What US and Korean conservatives can learn from Japan’s election

In Japan’s Feb. 8 general election, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party won an unprecedented, two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of parliament, giving the government a resounding mandate to address inflation and national security concerns.

Takaichi’s victory also demonstrated the electoral viability of immigration politics grounded in demographic realism and institutional management — an approach that contrasts with the emergency rhetoric common among in parts of the American and South Korean right.

Japan’s predicament is structural. It is aging faster than almost any major society, and its working-age population has been shrinking for decades. The result is chronic labor shortages across caregiving, construction, agriculture and manufacturing. Japanese conservatives do not deny this reality. Instead, they manage it. Tokyo avoids calling itself an “immigrant society,” but it has quietly expanded foreign-labor programs to keep essential sectors functioning.

That demographic realism was captured in remarks by Minister Kimi Onoda, who oversees coexistence with foreign nationals. On Jan. 24, 2026, she acknowledged that “many workplaces already cannot function without foreign workers,” and that if Japan were to “immediately suspend the acceptance of all foreigners,” industries from caregiving to agriculture would “collapse at once, and society would no longer function.”

Yet Onoda paired that realism with a firm cultural boundary: “A country whose native language is Japanese, with Japan’s own history and culture, exists only here in the world,” and preserving “what makes Japan Japan” is an “absolute red line that cannot be compromised.”

Her message was neither open-border idealism nor apocalyptic nativism. It was a governing synthesis: demographic necessity paired with cultural continuity, implemented through bureaucratic tools, productivity reforms, and incremental policies.

This institutional style is reflected in the composition of Japan’s conservative camp, which includes a small but visible number of mixed-heritage and minority-background politicians. Onoda Kimi, of Japanese and Irish-American parentage, and Eri Arfiya, of Uyghur and Uzbek parents, hold ministerial ranks in Takaichi’s government. They exemplify an unmistakably conservative message: Assimilation to a shared civic culture is both possible and desirable. 

Contrast this with the direction of debate in the U.S. and South Korea, which frames migration as an existential threat — a struggle against infiltration by hostile outsiders and complicit elites. When politics takes that form, enforcement becomes less about proportionality and more about public displays of national sovereignty.

In the U.S., federal authorities deployed roughly 3,000 immigration and border agents to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area to support enforcement and fraud investigations — far outnumbering the local police force. Whatever the merits of individual cases, the scale and staging reflect a broader shift of enforcement from policy administration to a public theater of resolve — with sometimes tragic results.

South Korea’s migrant population remains far smaller, but the rhetoric is starting to rhyme. Since the impeachment of conservative President Yoon Suk-Yeol, narratives about foreign election interference have turned “foreignness” into a partisan wedge, especially in debates about China and online influence. In early 2026, lawmakers backed proposals requiring online platforms to disclose users’ nationality and location — measures supporters frame as transparency tools but which critics warn would stigmatize foreign residents. Migration is no longer treated mainly as a labor issue but as a political threat.

Japan’s ruling conservatives are taking a different approach — one that understands the realities of an interconnected world and that valorizes cultural continuity. The irony is that this is not alien to American or South Korean conservatism. During the Cold War, U.S. Republicans combined strong national identity with pragmatic governance. President Ronald Reagan celebrated America as a country continually renewed by newcomers, and signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which combined legalization for millions with employer sanctions and enforcement provisions.

South Korea’s conservative leaders followed a similar path. Syngman Rhee was both a fierce nationalist and a Princeton-educated statesman. Park Chung-Hee left his Japanese military post to build an independent Korean state and tied Korea’s development to global integration, beginning with normalization with Japan in 1965. Later presidents, such as Kim Young-Sam and Lee Myung-Bak, deepened globalization and international ties. For years, conservative and progressive governments shared a consensus that national strength required global integration, and that foreign residents could be incorporated through civic institutions rather than treated as permanent outsiders.

Japan’s election is a reminder that conservatives need not choose between national sovereignty and demographic realism. Minister Onoda’s formulation — candid about labor dependence, unapologetic about cultural continuity — keeps enforcement within the bounds of law instead of spectacle.

Japan’s conservatives, newly reinforced by electoral mandate, are betting that competence, cultural boundary-setting, and administrative realism outperform the politics of existential struggle. In an age of demographic decline and geopolitical tension, that may prove the more durable form of patriotism.

Joseph Yi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hanyang University (Seoul), and Shaun O’Dwyer is Professor of Languages and Cultures at Kyushu University (Japan). They are co-founders of Heterodox East Asia Community, affiliated with Heterodox Academy.