As birth rates decline across the developed world and nations turn to immigration to fill labor gaps, many are grappling with crises of national identity. Japan is no exception. Over the past decade, Tokyo has steadily opened its doors to foreign workers, a shift that has accelerated since the 2019 revision of its immigration law. While the foreign-born population remains smaller than in Europe or the United States, the percentage is rising rapidly, and with it, a fundamental question: What does it mean to be Japanese?
To explore this, we turned to Hiroko Yoda, a Japan-based entrepreneur, cultural historian, and author of the new memoir Eight Million Ways to Happiness. Yoda, who is married to an American and holds degrees from U.S. universities, offers a perspective that bridges both societies. She notes that when she and her husband moved to Tokyo in 2003, international couples were rare enough to draw stares. Today, in urban centers like Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka, such families are unremarkable. Tourists and permanent residents alike are reshaping the social fabric.
Culture Over Creed
Yoda argues that what binds Japan together is not a single religious doctrine but a shared culture. This contrasts sharply with American debates, where faith often serves as a litmus test for belonging. In the United States, commentators like Ross Douthat of The New York Times have argued that the nation's founding ideals—enshrined in the Declaration of Independence—derive their power from a belief in a providential God. Similarly, writer Derek Thompson and scholar Ryan Burge have lamented that Americans who pick and choose elements of religion without a central spiritual spine struggle to build lasting community.
“If you don’t have that central spine of purpose, the community won’t last,” Thompson has said. “You need that higher purpose—that vertical spine—in order to build a truly strong horizontal community.”
Yoda finds this perspective revealing. “Japanese, as a nation, don’t subscribe to any one faith,” she writes. “There’s a popular saying: ‘born Shinto, married Christian, buried Buddhist.’ We pick and choose, bringing what we like from various traditions—the purifications of Shinto, the aesthetics of Christian weddings, the rituals of Buddhist funerals—into our secular lives. We’re so flexible about it that we often answer ‘no’ when asked if we’re religious.”
This flexibility, she suggests, is not a weakness but a source of resilience. Surveys consistently show that a majority of Japanese identify as non-religious, yet the country maintains strong social cohesion through shared customs, festivals, and a deep sense of collective responsibility. The concept of kuuki wo yomu—reading the air—encapsulates this: an unspoken understanding of social norms that binds people together without explicit doctrine.
As Japan’s demographic pressures mount—the fertility rate fell to 1.2 in 2023, among the world’s lowest—the government has increasingly turned to immigration. In 2023, the number of foreign residents surpassed 3 million for the first time, about 2.4% of the population. While still modest by global standards, the trend is accelerating. This has prompted a rethinking of Japanese identity, moving from a purely ethnic definition to one that includes cultural participation.
“Are you Japanese simply because of where you were born, or because of how you participate in society?” Yoda asks. The question echoes debates in the United States, but with a key difference: in Japan, the answer increasingly hinges on shared practices rather than heritage or faith. This pragmatic approach may offer lessons for other nations navigating similar transitions, from Seoul to Berlin.
For now, Japan’s experiment with multiculturalism remains a work in progress. But as Yoda’s analysis suggests, the country’s ability to adapt its identity without losing its cultural core could prove a model for an era of global mobility. As she puts it, “We don’t need a vertical spine when the horizontal bonds are strong enough.”
