00619/japan%E2%80%99s-...