Before long, the number of “Chinese in Japan” exceeded the population of Saga Prefecture… Shocking reason why the number of Chinese in Japan continues to increase!

At First, Only the Elite Came? History of Chinese in Japan

The presence of Chinese in Japan is increasing day by day. Although they have a strong image of buying multimillion-yen tower-towers and buying expensive goods, their population has grown to about 820,000 (as of the end of 2011, according to the Immigration and Residency Management Agency), about the same level as that of Yamanashi and Saga prefectures.

Tokyo has a particularly large population of more than 250,000. It would be safe to say that not a day goes by in Tokyo that one does not encounter a Chinese person, whether at work or in one’s neighborhood. Why and when did the number of Chinese living in Japan increase so much? Let us take a brief look at the history of their arrival in Japan.

Chinese first came to Japan in earnest more than 40 years ago, in the 1980s, after China’s reform and opening-up (1978).

At that time, many of them were state-sponsored students and other super elites selected by the Chinese government. Some of those who came to Japan at that time were unilaterally told by the government that they would study either in Germany or Japan in order to be useful to the nation in the future, and as a result, they ended up coming to Japan.

Only a very select few were allowed to come to Japan, those with no problems not only academically, but also in terms of family background and political ideology.

At that time, China’s GDP was less than one-tenth that of Japan. Even the elite foreign students were struggling students who had to work hard at construction sites to make a living. At that time, the slogan that was frequently heard was “Japan-China friendship. Many Japanese people made every effort to take care of the struggling students by sharing their personal belongings and food with them.

In the 1990s, however, the situation changed drastically. Chinese people began to arrive in Japan as “dekasegi” (migrant workers). Some of them came to Japan on smuggling boats, guided by “snakeheads” (蛇頭), brokers based in Fujian Province.

In the 2000s, the number of “pre-college students” increased rapidly. In the early 2000s, “pre-college students” were foreign students enrolled in Japanese language schools and special training schools, who went to school during the day and worked part-time at factories at night.

Some private universities in rural areas that were experiencing financial difficulties accepted a large number of foreign students through Chinese intermediaries, but some of them did not attend the universities and either disappeared or migrated to other countries, causing a social problem.

In addition to the revelation of these realities, the ’90s and early ’00s saw a sharp increase in crimes committed by Chinese nationals. According to the Metropolitan Police Department’s “White Paper on Police,” Chinese nationals ranked first by far in the number of arrests of foreigners by nationality in 2007.

With more than 10,000 crimes a year, Japanese people’s image of the Chinese has deteriorated. Some people may remember the “murder of a family of four” by three Chinese students in Fukuoka Prefecture in 2003.