Why isn't Japan criticized for its refugee policies as much as other developed countries are?

Question

Japan is unique among the world's most developed countries for its extremely harsh policies towards refugees. The policy is fully acknowledged by the Japanese leaders who have been quoted saying:

I would say that before accepting immigrants or refugees, we need to have more activities by women, elderly people and we must raise our birth rate. There are many things that we should do before accepting immigrants.

However, we don't seem to hear much criticism towards Japan from NGOs, newspapers and politicians. Likewise the issue doesn't seem to be a contested one within Japan, as their leaders publicly reject the very concept of asylum.

What is the reason behind this? Is Japan simply on the periphery of interests of the Western world?

Answer 1

According to this New York Times article, one reason is that the Japanese value ethnic homogenity. 98.5% of the country's population is ethnically Japanese. This may be contrasted with countries like the United States, which are significantly more ethnically diverse. Other relatively developed countries, like Israel, Hungary, and Poland offer similar nationalist justifications for their decision to not take in a significant number of refugees. Commentators have also noted that Japan has had no issues with Islamic terrorism, unlike countries who have a more welcoming attitude towards immigrants and refugees from majority-Muslim countries.

As for your question regarding criticism from NGOs and newspapers, that's slightly unclear. Anecdotally, as a consumer of mainstream media outlets, I've noticed that American media outlets naturally focus first on the American politics, then on European politics (given the broad cultural similarity between Europe and US) and then on politics elsewhere in the world. This would explain why the issue of Japan and refugees tends not to be raised very often.

If you mean to ask why the issue isn't raised in Japanese media and, more broadly, Japanese society, then that's a better question. Again, it likely has to do with the prevailing political and cultural norm that ethnic homogenity is desirable. That said, the issue is nevertheless often discussed in Japan as well.

One must also keep in mind that following the events of the Second World War, ethnic nationalism is something that much of Western Europe, and particularly Germany, has broadly repudiated in some sense. Until very recently, nationalist parties were considered entirely outside of the mainstream of European politics, and, to my knowledge, no nationalist party has had power in a Western European country for quite a long time. Wikipedia, for example, describes German nationalism as being "taboo" in Germany (a scholarly source is given for this claim). Even in the United States, given its history of racism and slavery, ethnic nationalism isn't something within the mainstream of political discourse; this is why events like the Charlottesville rally are repudiated across the political spectrum. This may again be contrasted with countries like Japan, Israel and India, all of which, although having relatively Western political systems, have nationalist political parties in power, all of which would likely be considered "far-right" by European/American standards.

Answer 2

I can't read the Financial Times article but the quote in your question is not very specific and lumps together all type of immigration. What little I know suggests Japan's policy is actually pretty standard. I even learned recently that it allows asylum seekers to work as soon as they arrive (i.e. before their application has been processed).

Importantly, Japan does grant asylum seekers a hearing and that's really all international law requires. Under the Geneva convention and other relevant laws and customs, you should not (and often practically cannot) send back refugees to their country of origin. Consequently, you cannot set quotas or quantitative limits in advance, use racist or otherwise arbitrary discriminatory criteria (no Arabs, no muslims, etc.), or select refugees based on how useful they are to your country's economy.

But the only thing you have to do is process applications on the merits. International law does provide a very broad definition of what a refugee is but it's essentially up to each country to decide whether someone fits the definition or not. Even in the EU, which has a body of secondary law and oversight mechanisms to regulate this, there are very large discrepancies in the rate of success for people coming from the same countries.

Looking at Japan, it did grant a status to some refugees, e.g. from Afghanistan, which is more than you can say of a country like Greece. The table in the other question is truncated but for all I know, it even seems possible that it does in fact recognise most Afghan refugees who manage to go to Japan. It just doesn't get that many.