Japan’s entry ban leaves students and universities counting the cost

Over the course of the pandemic, there’s been simmering criticism of Japan’s border rules, which have prevented thousands of students and researchers from newly entering the country. But recently the backlash against the restrictions has taken on fresh momentum, with everyone from former vaccine minister Taro Kono to the country’s top business lobby and leading Japan scholars taking aim at the border policy.

In a tacit acknowledgment of the costs of the entry ban, the government has in recent weeks given the green light to some new entries by students — a break from the restrictions that were dramatically reinstated at the end of November due to the emergence of the omicron variant, just weeks after they were eased. In mid-January, 87 students on government scholarships were given the OK, and on Feb. 1, NHK reported that about 400 more students deemed urgent cases or having a high public benefit would be allowed in from the beginning of this month.

Addressing a parliamentary committee on Feb. 4, COVID-19 minister Daishiro Yamagiwa said that the government “will respond flexibly” when it comes to entry restrictions. A change does appear to be in the offing — next week, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s education subcommittee plans to submit a request to the prime minister that the acceptance of new international students be resumed, the Nikkei reported Wednesday.

But many students, researchers and institutions have already had to bear a great cost — with projects disrupted, scholarships lost, international exchange undermined, career plans left in tatters and much more. Continued uncertainty about when the ban will be eased or lifted will only intensify the issues, those affected say.

As many as 147,000 international students are stuck outside the country, according to government data.

For Colombian student Maria Alejandra Gonzalez Pinto — who due to border controls has twice postponed her master’s in law studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, focusing on Asian law and economic integration — the ban has seen her at times juggle a full-time job, care for her grandmother and online classes in the middle of the night, impacting the progress of her degree. This has caused her to question whether she should give up on her dream of studying in Japan. With classes set to begin in April, she is apprehensively looking ahead to what the resumption of her studies will mean if she can’t enter Japan.

“I’m feeling really anxious about it, because I know what waking up at 2 a.m. to take classes is and I know what it does to my physical and mental health,” she said.

Beyond the immediate mental and physical tolls that have come with the delays and uncertainty stemming from the ban — which greatly grew in scale in April 2020 and has been both strengthened and eased in the time since — the restrictions threaten to derail career plans and ambitions, potentially robbing Japan of key international bridges in the worlds of academia, government and business down the line.

“Without my time at Sophia (University), I would not have pursued a research focus on Japan. Without my time at (the University of Tokyo), I would not have become a professional academic or policy analyst of Japan,” said Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and chair of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, a U.S. government agency.

“None of this would have been possible without that early stay in Japan and the study of Japanese culture and language,” Smith said, referring to the research, writing, teaching and mentoring she has done throughout her career.

While these downstream impacts can affect people at all levels, short-term exchange students in particular are losing an important entry point into Japan. It is these students who have likely been most affected given the limited window of opportunity they have, said Tetsuo Morishita, vice president for global academic affairs at Sophia University.

“The situation might be more serious than for academics. For example for academics or researchers, we may extend and we can wait two years or three years,” he said, adding that for exchange students, missing this time might mean they can never come to Japan, or at least for a substantial period.

Nonetheless, the effect on researchers has been by no means small. Fieldwork often needs to be planned months in advance, perhaps as much as a year, with sabbaticals, applications for funding and family arrangements all needing to be figured out. Delays caused not just by the ban but also the uncertainty around it can ultimately lead to the loss of grants, imperiling the research in question. Smith, for example, has had to pause her work looking at how historical challenges shape diplomacy in Asia, meaning she may no longer receive a grant to write a book on the topic.

“What many do not understand is that our research often contributes to policymaking and helps to deepen American understanding of Japan,” said Smith, who was among the signatories to a U.S.-Japan petition urging the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to reconsider its entry restrictions. “It also helps policymakers in both governments with their efforts to work together to solve problems.”

While some research has moved online, and Japan-based academics have launched a network to provide colleagues abroad with materials when possible, there are limits to what such endeavors can achieve. That is particularly true for lab-based disciplines, for which graduate students can play a critical role when it comes to research.

“The fact that quite a few of them are not able to come and work with our professors and other students, both Japanese and non-Japanese, in a lab setting significantly affects their day-to-day research activities,” said Yujin Yaguchi, director of the University of Tokyo’s International Education Support Office and a professor at its Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies.

Closer to home, there are worries that the entry ban could reinforce an inward-looking mentality among students. Even before the pandemic, concerns had been raised about the declining number of Japanese students studying abroad, with the number peaking at over 80,000 in 2004 before dropping to under 60,000 throughout the 2010s.

“This whole corona isolation period is contributing to a culture of isolation, where students feel … OK not to step outside of Japan,” Yaguchi said. “There’s a large segment of young people who feel it’s OK to be in Japan, and that they don’t necessarily have to do study abroad.”

Looking elsewhere

Some universities have already begun to see an impact from the ban in terms of international student intake. Sophia University, for example, had planned to accept 450 exchange students from overseas partner universities in the autumn semester, but only 100 ultimately stuck with their study plans. Of those, only around 15 were actually able to enter Japan, with the rest attending classes online while waiting for their chance.

For those who give up on Japan, pursuing study or research in another country remains an option depending on their discipline — for example, those in the sciences or those happy to shift their focus within the social sciences or humanities. In the case of exchange students, some are simply looking for an Asian or non-Western study abroad experience. But for others, their existing investment and subject focus stands in the way.

In Alejandra Gonzalez’s case, her desire to study in Japan stems from the strife her home country has experienced over the years and the belief that Japan represents a model of the kind of peaceful country she wants Colombia to become. For her, knowledge of Japan and the chance to act as a bridge between the two countries, as well as between Colombia and Asia more generally, can contribute to such a change.

“I’ve invested four years of my life in learning Japanese and learning the culture and in general learning everything about the country … the cultural values. So it’s not that easy to throw away those four years of effort,” Alejandra Gonzalez said. “Since ultimately Japan is so related to my experiences as a child and my desire to help my country, it’s really hard to give up on that.”

Nonetheless, she had considered giving up on her dream at one point, with South Korea seemingly offering an alternative.

But she was not able to find a suitable program in English. If she had, she “would be there already.”

What Japan’s neighbor may lack in English-language courses, it does make up for with open borders. But while Japan’s entry restrictions might be the strictest among the Group of Seven, in the Asia-Pacific region it is South Korea, rather than Japan, that is an outlier. Both Taiwan and New Zealand have restricted new entries of students, for example, with the key difference being that both have set out at least a rough timetable for when they will be allowed in.

With some institutions taking a hit in terms of student recruitment, the question is whether that impact will last beyond the entry ban and undermine the government’s long-term goals for the higher education sector.

The government has for years prioritized the internationalization of Japanese higher education, highlighted by a target, set in 2008, of having 300,000 foreign students in 2020 — the actual figure came in at just under 280,000 in May of that year, despite surpassing the goal in 2019. In addition, the education ministry has its ongoing Top Global University Project, a funding initiative that aims to increase the globalization of the country’s higher education institutions.

In the QS World University rankings, five Japanese institutions have consistently held positions in the top 100 over the past four years. But while Kyoto University and the Tokyo Institute of Technology were both able to move up two spots in this year’s rankings compared with 2019, Osaka University and Tohoku University slid eight and five places, respectively. The University of Tokyo, for its part, held steady at No. 23.

“The global competition is fierce,” Yaguchi said. “Talented students are globally mobile, and we need to attract students from all over the world if we want to maintain our standing in the world, the quality of the research and education, and to be not able to recruit students for this long a time is bad.”

The education ministry is aware of the damage the entry ban may have on interest in Japan, according to Sophia University’s Morishita.

“We discussed (with the education ministry that) there may be a risk that the current ban could result in a loss of interest in Japan due to the uncertainty … and such a … loss of interest would be very serious for Japan,” Morishita said.

Soft power draw

Standing in Japan’s favor is its continued cultural pull. While there are concerns that the entry ban and growing awareness of it may dent the country’s soft power — one student’s YouTube video on her abandonment of her goal of studying in Japan has drawn over 25,000 views — interest in Japan as measured by language study showed no signs of slowing down last year. On the widely used language learning app Duolingo, Japanese displaced Italian as the fifth most popular language globally, and it was the fastest-growing language of study in the U.S. and Britain.

Alexandre Teao Hereveri, a French Polynesian and fan of manga and anime, had planned to study Japanese, with the aim of using language skills and his tourism degree to get a job in that sector and fulfill a long-held dream of living in Japan. But given the entry ban and resulting work issues stemming from uncertainty over the border rules, he ultimately decided to pursue language studies in South Korea instead. All the same, he doesn’t rule out a move to Japan in the future.

“Why not come right after South Korea to try to work in Japan? Because I think I love Japan so much,” he said.

With the growing criticism of the ban and the COVID-19 minister’s promise that the government will be “flexible” on entry restrictions, expectations are rising that more significant moves to allow new entries from students and researchers could be announced soon. But from a political angle, the incentives for Kishida to act do not seem particularly strong — his Cabinet has enjoyed consistently high ratings even as COVID-19 cases have soared, and a Yomiuri poll in early December showed overwhelming support for his border measures, although it’s unclear if the more recent domestic spread of omicron has swayed public opinion on the entry ban.

The question now is whether the growing chorus from businesses, the education sector and others will be enough to sway his administration.

“I think this society needs to realize that the students, international students are really an integral part of our university community — they’re not tourists,” said Yaguchi. “I think we need to come to that realization, that simply excluding (foreign nationals) isn’t going to do any good.”