Japan's population is declining more rapidly than that of any major country. Indeed, since 2005, the death rate each year has been higher than the birth rate. In 2008 the population declined by 51,000, and the fertility rate was lower than in any country in the world (except Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong). Japan also has highly restrictive and racialized immigration laws, far more restrictive than those in Western Europe or the United States, with few protections even for permanent legal residents (mostly ethnic Koreans born in Japan).

Nevertheless, the number of foreigners in Japan has more than tripled from 1975 to 2008. There are now more than two million in the country, and that number is growing each year, even as the native Japanese population is declining. Moreover, although “Japan has one of the most controlled borders in the industrialized world” (p. 2), the number of people in the country illegally—about 200,000 (generally “temporary visitors” from Asia who have overstayed their visas)—remains higher than in most countries in Europe, though far lower than in the United States, as a percentage of foreign residents. As this fine study by Apichai W. Shipper makes clear, however, what most differentiates Japan from both Europe and the United States is the treatment of illegal immigrants: “Despite its antiforeigner image of the past, Japan has achieved a surprisingly high degree of civility in its accommodation of foreign workers, including illegal ones” (p. 3). Shipper credits this achievement to voluntary associations, rather than government action, significantly advancing inclusive democracy in Japan in the process. This thesis poses the question as to how voluntary associations in Japan have managed to do what their counterparts in Europe and the United States have failed to achieve.

The role of the state has been important in unanticipated ways, Shipper argues. The efforts of the central government have been directed toward controlling foreigners, while treating them in a racialized, hierarchical manner. Although there is no active policy to incorporate foreigners into Japanese society, and even permanent foreign residents have few political rights, legal foreign residents do have the right to form ethnic associations. These associations, Shipper argues, link legal immigrant communities more firmly to their countries of origin, and separate them from illegal immigrants of the same ethnicity. Because they have a relatively privileged status, they do not want to endanger their position by assisting their illegal brethren. Thus, state policy shapes the behavior of legal foreign residents by separating them both from Japanese society and from those in the country illegally.

Foreigners in the country illegally cannot form their own associations, but their significant presence has resulted in the formation of Japanese nongovernmental organizations to assist them. Since 1983, about 200 such associations have been organized to defend (or create) the rights of these residents, as well as to provide welfare, medical, and legal services. These NGOs have increased public awareness and have also worked with local governments, encouraging them to play a more active role in preventing the exploitation of this vulnerable population. Shipper argues that these activities, mostly at the local level, have created a pattern that has effectively encouraged integration in ways that ethnic associations have not, by promoting acceptance of multiculturalism in a country renowned for its homogeneity. They have also created a dynamic that has expanded democratic participation at the local level.

Shipper argues that by working from the bottom up, immigrant rights organizations have pursued policies of pragmatic and creative activism. They are problem solvers in an environment in which their potential clients are without political resources. In the process of dealing with specific problems, they have helped to create new processes (that have permitted some illegal immigrants to gain legal status), new informal institutions (health insurance), and new protections (against the abuse of women and human trafficking).

This study's central claim is that the fight for foreigners has also resulted in an expansion of rights for the larger Japanese population: “When activists help illegal foreigners with medical and legal problems, they work to restore rights that have been denied. And in dealing with specific issues, they lay the groundwork for realizing a society that guarantees those rights” (p. 118). Indeed, the larger impact may be more important than the impact of activism on the immigrant community itself.

Shipper acknowledges that most illegal immigrants are unaware of the existence of the NGOs, and many of those that are aware are wary of making contact with them for fear of being reported to the authorities. At the same time, the legally established immigrant communities are represented by ethnic associations that have maintained a studied distance from the NGOs, and that have been more oriented toward maintaining their distinctive identities and home-country linkages. Moreover, Shipper points out that the NGOs have generally responded to individual grievances and have not made much effort to work with the communities themselves.

Nevertheless, this study makes a convincing case that the NGOs have been remarkably effective in four different ways. They have created an expanding network that has formed a bridge between the illegal immigrant communities and the government, both at the local and national levels. They have developed new institutional arrangements that have served these immigrants. They have effectively influenced the establishment of policies that have benefited illegal immigrants, as well as the larger community. Finally, in the “contest over the public imagination of illegal foreigners in the mass media” (p. 172), they have balanced the government's negative propaganda about illegal immigrants with their own more sympathetic propaganda. Perhaps their most remarkable achievement was to work with the ministry of justice to develop the Basic Plan for Immigration Control in 2000 that has required the authorities that deal with overstayed foreigners to consider their ties with Japanese society. During the first four years, special permission to reside was granted to 40,000 applicants, about 20% of the illegal immigrant population in the country.

Thus, the impact of these NGOs appears to have been remarkable in a country that is stereotypically homogenized and hostile to immigrants. However, for those of us who have studied the politics of immigration in Europe and the United States, there is a missing element, political hostility and partisan political conflict. In the West, hostility to immigrants, illegal immigrants in particular, has been a salient issue in party politics and in center-periphery relations. In this study, the role of political parties is hardly mentioned, and local governments in Japan, across the political spectrum, appear to be committed to dealing with the problems of illegal immigrants in a more or less constructive way, with the cooperation of NGOs. Central state propaganda has characterized illegal immigrants in negative terms, but there is nothing in this study that would indicate that the state has acted in a forceful manner (as have states in Western Europe) to expel the roughly 200,000 immigrants who are now in the country illegally.

Shipper argues that NGOs are not perceived as a threat by established political actors, but this study does not resolve the question of why, in a self-consciously homogeneous society, 200,000 illegal immigrants are not represented as a threat by government or political parties. In other words, if we compare the politics of immigration in Japan with the West, the effectiveness of the NGOs may be less impressive than the cooperative orientation of local governments and the central state. Such comparative analysis of immigration politics and policy is likely to become more important as political scientists focus increasing attention on the political consequences of the world's massive population flows. Scholars working in this area will benefit from Shipper's analysis, by wrestling with its key claims and by addressing the kinds of comparative questions that it forces upon us.