Letting more migrants in by stealth

TAKEUCHI MASANOBU has a message for his compatriots: “If you order something, it arrives on time, if you go to the convenience store, you have cheap, good, food—that’s all sustained by foreigners.” Across Japan, foreigners are key in industries from farming to retailing. Vietnamese can be found in the fields of Yonaguni and the factories of Hokkaido. Chinese and Uzbeks man counters in Tokyo’s convenience stores. In Gunma Nepali staff help ageing proprietors of inns carry the futon. “They are the labour greasing the wheels of Japan’s convenience,” says Mr Takeuchi, a lawyer in Fukuoka, where one in every 55 workers is foreign, up from one in every 204 in 2009.