Why This Topic Landed in Japan

As the presence of foreign residents becomes an everyday reality, a house of worship—something that cannot easily be moved or undone once built—turned into a concrete point of contention, and it drew a sharper reaction than abstract immigration debate does. Japan carries its own historical memory of long resisting Christianity, so religious construction gets discussed less as a question of freedom of belief than as a question of local consent. The column by real estate producer Tomohiro Makino traced the roughly 33,000 signatures against the Fujisawa mosque plan, the petitions filed, the assembly's rejection, and the wider move by government toward regulating property acquisition by foreigners. Onto that landed a sweeping verdict from a commentator—that Japan will perish and almost every Asian country except North Korea is better off—which produced the obvious retort: then why are you still here? The taxi story circulated not as a complaint about price but as an account of an explanation that failed to land, and it was treated as a small, everyday instance of the same friction.

Key Reaction Themes

  • Coexistence means adapting to the host culture — The premise that immigrants adjust to the country they move to was repeated constantly, with anything short of it dismissed as not coexistence at all.
  • Wariness toward religious facilities — Direct criticism of Islam as intolerant sat alongside comparisons to how hard Japan pushed back on Christianity historically.
  • Scorn for the "leave Japan" argument — Posters attacked the absence of any specifics and reached for the standard reply that the people who say this never leave themselves.
  • The friction is not read the same way by everyone — On the taxi story, "look it up before you get in" ran next to posters explaining the price-perception gap and siding with the tourists.

What Japanese Netizens Are Saying

More than 30,000 signatures against a mosque

Roughly 33,000 signatures gathered against a mosque plan in Fujisawa, putting the question of whether coexistence is possible on the table.

Sources: Yahoo! news, MINKABU, 2ch

Comments:

  • "If you can't follow the country's laws, get out."
  • "Coexistence obviously means the immigrants adapt to that country's culture."
  • "If you knew the history of how hard Japan resisted Christianity you'd understand—even churches don't get to stand around acting big here."
  • "Islam is the intolerant one to begin with. It doesn't try to coexist. It pushes its faith on you harder than 17th-century Catholicism did."
  • "No country has made coexistence work. It'd be one thing if the Japanese were the only ones failing at it."
  • "If it means having another culture forced on us, then obviously it won't work."
  • "I don't want to coexist with pushy foreigners."
  • "Religion has been used as a weapon of invasion in every era. Japan is already completely controlled by the Unification Church, an anti-Japanese religion."
  • "Lend out the eaves and you lose the main house."
  • "A mosque just means the foreigners have no intention of coexisting with Japanese people."

A film critic's "Japan will perish, so leave the country" post

Atsushi Sasaki's post that almost every Asian country except North Korea is better off than Japan drew a wave of pushback.

佐々木敦
佐々木敦
@sasakiatsushi
·

このまま行くと極めて高い確率で日本は滅亡するので未来のある人は多少無理をしても国外脱出を考えた方がいいです。これ真面目に言ってます。北朝鮮を除くほぼ全てのアジアの国は日本よりましです。何より希望があります。それが嫌なら次の選挙で、いや選挙の前に今の政権を滅ぼさなくてはならない。

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Comments:

  • "You leave first."
  • "Komeito will defend illegal immigrants with everything it has. Please rest assured."
  • "*He. Is. A. Film. Critic."
  • "Between him and Machiyama, there isn't a decent one in the bunch."
  • "Today's edition of 'Japan is finished,' as usual. This one's hollow—no specifics at all."
  • "'The future'—no indication of how many years. 'High probability'—no actual figure. 'Japan will perish'—no statement of what state that even means. That's what it is. And anyway, at this rate energy runs out in about 50 years, and then everything perishes."
  • "The people who make this kind of argument are exactly the ones who never leave themselves."
  • "You see leftists like this all the time."
  • "Even if it 'perishes,' it'll just end up like Argentina. Developing countries, developed countries, Argentina and Japan—Japan drops out, gets merged into Argentina, and you're left with developing countries, developed countries, and (declining OR perished countries)."
  • "I figured anyone making a dumb argument is usually from Waseda, looked it up, and sure enough he's a Waseda grad. Hilarious."

An argument with a foreign couple over a taxi meter

A driver taking a couple from Haneda to Ginza was accused of fraud when the meter sped up, and called the police after his explanation was rejected.

柔タク
柔タク
@Jiu_JitsuTaxi
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つい先日、羽田から乗せた外人夫婦を銀座まで送る際、高速道路を走っていたら、 「お前がボタン押してから急にメーターが早く回り出した、詐欺だ」 といちゃもんをつけられた。 非常駐車帯に車を停めて説明したが納得しなかったので、下道に降りて警察を呼んだ。

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Comments:

  • "?? Taxis are expensive in every country."
  • "Those people compare it to cheaper countries. Also, taxi fares have gone up lately and Uber doesn't reflect that."
  • "They were angling to stiff him. Classic overseas move."
  • "Who cares what other countries charge. Look it up before you get in."
  • "Come on, this isn't some developing country abroad lol"
  • "See a Japanese person, assume it's a scam." [Translator's note: a flip on the Japanese saying "see a person, assume a thief."]
  • "I can't admit I only just learned the expressway button exists..."
  • "This one's Japan's fault. I'm on the tourists' side."
  • "Fares in developing countries are dirt cheap, right? They come to Japan carrying that image, so it can't be helped. If you rode a tuk-tuk in Thailand and got charged 10,000 yen you'd call it a scam too, right? That's the sense foreigners have."
  • "Japanese taxi fares are high because of insurance, strict vehicle inspections and other running costs, because fares that are too low invite low-quality operators into the market, and because of vested interests—all sorts of factors are tangled up, so writing it off as simply bad is stupid."