8:00 JST, July 25, 2026

This summer, I took my 6-year-old son to Japan for the first time in three years. He has been raised in the United States and is bilingual in English and Japanese, but I still wanted him to experience Japanese school. After doing some research, I contacted the same public elementary school in western Japan that I graduated from myself decades ago, and they agreed to accept him for a short period. He seemed to enjoy Japanese school life and its distinctive features, such as changing shoes at the school building entrance and students serving food in turns at lunchtime.

When I shared this story with friends in Japan, some of them reacted in an unexpected way. What my son experienced was a program called “trial enrollment,” which is established independently by local governments. Such programs usually do not specifically require Japanese citizenship. They complained, “If foreigners use this program, it is not fair for Japanese people.”

This argument is not very logical because if a foreign student participates in the program, the actual expenses, such as school lunch fees, are paid directly to the school by the student’s family, so it’s not as if taxes paid by Japanese citizens are being used. While it’s true that adding one more student to a class might slightly reduce the time a teacher can spare for each student, the program is only for a few days — hardly something worth making a fuss over. In addition, Japanese children will likely benefit from having exposure to other cultures. However, what my friends wanted to express was probably that they feel the rights that Japanese citizens should enjoy are being threatened by people from other countries.

Interestingly, this sounds familiar. Isn’t it similar to the mindset of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump — the so-called MAGA movement? MAGA people feel they are being exploited by foreign countries and advocate for stricter immigration policies. In my interviews with Trump supporters or conservatives in United States, I often encounter praise for my country and its culture. In their eyes, Japan has preserved itself as a monocultural and conservative country. In their view, the opposite extreme — and a cautionary example — is illustrated by European countries that adopted lenient immigration policies and lost their original cultures.

However, Japan is undergoing rapid change as the number of foreign residents is rapidly increasing. As of the........

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