Debates over immigration, foreign residents, and national identity have taken an increasingly contentious turn in Japan. As the country’s foreign population grows, migrants and minority communities have become more visible and increasingly politicized, especially in debates over national identity, public order, cultural norms, and social change. These tensions are unfolding not only in electoral politics and traditional media, but across digital platforms where domestic grievances increasingly intersect with transnational far-right narratives.

This event brings together experts to examine different dimensions of this changing landscape. Drawing on survey research, ethnography, and analysis of media and political mobilization, the event will explore public attitudes toward foreigners, Muslim women’s everyday experiences of Islamophobia, and the growing targeting of Japan’s Kurdish and Muslim community. They will examine how traditional and authoritarian values, social norms, political incentives, media ecosystems, digital platforms, and far-right mobilization shape and amplify prejudice and exclusion toward migrant and minority communities.

The discussion will examine how hostility toward minority communities takes shape, travels, and becomes normalized, and ask how boundaries of belonging are being constructed and contested in contemporary Japan, and what these developments reveal about the country’s changing relationship with migration, religious and cultural diversity, and national identity.

Speakers

Naoto Higuchi

Naoto Higuchi is a Professor of sociology at Waseda University, Japan. His underlying research interest lies in xenophobia, social movements, and migration politics. Among his works in English are Japan’s Ultra-Right (Trans Pacific Press, 2016) and The Digital Rise of the Far Right in Japan (Manchester University Press, 2026). His recent publication includes “He Who Gives to the Poor, Lends to Allah: Analyzing Individual Motives for Muslim Philanthropy in Japan,” Journal of Muslim Philanthropy & Civil Society, 10(1), 2026. “Migrant Religions in Japan,” Journal of Religion in Japan, 15(1), 2026.

Yu Ai

Yu Ai is a Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Tohoku University. Her research examines migrant belonging, racialization, and gender in contemporary Japan from an anthropological perspective.

Peter Chai

Peter Chai is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Political Science and Economics and a Researcher in the Institute of Asian Migrations at Waseda University. His research areas are political sociology, comparative politics, and public opinion. His main research methods are survey analysis and survey experiments, and his research focuses on public attitudes toward immigration and gender equality in Japan and East Asia.

Haroon Qureshi

Haroon Qureshi is the Secretary General of the Japan Islamic Trust