Source: @jimin_koho on X (2026-04-28)
Overall verdictBase revolt, not approval. The LDP’s official communications account posted a pamphlet about its ‘new foreigner policy’ on April 28, expecting its right-leaning base to nod approvingly at the new restrictions. Instead, the post drew 379 replies, almost without exception hostile, and rarely from the left. The dominant message: stop saying ‘foreigners’ when you mean immigrants. Stop saying ‘coexistence’ when we never asked for it. Honor Takaichi’s campaign promise of a ‘zero-base review’ or admit you’ve broken it. The most-liked reply, from anti-Takaichi user @harunee_clover, was a single line: ‘Could you please stop lying?’
Note: Comments on X (formerly Twitter) in Japan tend to skew toward the political right, though individual threads may lean left depending on the original poster and topic. These comments are not necessarily representative of the Japanese population as a whole.
What the tweet was about
On April 28, 2026, the LDP’s official communications account (@jimin_koho) posted an infographic summarizing the Takaichi government’s ‘new foreigner policy.’ The pamphlet promised tougher tools for handling illegal residents, stricter requirements for the ‘Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services’ visa, stricter naturalization standards, and a ‘rules-learning program’ to acclimate foreign workers to Japanese norms. The framing throughout: ‘orderly coexistence,’ ‘no unlimited acceptance.’
The pamphlet arrived in a tense moment. Earlier this month, Japan froze new Specified Skilled Worker visa applications for the food service sector, a story we covered, with X commenters strongly approving the freeze. Days later, Hidakaya’s CEO triggered a backlash by saying the company would ‘have to hire Japanese workers’ if foreigners weren’t available. PM Takaichi, who campaigned in part on a ‘zero-base’ review of immigration policy, has been navigating a base that wants visible toughness and a business community that wants foreign labor.
The LDP communications team apparently expected the pamphlet to land as a win for the base. The replies suggest otherwise: the same right-wing X discourse that approved the visa freeze considers the broader policy package a betrayal.
Sentiment distribution (engagement-weighted)
demands lower caps
the LDP’s policy
Highest-engagement comments
Activity timeline (JST, 2026-04-28)
Key themes in detail
🚫 Cap, Don’t ‘Coexist’ · 56.9% of engagement
The dominant frame across the thread, accounting for more than half of all engagement: stop letting more people in, ban family accompaniment, switch to a Singapore-style guest worker model, and abandon the ‘coexistence’ framing entirely. Many replies cited the statistic that one in ten Japanese in their twenties is now a foreign national, calling it the level at which ‘the country itself changes.’ Specific demands included caps proportional to Japan’s population on the Specified Skilled Worker Category 2 visa, no permanent residency for care workers, and termination of the family-accompaniment provisions Tokyo added in recent years.
Many commenters framed the policy as ‘population replacement’ (jinkou chikan) — the explicit Japanese-language analog of the great-replacement framing that has spread across right-wing online discourse worldwide.
🗣️ It’s Lies and Word Games · 17.0% of engagement
The second-largest theme was distrust of the LDP’s framing itself. Replies repeatedly objected that what the pamphlet calls ‘foreigner policy’ (gaikokujin seisaku) is in fact ‘immigration policy’ (imin seisaku) and demanded the LDP use that word honestly. The hashtag #移民党 (‘the Immigration Party,’ a sneering play on 自民党) recurred across the thread.
The other half of this theme: Takaichi’s ‘zero-base review’ (zero base minaoshi) campaign promise. Around seventeen replies pointed out that the LDP campaigned on reviewing immigration policy ‘from zero’ before her government took office, and that the new pamphlet is the opposite of zero-basing. ‘Whatever happened to zero-base?’ was a recurring shorthand for the broader betrayal narrative.
🚨 Send Them Home: Crime & Welfare · 17.4% of engagement
Roughly a sixth of engagement focused on specific public-order anxieties: foreign suspects being released without indictment (fukiso), missing Technical Intern Trainees, the Kurdish community in Saitama, foreigners drawing on national health insurance and welfare, and metal/copper theft incidents attributed to foreign nationals. The recurring demand: mandatory deportation for any foreign national arrested, regardless of whether the case is prosecuted, plus an end to non-citizen access to social welfare programs.
Some replies pointed to specific cases — the high-profile Saitama Kurdish-population disputes, runaway technical-intern statistics, copper theft from infrastructure — as evidence that the existing system is broken and that the pamphlet’s incremental steps cannot address it.
How well do these claims hold up? Two of the most-repeated framings in this theme are not borne out by the actual data. Government and academic statistics consistently show that foreign residents in Japan commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born population, despite the prominence of high-profile foreign-suspect cases on right-wing X. Likewise, although the welfare-tap framing is everywhere in this thread, foreign residents claim public assistance at a rate well below their share of the population, and have done so consistently for years. The replies tell us a great deal about what right-wing X believes; they tell us less about whether those beliefs match the underlying numbers.
🕌 Cultural & Religious Anxieties · 8.5% of engagement
Roughly 8% of engagement focused specifically on Islam. Concerns clustered around four issues: Muslim demands for burial (Japan is overwhelmingly cremation-only), halal accommodations in school lunches, mosque construction in residential neighborhoods, and broader perceptions of Islamic incompatibility with Japanese society.
One representative reply cited ‘Muslims demanding burial, half of elementary students being foreigners, halal demanded for school lunches’ as proof that ‘coexistence is absolutely impossible.’ The half-of-elementary-students claim is not borne out by national statistics, but the framing recurred. A handful of replies extended the religious anxiety to Christianity, drawing parallels to Japan’s Edo-period Bateren Tsuihō (Christian expulsion edicts).
🛡️ Rare Defenders · 0.2% of engagement
Across 379 replies, just three voices defended the LDP’s direction with any positive framing — and even those came hedged. One commenter said the new visa-screening criteria were a clear improvement and that ‘this is obviously different from the previous government’s approach.’ Another wrote that the policy is ‘overwhelmingly better than Kishida or Ishiba would have done, but the tap is still open’ — supportive but not satisfied. A third gave ‘a certain evaluation’ to the policy while warning that runaway technical interns becoming illegal workers in the Tokyo region was not being addressed quickly enough.
Total engagement on these three replies: 12 likes, against 5,437 total likes on the thread. The defenders are vastly outnumbered.
