With the number of foreigners working in Japan increasing, the highest increases are being seen not in urban but in rural areas, according to an Asahi Shimbun survey. 

With the declining birthrate and aging population, and a growing labor shortage, the pace of “opening up” local regions and the “competition” for foreign personnel is intensifying, the survey revealed.

The Asahi Shimbun conducted the survey of 67 local governments—47 prefectural governments and 20 government-designated cities.

It found that the number of municipalities that have concluded agreements with foreign municipalities and universities to supply human resources is rapidly increasing.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic died down, the number of foreigners living in Japan has been increasing at a rate of 10 percent per year.

Given that such agreements are spreading in local regions, the percentage of foreigners could reach 10 percent of Japan's total population around 2050, well ahead of the national projection.

Local governments have positioned “international exchange agreements” with foreign governments, municipalities, universities and other organizations as a powerful tool for securing foreign personnel.

Under this framework, also known as a “memorandum of understanding,” Japanese local governments will offer measures to support the acceptance of foreign workers, such as Japanese language education and daily life support, before and after their arrival in Japan.

In exchange, they will receive personnel from the foreign entities on a preferential basis.

The Asahi Shimbun conducted a survey on the issue of 67 municipalities in October 2024, and compiled the results after conducting supplementary interviews.

The results show that 28 of the 67 local governments, or 41.8 percent, have concluded a total of 87 international exchange agreements since 2014.

The figure included an agreement scheduled to be concluded in the future.

The largest number of agreements concluded was Yokohama city with 19, followed by the Ibaraki prefectural government with 10, the Chiba prefectural government with six, and the Nagasaki prefectural government with five.

In terms of the timing of the conclusion of these agreements, there was a first boom between 2018 and 2019, with a total of 39 agreements concluded.

This was due to the fact in 2017 that technical intern trainees were allowed to work in the nursing care field, and in 2019, the “specified skills” system began, which aimed at accepting foreigners with certain expertise and skills in industrial fields where it is difficult to secure domestic workers.

From 2020 to 2022, the pandemic-related entry restrictions caused a slowdown in the conclusion of such agreements.

However, the number jumped to a total of 40 after 2023, when economic activity normalized and the labor shortage intensified, indicating that a second boom was under way.

While the first boom was led by urban municipalities such as Yokohama and Chiba Prefecture, the second boom shifted the leading role to rural areas, with 34 of the 40 agreements concluded by municipalities outside the three major metropolitan areas (Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya), such as Ibaraki Prefecture and Fukui Prefecture.

Regarding the merits of such agreements, Ehime Prefecture responded in the survey, “The involvement of the ‘public’ leads to a secure sending and receiving system for both foreigners and Japanese companies.”

Wakayama Prefecture responded, “It is easy to establish a stable sending and receiving system.”

Changes can also be seen in the countries with which the agreements were concluded.

Of the 87 agreements, the largest number was with Vietnam at 46, followed by China at 10, India at seven and Nepal at five.

However, all of the agreements with India and Nepal were concluded after the second boom in 2023.

The survey indicated that the source of labor supply has been expanding from Southeast Asia to South Asia, including India, the world's most populous country.

According to the Immigration Services Agency, the number of foreign residents at the end of 2024 was approximately 3.77 million, up about 360,000 from the end of 2023.

The increase was 10.5 percent. Growth was particularly marked in regional areas, with Hokkaido, Miyazaki, Saga, Kagoshima, Okinawa and Nagasaki prefectures recording growth rates exceeding 15 percent.

In 2023, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR) of the labor ministry released an estimate that “the total population of Japan would decrease to 87 million in 2070, 10 percent of which would be foreigners.”

It was assumed that the number of foreigners would increase by about 165,000 per year, but in reality, the number of foreigners has been increasing rapidly, at more than double the rate.

Yu Korekawa, director of the Department of International Research and Cooperation at the NIPSSR, said that the agreements are spreading, and the enthusiasm for accepting foreign workers in local regions is increasing after the pandemic.

The NIPSSR has calculated that if the annual increase in foreign residents is 250,000, the number will reach 10 percent in the early 2050s, and it is possible that they will comprise 10 percent of the population as early as around 2050.

The survey also revealed that local governments are offering a variety of support measures to attract and to retain foreign personnel. 

In addition to subsidizing foreign students' tuition fees and foreign workers' housing costs, some municipalities offered “incentive grants” for those who had worked in the area for three years.

The survey indicates that it is likely that the “battle” among local governments for foreign human resources to stem the “exodus” to urban areas is likely to intensify further.