An article posted at a well known “conservative” website evoked an interesting comment.  The article was about Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s proposals to raise the bar to Japanese citizenship for foreigners.  Proposed requirements include increasing the length of residency in Japan and language proficiency.

With respect to language proficiency, the U.S. has had English language and civics test requirements for citizenship since the 1930s.  If the prime minister’s proposal is approved by the legislature (the Diet), then Japan will have finally caught up with the U.S. and other European countries.  Whether language tests and so on effectively screen out undesirable candidates is not known.  How have they worked out in the U.S.?

The article on Japanese immigration did not mention Muslims at all, but one commenter was nonetheless compelled to claim that Muslim migration to Japan “doesn’t exist.”

Anyone awake since 9/11, or even within the past few weeks, will see that Muslim immigration to Western countries is an ugly counterpoint to the West’s religion of multiculturalism and diversity.

There are those who laud Japan’s low-crime, high-trust society due in part to ethno-cultural homogeneity.  Thus, they say, there is no way that Japan will adopt the West’s destructive secular religion.

However, most foreigners do not recognize that the Japanese have already embraced multiculturalism and diversity as tightly as any Western leftist.

Indeed, Japan has allowed numerous Muslims to obtain citizenship.  Japanese media state that the number of mosques nationwide as of July 2025 is 160.  The number of Muslims in Japan has expanded almost fourfold over a 20-year period.  As of 2024, there are 420,000 Muslims in Japan, with the majority coming from overseas.  Indonesia sends the largest share of Muslims to Japan, followed by Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Malaysia.  The remaining number of Muslims are Japanese converts, mostly young Japanese women who converted on marrying a foreign male Muslim.  Muslims in Japan have stridently demanded that Japan adapt to their religious requirements.

As heard in Western countries, the ostensible reason that Muslims and other foreigners are allowed into Japan is they will “do the jobs that Japanese won’t do.”  Foreign Muslims are allowed into Japan as “technical intern trainees” to address what the media calls “labor shortages.”

For now, the number of ordinary crimes, such as theft and assault, committed by some foreign Muslim has not yet reached levels seen for larger Japanese minorities such as the Chinese and South Koreans.

However, Kurdish Muslims are a different story.  Allowed into Japan for humanitarian reasons (an “oppressed minority”), Kurds have congregated in Saitama Prefecture, a northern suburb of the Tokyo Metropolis, and turned it into “Mini Kurdistan.”  Crimes committed by Kurds in Saitama Prefecture vastly outpace all other ethnic minorities.  Kurds are responsible for quality-of-life crimes that have angered Japanese residents.  Angry residents voicing their objection to Kurdish behavior is “hate speech” to Japanese leftists and the media.  This should sound all too familiar to Westerners: Leftists and the media denounce anyone who questions current immigration policy as a “racist.”

The West praises the Japanese for their respect for law and order and high social cohesion.  Because of these values, perhaps Japanese Muslims will reject radicalization.  Mohammad Saifullah Ozaki, a Bangladesh native who acquired Japanese citizenship, pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State and was named emir of the Islamic State in Bangladesh.  He was believed to be responsible for the July 1, 2016 terrorist attack in the capital of Bangladesh in which 29 people, including 7 Japanese and 2 Bangladeshi police officers, were killed.  Japanese citizen Kosuke Tsuneoka, a Muslim convert, was arrested in northern Iraq in October 2016 and is alleged to have links to the Islamic State.  He was deported to Japan — what happened after that is not known.  Unnamed male Japanese Muslims, a 26-year-old and a 23-year-old, were stopped and questioned by Japanese police before flying to “the Middle East.”  They were allegedly planning on joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  What happened to these men after questioning is not known.

Whether there are other Japanese Muslims who will turn to Islamic terrorist groups is not known, either.  Given their experience with intrusive, regimented government during World War II, Japanese today value privacy.  Japanese Muslims have played on this in attempts to thwart all surveillance of them by the authorities — profiling, of course, is “racist,” and public safety counts for nothing.  Luckily, there have been no large-scale terrorist plots by Japanese Muslims uncovered by Japanese authorities so far.

Comments such as that Muslim migration to Japan “doesn’t exist” reflect the meager level of understanding of the issue.  Although the Japanese exhibit much less violent behavior than most Westerners, they are as susceptible as Westerners to the vacuous doctrines that are multiculturalism and diversity.  Thinking Westerners know that the response to declining Western civilization lies not in mimicking an exotic Eastern country, but in rebuilding their own homeland.

Image via Raw Pixel.