Alien Attack?

The rapid growth of labor migration in the last few decades has presented a direct challenge to the myth of Japanese homogeneity. As the visibility of foreign national residents has increased, crimes by foreigners have come to be spotlighted as a significant social problem in Japan. This paper argues that the discourse of foreign criminality, which is increasingly prominent in contemporary Japan, is better understood as a political construction of foreign “others” within, rather than as a response to an actual high crime rate for foreign nationals. This discourse portrays foreign nationals as international predators feeding on Japanese prey, while in turn enforcing the image of Japan as an originally safe, crime-free country. In this picture, immigration policies are framed as a security issue, and strict immigration control and close surveillance of foreign national residents are promoted as measures of crime prevention. Foreign criminality discourse has utilized crime statistics to assert the high crime risk of foreigners. Careful examination of these statistics, however, reveals discrepancies between discourse and data. Two social factors may deserve special attention as pertinent contexts for the emergence of foreign criminality discourse: 1) predicted population decline and subsequent dependence on migrant labor; and 2) public expectation for a strong political leadership in the height of social anxiety.