Why Japan Is So Uncanny… Uncannily Normal

And how living in Tokyo changed my views on immigration and policy design

Disclaimer: This post is more personal than usual. I plan for it to be part of a larger Japan series, so hopefully it wouldn’t be just another “American discovers that public transit doesn’t have to suck—or that the dollar goes further abroad” piece. But it may sound like that sometimes, because the hype is real. Japan is awesome, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Yes, that makes my partner jealous and my colleagues roll their eyes—but it’s true.

As some of you know, last year I spent my fall sabbatical¹ as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo. This was a rushed decision prompted by a single conversation with a now-collaborator I haven’t met before, but it ended up changing my life plans and the trajectory of my whole research agenda. My Tokyo sabbatical wasn’t just a productive and enjoyable research trip but a shift in how I think about cultural differences, the benefits of immigration, and the threat of depopulation in America and Europe.

Of course, it wasn’t just me who decided to go to Japan suddenly. Over the past years, and especially since the country reopened post-pandemic, people from all over the world have traveled to Japan in search of novelty and awe. According to some observers, it is one of the most culturally distinct places for Americans and Europeans. According to others, it is a country where tradition and modernity sit in plain view: wooden bathhouses two blocks from neon-lit arcades, or hand-pulled noodles in the basement of a high-rise office tower served by a robot.

The truth is more mundane. Japan is an uncannily normal, advanced democracy with familiar problems after years of economic stagnation and aging: disappointing wages, mental health strain, frustration with the status quo, population decline, and now also anti-immigration parties. In fact, I would argue that Japan’s appeal to outsiders is exactly that it is ultimately the most “normal” country in the world that manages to adapt to our ever-changing environment and make familiar things, from food and bathing to whisky and clothing, better.

Indeed, the more time I spent in Japan, the more I saw that it felt “weird” and “crazy” to so many westerners not because it was exotic, but simply because all possible normal things worked well there. None of this was mystical or rooted in some fixed or mysterious national character of the country. What I came to realize is that it was mostly about social norms and government policy choices that made everyday life feel predictable and frictionless. But the question that has stayed with me since I left Japan is whether these good things can last.

Entering the remains of the old Tokyo-Kyoto highway checkpoint.

Why Japan is so awesome

I’m yet to meet someone who traveled to Japan and was disappointed in their experience. There is something to like for almost anyone, from beautiful pristine nature to thoughtful urban design, not to mention the obvious things like anime, fashion, or the hot springs culture that make people want to go to Japan in the first place.

As just one pertinent example, let’s talk about the food. If you care about good food like I do, Tokyo is unbeatable. You could try a different restaurant every single day for the rest of your life and still not run out of options—there are now about 160,000 restaurants in the city. Some are Michelin-starred, some are hole-in-the-wall counters, some are themed to the point of absurdity.

Sometimes it does get a little too weird, as in the case of this cat-themed cafe-slash-entertainment complex.

Outside of Tokyo, the quality and diversity of restaurants are still remarkable. I’ve deliberately gone out of my way to do fieldwork in declining regions, and even there the food options were better than what I generally found in comparable places in Europe or America. I particularly grew to appreciate Japanese comfort food and the local interpretation of various Chinese and Sichuan dishes.

The moment I tried to become a food influencer in Japan.

What explains this? While it’s tempting to say that food has always been important to Japanese culture, there are more mundane and identifiable reasons why there are so many good restaurants everywhere. Much of it, for instance, arguably comes down to zoning.

Hear me out. Similar to many, many, many people before me, the experience of living in Japan basically radicalized my views on zoning in America and the myriad regulations that stifle small businesses. It’s worth emphasizing again: the reason there are so many great little restaurants on the fifth floor of a high-rise in Tokyo or cozy coffee shops that feel like someone’s living room is because they often are. In mixed-use areas, it’s usually legal to run your business out of your own home, and the result is an endless churn of creative, affordable, and idiosyncratic spots that make cities feel alive.

This excellent tea shop in Kagurazaka, Tokyo’s “Little Paris” looked like I was in someone’s kitchen because it probably was someone’s kitchen.

Yet why Japan feels so normal

As an American who was born in the Soviet Union and lived in Western Europe, I never really believed in the “collectivist East vs. individualist West” dichotomy, but being in Japan cured me of it completely. Day to day, Japan often feels more familiar to most Americans than Germany, France, Italy, or even the UK. No, unfortunately, the dryers are just as slow as in Europe, but most places are air-conditioned, and ice shows up by default in every drink. And—while I’m not necessarily endorsing it—once you get outside central Tokyo, you run into wide stroads, gas stations, and parking lots that could just as well be in New Jersey. Even the electrical outlets are the same.

Talk to people, and the overlap becomes even clearer. Despite its former technological dominance and the futuristic outlook, everyone in Japan these days carries iPhones and other US-designed gadgets. Parents worry about childcare costs and school quality. Adult children juggle eldercare. Young workers complain about rent, commutes, and managers. Teens argue with their parents about screen time. And yes…folks also increasingly complain about foreigners and some even vote for anti-immigration politicians.

The collectivist/individualist distinction or various cultural explanations don’t help much here. What is different here is informal social norms and formal institutional rules, not people’s mentality per se. Trains in Japan are reliable and quiet because people expect them to be reliable and quiet, and railway workers back that up because they are incentivized to do so. Small businesses and weird coffee shops proliferate because zoning allows them to, not because people here are necessarily more creative or entrepreneurial.

Why awesomeness and normality may not last

Unfortunately, these good things may not be there for too long. The proposed research plan for my sabbatical was to study Japanese immigration politics in the context of population decline, so I was familiar with the basic statistics of Japan’s low fertility rates, rapid aging, depopulating countryside, and the collapsing pension system. Yet venturing outside of Tokyo and seeing abandoned houses and emptying elementary schools scattered all around firsthand, along with hearing personal stories about old people dying alone, made me think more seriously about the global depopulation trend and its impact on politics and human well-being.

Depopulation rather than overpopulation is a real issue, and it’s neither inherently left nor right. I’ve been aware of this for years, but being in Japan made the abstract numbers concrete in a way charts never could. It is a topic I have recently written about, and I expect it to feature more in my work in the months ahead. The related problems of low fertility and aging are already salient political issues in Japan, and we should expect them to become central political questions everywhere else sooner than most people think.

Some “degrowth” advocates point to Japan as proof that you can be prosperous and happy without striving to produce more. But what we are really observing are the accumulated benefits of past growth and technological diffusion—the result of previously built infrastructure, high capital stock, strong institutions, and reliable global trade flows. Objectively speaking, Japan’s living standards are already too low, especially relative to its potential. Without more young workers, the story will soon become one of a slow decline rather than a stable alternative path.

Immigration as a way to slow the decline?

Contrary to the old cliché that Japan is an ethnically homogeneous country that “can’t” accept foreigners due to ingrained xenophobia, the recent trajectory looks different. One of the main reasons is that the demographic situation is so dire that the government has effectively had no choice but to accept more immigrants. Japan’s foreign-worker population has roughly quadrupled since 2007 to more than 2 million—a remarkable shift given its long history of minimal immigration. As recently noted by

Noah Smith

, it’s also unclear how ethnically homogenous Japan has truly been to begin with.

Japan’s pragmatic and incremental approach—favoring work-tied, often temporary entry over permanence and humanitarianism—has critics, but it likely helped minimize backlash and build tolerance for higher inflows. Whether support endures and whether voters will accept more permanent pathways as the numbers rise remains an open question. There is already a nascent anti-immigration party, as in many European countries, though its ability to retain or expand influence is uncertain.

It’s widely acknowledged that high-skilled immigration boosts economic growth, and it tends to be extremely popular (the recent H-1B controversies notwithstanding). As I argue in my book, such immigration is demonstrably beneficial so that most voters intuitively understand why more of it makes sense. The same dynamic is visible in Japan. Yet, unlike many other OECD countries that mostly need high-skilled workers, Japan would clearly gain from a much broader mix.

The lessons I learned about migration in Japan

This leads me to what may be the most important thing I learned in Japan. Unlike what many centrist analysts believe based on their US or European experience, Japan shows that demonstrably beneficial immigration is much broader than simply attracting the best and the brightest. Labor shortages can be real across the entire economy. Walking around Japan—especially outside the greater Tokyo area—you quickly see that businesses struggle to find workers not because wages are low or conditions are bad but because most people in the area are old and already retired.

Some analysts I respect, like

Adam Ozimek

and

Connor O'Brien

, have expressed legitimate skepticism about immigration pathways based on labor shortages. These metrics are hard to define, and it’s easy to imagine how they could be gamed, especially when firms want special carve-outs to hire more foreign workers at lower wages. Yet when shortages are structural and clear, as they are in Japan, and driven by age rather than policy failures, the logic of matching foreign workers to specific needs becomes much harder to dismiss.

In Japan’s daily life, immigration is already increasingly woven into the social fabric. It is not a future prospect but a present reality. Even older residents in rural towns told me that without the Vietnamese owner of the ramen shop, or the Filipino aide at the neighborhood clinic, the community would feel hollowed out. These folks are not cosmopolitan, but when the benefits of immigration are visible and close to home—open storefronts, functioning care facilities, affordable food—attitudes soften regardless of prior biases. Immigration stops being abstract and becomes a question of whether a town can keep its school open and its hospital staffed, rather than a question about “identity.”

Americans often struggle to see this because our demographic situation, while worsening, is not as dire. We already have a large immigrant presence, so the counterfactual—what our communities would look like without immigration—is hard to even image. As

Virginia Postrel

recently observed, the United States shifting into “a normal, settled country rather than a nation of strivers seeking a better life” in the middle of the 20th century has been a recipe for stagnation. Japan, too, probably needs more strivers of all kinds if it hopes to reverse its decline.

Another related idea I hadn’t fully appreciated before Japan was the importance of “training-based” immigration. Proponents of high-skilled immigration often argue that skilled pathways yield larger long-term benefits, which is true. But they also assume that skills are something workers bring with them through education before they migrate, or acquire only after arrival through formal programs. What Japan highlights is that skills can be gained directly on the job, sometimes more effectively than in school. Its system—flawed as it is—shows how structured, supervised work programs can develop skills while addressing acute labor needs. This is not a replacement for skilled immigration, but it expands the set of complementary legal pathways that voters can see as clearly beneficial.

***

Still, major barriers remain if Japan hopes to harness the full benefits of immigration. Naturalization is rare even for long-term residents. Housing markets are difficult for foreigners to navigate. Language training is underfunded. Professional licensing is opaque. Many foreign residents remain locked out of full participation despite years of legal work. Bias shows up in subtle ways: tourists get scolded for breaking unspoken rules, while residents face endless paperwork and suspicion from landlords or officials. But these are not immutable features of Japanese society. They are policy design problems that can be fixed through clearer rules and more consistent enforcement.

A common sign politely stating that “foreigners are not allowed” in Golden Gai, the famous Tokyo bar alley.

Japan’s broader lesson is that there is no secret sauce to prosperity. Good policy design can make the everyday feel exceptional, whether in zoning that enables countless restaurants or incremental immigration measures that relieve decline without sparking backlash. Bad design—or simple institutional neglect—can unwind those gains quickly.

If progress means more people living better lives, Japan shows both the promise and the risk. The promise is what well-crafted rules can deliver. The risk is what happens when demographic collapse pushes even a well-run society toward decline. Economic growth makes life comfortable for decades even after it stalls—but that comfort eventually erodes if new progress does not follow.

I would like to thank the folks at the The Roots of Progress and Blog-Building Intensive Fellowship for encouraging me to publish a more personal essay. A special thanks to

Mike Riggs

,

Ariel Patton

,

Karthik Tadepalli

, and

Kelly Vedi

among others for their comments on the previous versions of the draft.

1. To be honest, this is probably the single best perk of being in academia.