Racism and Discrimination in Japan: What Japan's Own Data Shows for Indians

Every Indian who seriously considers Japan eventually types some version of this question into a search bar at midnight. The answers they find are usually one of two genres: a furious thread about being refused an apartment, or a cheerful video insisting Japan is the politest country on earth and any problem is your own language ability.

Both are real. Neither is an answer.

Here is a better starting point. Every year, Japan's own Immigration Services Agency surveys foreign residents and publishes what they say about being discriminated against. In the most recent round — fieldwork in October and November 2025, published in May 2026, 8,874 valid responses — 47.0% of foreign residents reported at least one experience of discrimination, and in the same survey 91.0% said they were satisfied living in Japan (ISA, 令和7年度在留外国人に対する基礎調査).

Those are not two different populations arguing on the internet. They are largely the same people, answering the same questionnaire. This article is about how both things can be true, where the risk actually concentrates, what the data cannot see about Indians specifically, and what you can do about any of it.

Key takeaway

Discrimination in Japan is real, measured by the Japanese government, and heavily concentrated in a few specific transactions — housing (19.4%), being at work (17.5%) and job-hunting (13.2%) — rather than spread evenly across daily life. It is mostly gatekeeping and refusal, not confrontation. That matters, because gatekeeping has workarounds: guarantor companies, the right city, the right employer, documentation, and Japanese. What it does not have is a version where you can pretend it won't happen at all.

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The number everyone quotes, and the number nobody does

The Immigration Services Agency (出入国在留管理庁) has run its basic survey of foreign residents every year since FY2020. The FY2025 round mailed invitations to 20,000 mid-to-long-term residents and special permanent residents aged 18 and over, and got 8,874 valid responses — a 45.5% response rate. Fieldwork ran 17 October to 9 November 2025; results were published in May 2026 (ISA survey page).

Asked where they had experienced discrimination, 53.0% chose "I have not experienced this in particular." The other 47.0% picked at least one situation. Here is where, with the previous year's figure alongside:

Source: ISA, 令和7年度在留外国人に対する基礎調査, multiple response, n=8,874. Figures rounded by the ISA.

Read the shape of that table, not just the top line. This is not a picture of a society where strangers abuse you in the street. It is a picture of doors: a house, a job, an account, a card. The most common counterparty in the survey's companion question was "a stranger" (44.8%), but the ones that change your life are the next three — workplace people (35.9%), housing and real-estate people (23.8%), and shop staff (22.1%), followed by neighbours (15.8%) and recruiters (15.3%).

And the year-on-year movement is worth noting honestly: most categories ticked up, not down.

Bucket brigade, because this is the part people skip: the "not experienced" majority is real too. If you only read the 47%, you will arrive braced for a fight that most days will not come. If you only read the 53%, you will be blindsided the first time a rental agency stops returning calls.

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What the survey cannot see: Indians

Here is the finding that made this article worth writing, and it is not in anyone's blog post.

India does not appear in the ISA survey's nationality breakdown. The published table lists China (25.1%), Vietnam (18.9%), the Philippines (10.7%), Indonesia (6.7%), Brazil (6.1%), South Korea (6.0%), Nepal (4.3%), Myanmar (3.0%), Taiwan (2.2%) and the United States (1.8%). Everyone else — including every Indian respondent — is inside "Other," 15.2%.

Second: the survey is answered online in ten languages — Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Nepali, Indonesian and Spanish. No Hindi. No Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi or Malayalam. Nepali is there; no Indian language is.

That is not a conspiracy. It is arithmetic: Nepal has roughly 6.2% of Japan's foreign-resident population and India around 1.5%, and survey languages follow population size. But the consequence is real. Indians are the 13th-largest nationality in Japan, about 59,000 people at the end of 2025 (see our full breakdown in Indians in Japan: every statistic that matters) — large enough for the experience to matter to tens of thousands of families, small enough to be statistically invisible in the one dataset that measures how foreigners are treated.

So when someone tells you confidently what Indians experience in Japan, ask where the number came from. There isn't one. There is national data that includes Indians without identifying them, and there is anecdote.

Which is why this article uses the national data where the national data is sound, and is honest about where the national data cannot see Indians at all.

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The four things people call "racism," and why the difference matters

Most of the confusion in that midnight search comes from lumping four very different experiences under one word. They feel similar in the moment. They require completely different responses.

Here is the triage we would give a friend landing next month.

Level 1 — Friction that applies to everyone

The paperwork is heavy. The rules are unexplained. The bank wants a hanko. The city office sends a four-page letter about something a one-line email would cover — a complaint Japanese residents make constantly, and one that appeared verbatim in the ISA survey's own free-text responses.

How to tell: a Japanese colleague, asked casually, rolls their eyes and says "yeah, that's Japan." Response: systems, not feelings. Budget the time and move on.

Level 2 — A rule applied to foreigners with a stated business reason

Guarantor requirements. Credit history you don't have. A card application declined because you've been in the country eleven months. A phone contract that wants a longer residence period than you have.

This is where most Indian arrivals' anger actually lands, and it is genuinely ambiguous. Some of it is ordinary risk pricing applied to someone with no domestic record. Some of it is that dressed up. In the ISA data, 19.3% of respondents named "a guarantor when renting a home" as a live problem in their daily life — and the survey's free-text section carries the complaint precisely: residents who say they can use a guarantor company, but are asked for extra documents and higher fees than they understand to be standard.

How to tell: there is a stated criterion, and it is at least theoretically satisfiable — by time, income, a guarantor company, or a document. Response: satisfy it or route around it. This level has the most workarounds and the best return on effort. Our renting an apartment in Japan guide and opening a bank account guide exist mostly for this level.

Level 3 — Discretion, exercised against you, with no reason given

The property that was available this morning and is "already taken" this afternoon. The agency that stops replying after your name. The interview that goes well until the visa question. No rule cited, because there isn't one — just a decision somebody was free to make.

This is the level the survey's housing and hiring numbers are mostly capturing, and it is the hardest to fight, because there is nothing on paper.

How to tell: no criterion is offered, or the criterion changes. Response: document it — date, company, the words used, who said them — and move on fast. Then use the channels in the last section. Arguing with the front desk almost never converts a Level 3 refusal, and it costs you the afternoon.

Level 4 — Hostility

Slurs, "go home," abuse, threats. In the FY2025 survey, 12.0% of respondents said they had personally been targeted by hate speech, and a further 31.9% said they had seen or heard it without being targeted. Where? The internet, 71.4% — far ahead of street demonstrations (25.4%), organised demos (22.3%) and television (18.8%). Of those who encountered it, 83.2% described content telling foreigners to leave or go back to their own country.

Note the shape of that too: the hostility is overwhelmingly online, and the in-person figures, while not zero, are much smaller.

How to tell: you know. Response: safety first, disengage, and report — Japan does have channels, though they are weaker than most Indian readers expect. Details below.

The practical value of the triage: roughly, Level 1 costs you patience, Level 2 costs you money and paperwork, Level 3 costs you time and options, and Level 4 costs you peace of mind. Only Level 3 and 4 are discrimination in the sense most people mean. If you treat every Level 1 as a Level 4, Japan will be unbearable and you'll be wrong. If you assume every Level 3 is a Level 1, you will waste months blaming your own Japanese for a door that was never open.

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Where it concentrates: housing

Housing is the single largest category in the survey and has been for two consecutive years. 19.4% of all respondents reported discrimination while looking for a home; 23.8% of those who experienced any discrimination named housing and real-estate professionals as the counterparty.

Two structural things drive this, and it helps to separate them:

1. The guarantor system. Japanese rentals traditionally require a personal guarantor (連帯保証人), usually a relative with Japanese income. Most new arrivals don't have one. Guarantor companies (保証会社) exist and are now standard — but the survey's own free-text responses include residents reporting extra documentation and higher premiums than they understood the standard to be.
2. Owner discretion. Individual owners can decline tenants, and some do. Industry surveys by the Japan Property Management Association have for years found a meaningful minority of owners expressing reluctance to rent to foreign tenants (JPM market data), and the ISA's own free-text section contains resident accounts of being refused apartments outright.

What reduces it, in rough order of effectiveness: a company that arranges housing as part of the package (common for IT and SSW roles); UR (Urban Renaissance) public rental stock, which does not require a guarantor or key money; agencies that specialise in foreign tenants; a Japanese-speaking colleague on the phone for the first call; and living in a ward where Indian tenants are already normal. On that last point, see where to live in Tokyo as an Indian — Edogawa Ward alone had 8,493 Indian residents as of 30 April 2026, roughly one in seven of all Indians in Japan, with about 4,596 around Nishi-Kasai station.

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Where it concentrates: work and hiring

17.5% reported discrimination while at work — up from 14.2% the previous year — and 13.2% while job-hunting. Separately, when the survey asked about workplace problems generally, 5.4% said they were treated less favourably than Japanese colleagues in hiring, assignment or promotion. (The single biggest workplace complaint, by a distance, was simply "my pay is low," at 29.1%.)

That distinction is worth sitting with. For most foreign workers in Japan, the dominant work grievance is money, not hostility — and pay is a solvable, negotiable, comparable thing. Run your own offer through the Komichi salary calculator before you accept anything, and read the ₹35 lakh illusion so you're comparing take-home rather than headline.

Where nationality does bite at work, it tends to show up as: client-facing roles withheld, promotion tracks that quietly don't include you, "we need native-level Japanese" for a role that demonstrably doesn't, and the assumption that you will leave in three years so you needn't be invested in. Some of that is discrimination. Some of it is a real language gap. Telling them apart is genuinely hard from the inside — see Japanese work culture for Indians and how far English gets you in Japan.

Two hard boundaries, though, and neither is a grey area:

• Illegal is illegal. Unpaid overtime, withheld wages, confiscated passports and contract terms that differ from what you signed are labour-law violations, not cultural differences, and they have enforcement channels. That is a separate article: spotting an exploitative employer from India.
• Route matters more than country. The exposure of a Tokyo IT engineer and a regional SSW worker to unfair treatment is not remotely the same, and averages hide that completely.

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Street level, police and the profiling question

This is the topic Indian readers ask about most often and where the public data is thinnest.

There is no official national statistic on how often foreign residents are stopped and questioned. The most-cited number comes from a 2022 Tokyo Bar Association survey of over 2,000 foreign residents and people of foreign descent, in which 62.9% said they had been questioned by police in the previous five years (survey site). It is a self-selecting online survey, not a random sample — people with an experience to report are likelier to answer — so treat it as an indication of a live problem rather than a population rate.

In January 2024, three foreign-born residents — one of them a man of Indian descent with permanent residency and more than twenty years in Japan — filed a civil suit at the Tokyo District Court, seeking a ruling that stopping and questioning people solely on the basis of race, nationality or ethnicity is unlawful, plus ¥3.3 million in damages each (Human Rights Watch). Hearings ran through 2024. We could not verify a final judgment as of August 2026; we will update this section when there is one.

In the ISA survey, the everyday street-level figure is smaller than the housing and work ones: 11.0% reported discrimination on trains and buses, and 22.1% of those who experienced any discrimination named shop staff.

Practical, and deliberately undramatic: carry your residence card. Mid-to-long-term residents are legally required to carry it and to present it to a police officer or immigration officer on request. Cooperating with a card check costs two minutes; not having it is a real legal problem. If a stop feels wrong, note the time, place, and the officer's identification, and raise it afterwards through the channels below — not at the roadside.

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The 2026 climate, honestly

It would be misleading to publish this in 2026 and pretend nothing has changed. Two things have.

Politics. Immigration became a mainstream electoral issue in Japan during 2025. Following the July 2025 upper-house election, in which the populist Sanseito party made gains on a "Japanese First" platform, foreign-resident policy moved to the centre of the national agenda. In January 2026, the government published a policy framework titled Comprehensive Measures for Accepting Foreign Nationals and Orderly Coexistence, and the Immigration Services Agency has since drafted tighter criteria for permanent residency and naturalisation — including income and projected-pension thresholds — currently slated to take effect in April 2027 after public consultation. If permanent residency is part of your plan, read Japan PR for Indians and check your position with the PR rules checker and the HSP points calculator, because the goalposts are moving.

One case that is specifically about Indians. In 2026, the city of Sapporo selected a Tokyo-based operator, Global Indian Education, as preferred negotiating party to convert a closed elementary school in Minami Ward into an international school opening in 2027. Local opposition followed, amplified online by claims the city itself later described as misinformation — including the false claim that the school would admit Indian students only. On 23 July 2026 the company relinquished its negotiating rights, citing the risks that "the spread of false information and protest activities" posed to running the school. A city official called the withdrawal "extremely regrettable" and acknowledged the city had not adequately communicated accurate information (UHB Hokkaido News, via News On Japan, 30 July 2026).

We include that case because it is a matter of public record, it involved officials of the city correcting the record themselves, and it is honest. We are not going to pretend it didn't happen. We are also not going to generalise from one project in one ward to a country of 124 million people — and it is worth noting that the misinformation was identified as misinformation by the local government.

What has not changed: in the same period, satisfaction among foreign residents went up — 91.0% satisfied in FY2025, 2.8 points higher than the year before — 62.6% said they want to stay in Japan indefinitely, and reported loneliness fell. Both of those are from the same survey as the 47%.

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So — is it worth it?

That is genuinely your call, and it depends on things this article can't know: your route, your city, your Japanese, your family, and what your alternative is.

What the evidence supports is narrower and more useful:

• Discrimination in Japan is real and measured, concentrated in housing, work and hiring, and is mostly refusal rather than confrontation.
• Direct hostility exists, is overwhelmingly online, and is reported by a minority — 12.0% targeted, 31.9% as bystanders.
• The great majority of foreign residents, having experienced Japan for years, choose to stay, and 62.6% want to stay indefinitely.
• Almost every effective mitigation is structural, not attitudinal: the city you pick, the employer you pick, the housing route you pick, your Japanese, and your documentation. None of it requires anyone to like you.

If you want the trade-offs on the other side of the ledger — money, savings, pension, timelines — the honest comparisons live in Japan vs the Gulf for Indian workers and three years or forever.

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If it happens to you: the channels that actually exist

Japan's legal architecture here is weaker than most Indian readers assume, and it is better to know that in advance than to discover it mid-crisis.

The law. The Hate Speech Elimination Act came into force on 3 June 2016. It states that discriminatory speech against people of foreign origin is unacceptable and obliges national and local government to provide consultation, education and awareness measures. It carries no criminal penalties (Ministry of Justice). A small number of municipalities have gone further with their own ordinances — Kawasaki's, in force from 2020, was the first in Japan to attach criminal penalties to repeated public hate speech. Japan has no comprehensive anti-discrimination statute covering housing or employment refusal in the way an Indian reader might expect from, say, the UK or Canada.

Who to call.

What to do in the moment, in order: get safe; write it down the same day (date, time, place, company, the exact words, any witness); keep every message and email; ask for the refusal in writing if there is any chance of getting it; call the hotline before you escalate anywhere else. Documentation is the difference between a complaint and a story.

And the unglamorous one: Japanese. In the ISA survey, respondents in smaller municipalities consistently reported both lower Japanese ability and more difficulty accessing help. Language will not stop a Level 3 refusal — but it changes how many Level 1 and Level 2 problems ever reach you, and it changes whether you can find out what actually happened. Our level-by-visa guide sets a realistic target for your route.

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FAQ

Is Japan racist towards Indians? There is no dataset that answers that question about Indians specifically — India is not broken out in Japan's national survey of foreign residents, and no Indian language is among the ten the survey is offered in. What can be said from evidence: 47.0% of all foreign residents in Japan report at least one experience of discrimination, concentrated in housing, work and hiring; 12.0% report being targeted by hate speech, mostly online; and 91.0% report being satisfied with life in Japan. Indians are inside all of those numbers without being visible in them.

Will I be refused an apartment because I'm Indian? Possibly. Housing is the most-reported category in the government survey, at 19.4%. It is also the most workaround-able: company-arranged housing, UR public rentals (no guarantor, no key money), guarantor companies, foreigner-friendly agencies, and wards with established Indian communities all materially change the odds.

Do I need to speak Japanese to avoid discrimination? Japanese does not prevent someone from refusing you. It does reduce how many ordinary frictions look like discrimination, widens your housing and job options, and lets you find out what actually happened when something goes wrong. Treat it as risk reduction, not immunity.

Is it worse for visibly Muslim or Sikh Indians? Japan-specific data separating religious visibility from nationality has not been published, so we won't guess. What we can say is that the government survey does not break down discrimination by religion or visible religious identity.

Are Indians in Japan targeted by police for stops? There is no official national statistic. A 2022 Tokyo Bar Association survey of over 2,000 foreign residents and people of foreign descent found 62.9% had been questioned by police in the previous five years, though it was a self-selecting sample. A civil case on racial profiling, with a plaintiff of Indian descent, was filed at the Tokyo District Court in January 2024; we could not verify a final judgment as of August 2026. Carry your residence card — you are legally required to.

Is it getting worse in 2026? Mixed, and both directions are real. Most discrimination categories in the government survey ticked up year on year, immigration has become a live electoral issue, and permanent-residency criteria are being tightened for April 2027. In the same survey, satisfaction rose to 91.0%, reported loneliness fell, and 62.6% said they want to stay indefinitely.

Should this stop me coming to Japan? That depends on your alternative, your route and your reasons — and it is not a decision an article should make for you. What the evidence suggests is that the deciding factors are usually structural: your visa route, your employer, your city, and your Japanese. Those are the things worth optimising before you land.

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This article is general information, not legal, immigration, tax, financial, or medical advice. Rules, fees, and figures change and vary by individual circumstances — verify the latest details with official sources (e.g. the Immigration Services Agency of Japan and the relevant embassy or test body) and consult a qualified professional before making decisions.