Number of foreigners living in Japan has grown 50 percent in four years, hits historic high

Japan’s foreign resident population surges past four million for the first time in history.

Though it’s been 2026 for a while now, the Japanese business/administrative year starts in spring, so this is the time of year when many organizations start putting out their annual reports and statistical analyses. That includes the Japanese government’s Immigration Services Agency, which in a report to the prime minister’s cabinet says that Japan has reached a new record high in its number of foreign residents.

For the first time in history, Japan’s foreign population numbers over 4 million people, and it didn’t just barely rise past that figure, either. As of the end of 2025, there were approximately 4.13 million foreign nationals living in Japan, with roughly 370,000 of them added over the course of last year. The foreign resident demographic has grown by more than a million members in just the past three years, and is 50 percent larger than it was a mere five years ago.

● Foreign-resident population in Japan (by end of year)
2021: 2.76 million
2022: 3.07 million
2023: 3.41 million
2024: 3.76 million
2025: 4.13 million

Proportionally, the rate of growth has actually slowed slightly, but the numerical increase in foreign residents continues to grow.

● Increase in foreign resident population
2022: 310,000 people (11.2 percent increase in total foreign population)
2023: 340,000 people (11.1 percent increase in total foreign population)
2022: 350,000 people (10.3 percent increase in total foreign population)
2022: 370,000 people (9.8 percent increase in total foreign population)

It’s still too early to confidently say exactly how large an impact the surge in foreign residents is going to have on Japanese society. All else equal, an increase in foreign nationals coinciding with a decrease in the ethnically Japanese population would point to a likely acceleration of the internationalization of the country’s culture. However, the above statistics reflect foreigners in Japan on anything longer than the standard three-month tourist visa, and aren’t limited to permanent, or even particularly long-term, foreign residents. Included in the figures are foreign residents who’re attending school or otherwise participating in educational programs in Japan. Thanks to the yen’s recent weakness versus foreign currencies, financing such ventures using home country savings has become a much more viable option in recent years. The exchange rate becomes less attractive, though, for foreign nationals working in Japan and being paid in devalued yen, who could perhaps be earning much higher salaries elsewhere, which could end up making living in Japan less attractive as they progress farther into their careers.

Shifting back to the present, though, the statistics show that people in Japan are now much more likely to have neighbors, classmates, or coworkers from other parts of the world, and brings Japan that much farther into the global community.

Source: Sankei Shimbun via Itai News
Top image: Pakutaso
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