When will Kishida fully reopen Japan’s borders?

Pyeongtaek, South Korea – Japan is relaxing its border policies, and the good news is that they will be allowing more foreign nationals — including tourists — to enter the country.

The bad news is that it is limited. Japan will only allow 20,000 entrants per day, with special considerations granted to visitors from just four countries and tourists limited to those signed up with Japan’s big tourism companies’ packaged trips.

This decision did not exactly match the expectations that came when Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that Japan would bring its COVID-19 border policies in line with the other Group of Seven nations.

Naturally, this incremental approach has frustrated foreign nationals seeking to travel to Japan, Japanese businesses that rely heavily on tourism and residents who are exploring easier ways for friends and family members to transit to and from the country.

Why, they ask, does Japan resist change when the rest of the world is opening up? When might the government actually implement meaningful relaxation of its standing policies?

To answer those questions, we must see the politics behind the situation.

In short, decisions will hinge on the outcomes of the Upper House election in July. If the Liberal Democratic Party does well, we can expect the Kishida administration to get more aggressive in its border relaxation, but if the ruling party does poorly, we should expect more of the same incremental approach.

Although that seems like an overly simplistic view, the politics behind it is layers deep. Beneath all those layers is a core truth: Kishida does not want to end up in the same predicament as his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga.

Suga only lasted a year in office as prime minister. While public dissatisfaction of his COVID-19 response was just one domino in the chain of events that led to his downfall, it was the first domino to tumble. Perceptions of a subpar COVID-19 response contributed to his declining public approval, which weakened Suga’s already tenuous position and opened the door to other forces inside the party seizing an opportunity to gain control — namely, Kishida.

Now that Kishida is in power, he is taking steps to avoid Suga’s fate, knowing full well that the circumstances that enabled him to make it to the top are eerily similar to his predecessor. Like Suga, Kishida was not the most popular candidate in the running. Also like Suga, Kishida was able to win the top job by securing enough deals among party elites to edge out his competition.

To distinguish himself from his predecessor, Kishida would need to lead the LDP to electoral victories. Kishida already led the party well enough in the Lower House election last October, but now he has the Upper House election in July to worry about.

If the LDP performs poorly, it will give ammunition to would-be challengers — namely, the Shinzo Abe-backed conservative wing of the party — to veto Kishida’s initiatives and disrupt his policy designs, all while positioning themselves to seize control of the party. If Kishida can lead the party through another successful election, he buys himself the leverage to silence dissent and curry support from his intraparty challengers.

So for Kishida, the Upper House election is a pivotal moment. But what does any of this have to do with COVID-related border restrictions?

It comes down to the fundamental question for most of the electorate in Japan’s de facto one-party system: Am I dissatisfied with the LDP-led government or not? If the voter feels let down by the current government, the vote goes to the opposition, regardless of their political stripes.

Given this reality, for Kishida (and the party writ large), the baseline goal is to build upon the votes that are guaranteed based on the existing vote-getting apparatus while keeping a majority of the public satisfied enough that they either stay home on election day or do not default to the opposition.

Here is where COVID-19 policies come into play: Kishida had to demonstrate action in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic; but whatever he decided had to have the least impact on the Japanese electorate.

Rather than declare formal states of emergency that could compel business closures and other similar measures (which were difficult to implement and unpopular), Kishida opted for the easier and more palatable border restrictions.

As many will recall, as soon as the omicron variant came to light last November, Kishida immediately shut down the borders for foreign entry and has only relaxed those restrictions incrementally.

While there is debate over the actual efficacy of the Kishida administration’s COVID-19 policies, there have been two key outcomes: first, on paper, Japan’s current COVID-19 measures have contributed to statistics that demonstrate high performance among developed countries. Second, the Japanese public has not punished him in opinion polls for those policies.

Some might argue that it would be safe for Kishida to go all in on relaxing the borders now, especially if it could generate a little boost to the economy before the Upper House election. However, if there was another COVID-19 wave (regardless of the point of origin), it would be very easy for the opposition and the population to pin it singularly on the Kishida administration.

With sweeping changes politically challenging, incremental relaxation of restrictions has offered a relief valve for any criticism. When there have been complaints in the press and pressure from advocacy groups, the government has taken the minimum steps necessary to say that they have relaxed conditions without opening itself up to another COVID-19 wave. They did that back in April when relaxing to 10,000 entries per day, and we see it again now with the change to 20,000 and limited tourism.

Are there people in Japan dissatisfied with these risk-averse measures? Of course, but do those groups have an ability to influence the upcoming election? Not really. That’s why Kishida will continue to take a measured approach.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel here: If the political logic of the situation holds true, we should expect to see the LDP-led government use the next relaxation to 20,000 entrants as a trial between June to the end of July.

Once the Upper House election is complete (assuming the LDP wins a majority), we will probably see the Kishida administration address the situation more aggressively to match the same border restriction policies as other G7 partners like Germany or the United Kingdom.

After all, the electoral clocks will have been reset for both houses of the legislature, and Kishida can use the G7 models as justification for border relaxation. Additional entrants will give a boost to tourism and the service industry, which will breathe some new life into the Japanese economy. Jump-starting the economy will give another boost to the Kishida administration, affording him even more political capital following the Upper House election.

If the LDP does poorly and Kishida’s public approval drops, it may disincentivize a relaxation of the borders. This is because the Kishida administration will already be seeking ways to regain public confidence without introducing any additional problems.

Such is the political logic behind the policy decisions. And while that all makes sense for Japan’s ruling party, it does mean that those who have been waiting to travel to Japan will have to wait a little while longer.

Michael MacArthur Bosack is the special adviser for government relations at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies. He previously served in the Japanese government as a Mansfield fellow.