The perhaps not-so-surprising media dominance of the right-wing Sanseito in the recent general election is predicated on the party’s perceived prioritizing of Japanese citizens over foreigners. As others have already pointed out, this analysis is an over-simplification of certain Sanseito characteristics, the most obvious one being its motto, “Japanese people first,” which has given rise to a contrasting hashtag, #gaikokujinfirst, meaning “foreigners first,” or the idea that foreigners in Japan have privileges that Japanese don’t. This belief is based on a few loopholes that Sanseito has fixated on, in particular a means for some tourists to be able to exchange their home country drivers licenses for Japanese ones. The present administration, spooked by the popularity of Sanseito, has pledged to study whether foreigners are getting special breaks and tighten up rules accordingly. 

So it will be interesting to see if the government does something with another loophole related to the private lodging (minpaku) law, which regulates short-term private accommodation transactions, like those handled by AirBnB. The law is fairly strict about how many days a year an owner can rent out their property, as well as where and how they can operate. But the government did allow for “special districts” throughout Japan where such regulations are more relaxed, and one of these places is Osaka. 

According to a recent article in the weekly magazine Aera, Osaka was given this special status during the runup to the current Expo 2025, since it was believed that Osaka did not have enough hotel rooms and other short-term accommodations to handle the expected demand. Consequently, Osaka has become a veritable bastion of private lodgings, causing problems on various fronts. Prof. Yoshihisa Matsumura of Hannan University is doing field work on the subject in Japan, and told Aera that he sometimes walks around Osaka neighborhoods with an open map looking for private lodgings and is often approached by local residents who think he is looking for one of these lodgings as a customer. Or they think he is a “Chinese realtor,” because many private lodgings in Osaka are owned by Chinese, be they residents of Japan or China. The local residents are afraid that Matsumura is scouting out possible new properties to acquire for Chinese clients. 

Obviously, these residents don’t like it that Chinese are buying up properties for short-term rentals, the ostensible reason being that guests who use these lodgings are loud and don’t follow local ordnances. But in truth the “trouble,” as it were, goes deeper. Most of the properties that Chinese are buying are rental apartments, which means the new owner will evict any present tenants. The Aera article cites several examples of tenants who refused to leave but were then forced out because the new owner increased their rent. After the tenant leaves, the new owner renovates the property in order to make it more appealing to travelers. 

There are also more ambitious buyers, usually developers or real estate companies, who buy up entire buildings and either kick out all the tenants or tear the building down and make a new one that is completely made up of short-term private lodgings that are sold piecemeal to potential lodging landlords. In some cases, these developers and real estate companies have Chinese connections and they work directly with Chinese buyers in China who see the purchases as good investments. 

Of course, not all the new minpaku properties are owned and run by Chinese. Most are still Japanese, but the conspicuously high number of Chinese investors points up a different motive that has less to do with profit-making: immigration.

When a Chinese person buys a property with the intention of making it into a minpaku, the Chinese person then registers themself as a business owner in Japan, even if they remain in China. They then hire a management agent to run the property; or, if they bought the property from a developer, the developer will manage it. Farther down the line, the Chinese owner may move to Japan after attaining a business owner’s visa, which requires only ¥5 million in capital. They can then live in Japan, along with their family, indefinitely as long as they are registered as a business owner. Even farther down the line they can apply for permanent residency. 

So for a lot of these Chinese minpaku owners, making money from the property is really secondary. The primary purpose is to get a visa to live in Japan, where the health care and education systems are better than they are in China. 

Aera points out that the real aim of the business management visa is to encourage “young people” from overseas to come to Japan to start their own businesses and reinforce Japan’s “international competitiveness.” But in China business owner visas are seen as immigrant visas. There are whole handbooks online in China instructing people how to get a business management visa, as well as lots of ads from Chinese real estate companies selling Japanese properties, mostly in Osaka. Many of these properties are priced higher than market rates in order to discourage Japanese buyers, but for Chinese buyers looking to move to Japan, it’s worth it. 

As Matsumura says, it’s all perfectly legal, and he wonders if once the expo is over the government won’t revise the law regarding business management visas, because more people in Osaka are becoming leery of all these new Chinese immigrants. Matsumura is afraid that many of these people do not make the attempt to “belong” to Japanese society. In other words, he’s afraid that their obvious otherness will spark a fiercer form of xenophobia among Japanese people, thus making it more difficult for all foreign residents, regardless of why they are in Japan.