This story first appeared in Japanese in Asahi Shimbun's GLOBE+. The English translation below was machine-generated and lightly edited for accuracy. You can also read a related news article about the Stanford Japan Barometer's experiment discussed here via our website.

The Japanese are currently very cautious about accepting foreign workers, a trend that has intensified especially in recent years. Among foreigners, those from China tend to be less favored, while those more readily accepted are immigrants from Europe, the United States, or Vietnam who work in fields such as medicine, research, or science, speak Japanese, and have high academic qualifications. The Stanford Japan Barometer is an online public opinion survey conducted by Kiyoteru Tsutsui, professor of sociology at Stanford University and director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and political scientist Charles Crabtree of Monash University in Australia, covering a variety of themes including Japanese society, economy, and politics. While it boasts one of the largest respondent numbers in Japan, this time the survey focused on the themes of "immigrants" and "foreigners."

The survey was conducted from February 6-8 and 13-16, 2026, with the aim of examining changes in public opinion before and after the House of Representatives election held on February 8, 2026. The number of respondents was slightly over 4,000 in each period. However, the results were almost identical before and after the election.

The survey explored the extent to which Japanese people support or oppose the acceptance of foreign workers. Respondents were asked to answer "agree," "somewhat agree," "somewhat disagree," or "disagree" for 16 policies, including "climate change/global warming," "declining birthrate," "aging population," "social security for the working generation," "national budget cuts," "economic inequality," and "AI strategy."

In the first survey, when asked about "accepting foreign workers," 46.9% answered "agree" (first two groups), and 53.1% answered "disagree" (last two groups), indicating that opposition was the highest percentage. The second survey yielded similar results, with 46.6% agreeing and 53.4% ​​disagreeing.

Regarding policy priorities, including "acceptance of foreign workers," surveys were also conducted in 2022 and 2023. These surveys covered 14 policy items, and while the response categories differed slightly, the content is comparable. In 2022 and 2023, broadly speaking, opposition accounted for 35.5% and 36.6% respectively. This represents an increase of approximately 18 percentage points between 2022 and 2026. This is a significant change compared to other items, where the opposition rate either decreased or remained unchanged, or increased by only a few percentage points. In the following text, the researchers explain the experiment further.

Popular among Westerners and Indians

We also investigated what kind of immigrants are preferred. To do this, we asked people to "make judgments from the perspective of an immigration officer." We asked them about nine attributes: gender, educational background, country of origin, Japanese language ability, reason for immigration application, occupation, length of previous work experience, work plan, and travel history to Japan.

The research method involves randomly combining these nine attributes to create two "candidate profiles," and then asking respondents to choose one of them in a two-option format. The same question is repeated a total of six times with variations in the options, and the responses obtained from all respondents are compiled and analyzed. This method allows for a statistically closer understanding of the respondents' true feelings.

The educational background ranges from "no formal schooling" to "equivalent to a Japanese graduate degree" (7 categories), and the applicants come from eight countries: the United States, India, Turkey, Germany, Brazil, Vietnam, China, and South Korea. Japanese language proficiency is categorized into four levels, from "spoke through an interpreter during the interview" to "spoke fluently in Japanese during the interview." The reasons for applying are categorized into three types: "to live with family already in Japan," "to escape political/religious persecution," and "to seek better employment in Japan." The occupations are categorized into 11 types, including IT engineers, convenience store clerks, caregivers, childcare workers, doctors, research scientists, and financial consultants. Work experience is categorized into four types, from "no experience" to "more than 5 years." Employment plans are categorized into four types: "no plans to look for work at this time," "plans to look for work after arriving in Japan," "no contract with an employer in Japan, but has had job interviews," and "has a contract with an employer in Japan." There are five types of travel history to Japan: "Entered Japan once without legal permission," "Spent six months with family in Japan," "Never visited Japan," "Entered Japan once on a tourist visa," and "Visited Japan multiple times on a tourist visa."

The analysis revealed that the most popular responses for each of the above categories were: "female," "graduate degree," "German," "spoke fluent Japanese during the interview," "to live with family already in Japan," "doctor," "more than 5 years of work experience," "has a contract with an employer in Japan," and "spent 6 months with family in Japan." The countries of origin where they were most likely to be accepted were Germany, followed by the United States, then India, Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil, South Korea, and China.

Furthermore, we investigated whether the ease of accepting immigrants changes depending on the preconditions. Focusing on three areas—the Japanese economy, the culture of Japanese society, and the governance and public safety of Japan—we asked participants to choose from "agree," "somewhat agree," "somewhat disagree," or "disagree" regarding Japan expanding immigration after reading statements such as "increased immigration will benefit the Japanese economy" or "will be a burden," "will enrich the culture of Japanese society" or "will be detrimental," and "will bring stability to the governance and public safety of Japan" or "will cause chaos." The results showed that the most significant increase in support for immigration was when the precondition of economic benefits was read. Conversely, the most significant increase in opposition was when the statement that increased immigration would cause chaos to governance and public safety was read.

"The impact of political public opinion arousal"

Regarding these results, Professor Tsutsui commented, "The acceptance of foreign workers has become a major concern for Japanese people. Previously, it was probably not such a significant issue for the average Japanese person, but interest in accepting foreign workers has rapidly increased following the 2025 House of Councillors election and the subsequent gubernatorial elections. This can be attributed to the influence of political public opinion-raising efforts by parties such as the Sanseito party. Although the proportion of foreigners in Japan is on the rise, it is still low compared to Western countries, and it was surprising to see such a shift in public opinion through a political campaign, even in a country that hasn't received a large influx of immigrants."

Regarding the unfavorable perception of people of Chinese descent, the author states, "The tendency to dislike minority groups that become competitors and threaten one's position is quite widespread. For example, in the United States, after the Civil Rights Movement, when Black people began to enter white residential areas and schools, white people felt their space was threatened and that Black people were becoming competitors, leading to resistance. For Japanese people, even among Asian foreigners, Vietnamese people are seen as people who fill jobs in areas with labor shortages, such as elderly care, and are viewed more as complementary than competitive. This is in stark contrast to the perception of Chinese people."

Furthermore, the survey indicated that foreigners who are easily accepted by Japanese people are "individuals with high levels of education, work experience, and Japanese language proficiency, who possess the ability to contribute to Japanese society and who are prepared to do so. A similar trend has been observed in the United States, where ability is highly valued."

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The Japanese public is largely opposed to dispatching the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to the Strait of Hormuz, but framing the issue in terms of Japan’s energy dependence substantially raises support for military involvement in Iran. By contrast, arguments invoking the Japan-U.S. alliance and legal legitimacy for military action have no such effect. These are the findings from a vignette experiment fielded by the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB) in March, one month after Japan’s February 2026 general election.

The results also reveal that mentioning energy dependence moves opinion in favor of military deployment even among respondents who are told that diplomacy, not deployment, is the right response, suggesting that energy-dependence messaging changes minds regardless of policy recommendation. Alliance- and legal-focused messaging, by contrast, have no measurable effect.

SJB is a large-scale, multi-wave public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues in Japan. A project of the Japan Program at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), SJB is led by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the director of APARC and the Japan Program, and political scientist Charles Crabtree. The vignette experiment on the Japanese public's attitude toward military deployment in Iran was part of the final, three-wave panel survey SJB fielded around Japan’s February 2026 snap election, which focused on identifying public attitudes toward immigration.

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A Public Wary of War

The SJB experiment finds that, without any contextual framing, Japanese respondents lean against JSDF dispatch to the Strait of Hormuz, averaging a score of 2.00 on a four-point scale, where 1 represents "strongly oppose" and 4 represents "strongly support." 

This baseline skepticism reflects the Japanese public’s reluctance to deploy military forces abroad, rooted in Article 9 of the postwar constitution, and a broader wariness of entanglement in the Iran conflict. But the crisis in the Middle East has fueled deep economic fears in Japan, which relies on the region for over 90% of its crude oil imports, making it highly dependent on the Strait of Hormuz for energy security.

The SJB team wanted to know: Could this energy security argument shift the public’s baseline opposition to military deployment, and if so, how, compared with other justifications?

The Energy Argument Works Both Directions

The experiment randomly assigned respondents to read one of several short policy statements before answering whether they supported JSDF dispatch to the Strait of Hormuz. Some arguments favored deployment; others opposed it. Each invoked a different rationale: energy security, the Japan-U.S. alliance, and constitutional legitimacy.

The most striking change in attitude came from the energy-dependence framing.

Respondents who read a pro-dispatch energy argument – emphasizing that a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would devastate Japan's economy and living standards, making military involvement necessary – showed a statistically significant increase in support for JSDF deployment, rising approximately 0.12 points above the control group.

Notably, respondents who read a con-dispatch energy argument – which presented the same energy-dependence facts but concluded that Japan should pursue diplomacy through its own channels with Iran rather than deploy forces – showed an even larger increase in support, rising approximately 0.28 points above the control group.

That is, simply mentioning Japan's vulnerability to an oil supply disruption raised support for JSDF involvement, even when the message explicitly argued against military action. “This pattern suggests that the energy-dependence information itself, rather than the normative conclusion drawn from it, is what moves opinion,” the researchers write on the SJB website.

Alliance and Legal Arguments Fall Flat

In contrast, two other commonly invoked arguments – obligations related to the Japan-U.S. alliance and constitutional authority – had virtually no effect on the Japanese public’s support of JSDF deployment.

The alliance framing emphasized that contributing to U.S. operations in the Strait of Hormuz is essential, given the centrality of the U.S.-Japan security partnership to Japan's defense. A counter-argument noted that many international observers view U.S. strikes on Iran as violations of international law and that most European allies are declining to participate.

Neither version significantly moved opinion on JSDF dispatch.

Similarly, arguments about whether the conflict legally qualifies for the exercise of collective self-defense – with one version arguing that new legislation could authorize dispatch and another arguing that no existing legal basis permits it – produced near-zero effects.

These null results are particularly striking given how frequently alliance obligations and constitutional legitimacy dominate elite debates over JSDF deployment in Japan. The data suggest that, at least in this scenario, these arguments resonate far more in policy circles than with the general public.

The findings carry important lessons for Japanese policymakers, who are walking a tightrope between the United States and Iran: “Concrete economic stakes are more resonant than foreign-policy abstractions,” note the SJB researchers. Still, the Japanese public’s default position is opposition to JSDF deployment in Iran. “The framing experiments shift opinion at the margins, but do not reverse the underlying skepticism toward JSDF dispatch.”

As people increasingly turn to large language models for political tasks, including voting guidance, the political neutrality of AI chatbots has emerged as a major policy concern. American AI chatbots are used globally, yet little is known about their behavior as tools for political decision-making and potential political bias in non-U.S. contexts.

To address this gap, researchers ran an experiment during the final week of Japan’s February 8, 2026, general election. The experiment reveals a striking pattern: when asked which party to support in the election, five major AI models from three companies overwhelmingly directed voter profiles with left-leaning policy positions toward the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). The reason, according to the researchers, has to do with the information environment AI systems can access.

These findings, published in a working paper titled Why Do AI Models Tell Left-Wing Voters to Support the Communist Party?, “suggest that AI voting advice may be shaped as much by the information-retrieval environment as by model training, with implications for governance frameworks that rely on U.S.-centric assumptions,” write the researchers, Andrew Hall, the Davies Family Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Sho Miyazaki, a visiting researcher at Waseda Institute of Political Economy, an incoming Ph.D. student in public policy at Harvard University, and a former predoctoral research fellow at Stanford University. Miyazaki is also a core member of the Stanford Japan Barometer, a project of the Japan Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

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How AI Models Deliver Political Advice in Japan: A Systematic Experiment

To understand how AI models provide political recommendations in the Japanese context, Hall and Miyazaki created 36,300 synthetic voter profiles with varying gender, region, and stated political views on 12 policy issues spanning security (constitutional amendment, defense spending, espionage law), diplomacy and immigration (China relations, foreign workers, permanent residency), energy (nuclear power), economic (consumption tax, social insurance), and social domains (dual surnames, restrictions on corporate donations, Diet seat reduction).

They then queried five models from three AI companies (OpenAI, Google, and xAI) during Japan’s February 8, 2026, Lower House election, asking each model to recommend a political party based on the voter profiles. All five models were queried with web search enabled and could access current information.

The researchers found that policy positions overwhelmingly dominated the models' party recommendations, producing swings of 50 to 98 percentage points in party choice, compared to just 0.5 to 7 percentage points for demographic factors. Thus, demographic effects are an order of magnitude smaller than policy effects.

Furthermore, left-leaning policy views in voter profiles caused all five AI models to converge overwhelmingly on recommending the Japan Communist Party, even though other parties hold broadly similar positions on the issues tested. The concentration on recommending JCP under left-leaning policy stances is therefore not explained by ideological distinctiveness.

In the control condition without policy input, models showed no uniform left-wing bias: three of the five models recommended the Liberal Democratic Party at high rates, and JCP shares were low for four of the five models.

“The key finding is that JCP recommendation rates rise sharply when policy positions are provided, which is the typical scenario when voters use these tools in practice,” write Hall and Miyazaki.

Information Environment Asymmetry

Why the JCP? The researchers traced the pattern to the sources AI models cite when making recommendations.

The JCP operates Akahata, a self-described daily newspaper published on a fully open website that AI web-search tools can freely access. In contrast, Japan's major news outlets have implemented technical barriers (known as robots.txt restrictions) that block AI crawlers from accessing their content, a move driven by copyright concerns.

The researchers found that the JCP's open website and party newspaper were among the most-cited sources in the AI models’ recommendations. Unable to distinguish between editorially independent journalism and partisan content, the models treated the JCP content as a credible news source. Thus, the information environment available to AI is systematically skewed toward the JCP's partisan sources that are designed to persuade rather than to scrutinize and inform.

“A model that retrieves information from jcp.or.jp/akahata and simultaneously classifies that site as news media is not simply making a labeling error: it is operating in an information environment where the boundary between party communication and journalism is genuinely blurred, and where the consequences of that blurring flow directly into its recommendations,” Hall and Miyazaki write.

The researchers also found that incorporating X search amplified left-leaning recommendations in Japan, the opposite of expectations based on the U.S. discourse environment.

Implications for Democratic Systems in the AI Age

The study's findings carry significant implications:

• AI governance frameworks should treat content access policy and AI political neutrality as deeply intertwined domains.
• Election commissions should create nonpartisan platforms that compile structured data about party positions so that the information is comparable, party-independent, and machine-readable.
• News organizations should recognize that by imposing copyright-motivated content access restrictions, they may inadvertently cede influence over AI-mediated information to partisan actors. They may wish to consider forms of negotiated access.
• Political actors will likely begin to optimize their communication for AI.
• Users should exercise caution in using AI as a voting advisor and be conscious of its potential biases and blind spots.

“If AI systems are going to act as political intermediaries more broadly, two problems need to be addressed,” writes Hall in an article about the research via his Substack. “The first is informational: ensuring that what the sources models read reflects the same balance of scrutiny and debate that voters encounter in a healthy media ecosystem. The second is advisory: deciding how an AI system should even translate a voter’s values into political guidance in the first place.”

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The following reflection is a guest post written by Yuto Kimura, an alum of the Spring 2021 Stanford e-Japan Program. Earlier this month he graduated from Waseda University’s School of Political Science and Economics.

This is the message I wish to share with high school students considering applying to Stanford e-Japan (or other SPICE programs). As a former participant about to graduate from Waseda University this spring, I can confidently say that the lessons and skills I gained through the program remain invaluable to me, even after five years.

The initial reason I applied for the program was to deepen my understanding of U.S.–Japan relations and U.S. society. Although I was born in the United States, I moved away when I was only a year old and have had little opportunity to engage with U.S. culture since then. While I certainly accomplished that mission through Stanford e-Japan, I came away with so much more. Here are my two biggest takeaways.

The first takeaway is purely skill-based. Throughout the program, we were required to digest a significant amount of reading material to prepare for every class. I vividly remember spending my one-hour train commute focused entirely on these readings. This routine lasted about six months and proved to be an incredible asset during my university studies.

Even at Japanese universities, reference materials are often provided in English; thanks to this program, I was already well-trained to handle them. Beyond reading, the program also honed my ability to write academic papers and deliver presentations. These skills directly contributed to my high grades in university, giving me a head start in areas many of my peers hadn’t encountered until after high school. By dedicating yourself to this program, you are able to sharpen skills that will serve you throughout your future career—a fact that has proven true in countless situations over the last four years.

The second takeaway involves my personal values and perspectives. The most impactful session in the program for me was the one on Japanese American Internment. In Japanese classrooms, we typically learn about the Pacific War through a specific lens—from the Pearl Harbor attack to the invasion of Southeast Asia to the two atomic bombings. However, there is always a flip side to every story.

The program challenged me to look at the war from a U.S. perspective, exploring topics like the rationale behind the atomic bombings through U.S. textbooks, and the internment of Japanese Americans by hearing from some storytellers. You may not necessarily agree with every viewpoint, but acknowledging the existence of differing ones, I believe, is essential to living as a global citizen.

This mindset has stayed with me since then. During my recent solo trip to Malaysian Borneo—an area formerly occupied by Japanese forces—I never missed the opportunity to visit war heritage sites, museums, and Japanese cemeteries in every city. I wanted to reflect on my learning from the program and understand the history through the eyes of the locals.

Lastly, as a proud Waseda alumnus, I also want to highlight the strong, decades-long connection between Waseda and Stanford. From a century-long baseball tradition to Waseda professors of Stanford alumni to countless e-Japan alumni studying here, the bond is deep. If you are considering Japanese universities, I highly recommend Waseda for its rich Waseda–Stanford connections.

Stanford e-Japan is one of several online courses for high school students offered by SPICE, including the China Scholars Program, the Reischauer Scholars Program, the Sejong Korea Scholars Program, Stanford e-Entrepreneurship U.S., Stanford e-China, Stanford e-Entrepreneurship Japan, as well as numerous local student programs in Japan. For more information about Stanford e-Japan, please visit stanfordejapan.org.

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Indo-Pacific nations are racing to adapt to a world in which the United States has become fundamentally unpredictable. The 2026 Oksenberg Conference, hosted by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), gathered scholars and foreign service veterans at Stanford University to assess how regional stakeholders are confronting what Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney had famously named "a rupture, not a transition" in the post-World War II order. The conference took place as Carney was in the midst of an Indo-Pacific trip, visiting Australia, India, and Japan to forge "middle power" trade alliances, and as the United States joined Israel in a war against Iran.

“For Indo-Pacific countries, the question is no longer just how to balance between Washington and Beijing,” said APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui in his welcome remarks, “but how to understand and respond to the emergence of a multipolar world in which the United States is less predictable, less committed to multilateral frameworks, less invested in alliance maintenance, and more willing to pursue narrowly defined national interests at the expense of broader international stability.”

The panelists agreed that, while the U.S. retreat from the eight-decade-old international order it had previously championed creates multiple opportunities for China, Beijing is not naturally filling the vacuum, and regional powers are not pivoting toward it but instead scrambling to diversify security and economic partnerships. The consensus is that the international system is moving toward multipolarity and the world toward an increasingly unstable period, and no one knows yet what will replace the disintegrating post-WWII order.

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China Sees Opportunity in Multipolarity

To commemorate the legacy of the late Michel Oksenberg, a renowned scholar of contemporary China and a pioneer of U.S.-Asia engagement, the Oksenberg Conference, an annual tradition sponsored by APARC and led by the center’s China Program, gathers individuals who have advanced U.S.-Asia dialogue to examine pressing issues affecting China, U.S.-China relations, and broader U.S. Asia policy.

At this year’s convening, the first panel, moderated by Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, focused on how China perceives, interprets, and responds to the new vulnerabilities and opportunities in the international system.

Speaking via video link from Beijing, Da Wei, a professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University and the director of its Center for International Security and Strategy, said China views the current moment as neither ideal nor catastrophic but better than recent alternatives.

China has experienced three scenarios, Da explained. First, from the 1990s through the Obama era, China benefited greatly from the U.S.-led liberal order, but was increasingly criticized by the West. Second, during Trump's first term and the Biden administration, while facing mounting pressure of decoupling in a bipolar system, China was forced into a camp with Russia, which Da characterized as Beijing’s “worst scenario.” Now, under Trump's second term, the shift toward multipolarity has redirected pressure away from China and onto multilateral institutions and U.S. allies – "the least bad option" from Beijing’s perspective.

Da argued that “culturally, China has a very low appetite for global governance or leadership.” China sees itself primarily as a regional power, he said. Rather than filling the vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal from international institutions, "we want to be powerful and respected in the region. I don't think China has a very big appetite for leadership in faraway regions, except for economic interests." He contrasted this “Emperor's perspective,” demonstrated by China’s foreign policy, with the U.S. “boss perspective.”

Susan Shirk, a research professor at the University of California, San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and director emeritus of its 21st Century China Center, noted that China's response to Trump's trade war has been robust, muscular, but disciplined. "The Xi Jinping administration was operating in a more disciplined manner than it had previously," she said, contrasting this approach with what she called Xi's "rash reactions” to Japan and failure to engage Taiwan diplomatically.

Shirk stated that, while Trump's alienation of U.S. allies through extreme tariffs and military interventions has created clear opportunities for China to expand its influence and further divide Washington from Europe and Asian partners, Beijing has only modestly exploited these openings.

She emphasized that Xi's support for Russia in its war against Ukraine represents "self-defeating overreach" that undermines China's ability to improve relations with Europe. "Russia represents an existential threat to Europe," she said. "Xi Jinping really doesn't grasp how important this is."

Mark Lambert, a recently retired U.S. State Department official who served as China coordinator and deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, contrasted the Biden administration's China strategy with the current U.S. policy vacuum.

The Biden approach, he explained, was rooted in U.S. relations with five Asian treaty allies plus NATO and positioned China as the only country with the means and capabilities to reshape the post-World War II order. It required "all hands on deck" to address this challenge through what U.S. officials called a "lattice work of relations": the Quad involving India, AUKUS with Australia, the Camp David summit between South Korea and Japan, and strengthened linkages between NATO allies and East Asian partners. China's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine unified Europeans in understanding the China challenge in ways never seen before. The administration also successfully reframed Taiwan's importance, emphasizing that Taiwan's chip dominance was vital to global prosperity.

Today, Lambert argued, the United States either has no China strategy or “one so classified that neither our allies nor our practitioners know what it is.” On security, trade, technology, and international cooperation, the United States has given China “fantastic opportunities,” he noted.

Allies’ Transactional Coping Strategies

The second panel, moderated by Laura Stone, a retired U.S. ambassador and APARC's inaugural China Policy Fellow, turned to other regional states – South Korea, Japan, Russia, and India – and how they read the geopolitical landscape and devise strategies to shape the regional order.

Victor Cha, the D.S. Song-KF Chair and professor of government at Georgetown University and president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), noted that "every U.S. ally around the world is looking at a Plan B," pointing out that, in the first year of the second Trump administration, allies were not acting on these plans, but that "we’re now at a threshold where many of them are executing their Plan B's."

Cha identified seven types of behavior that U.S. partners have adopted when dealing with the Trump administration. These are drawn from a recent CSIS project on ally and partner responses to the paradigm shift in U.S. foreign policy. First is prioritizing face-to-face meetings with Trump himself, "because there's a recognition that the policy process in the United States is broken,” Cha said, “and that policy making is not being informed, as it traditionally has been, by foreign policy professionals. It's all happening at the leader level."

Other strategies include minimizing risk to avoid what Cha called "the Zelensky moment" – the public humiliation Ukraine's president suffered in the Oval Office in February 2025 – and preparing "trophy deliverables," such as South Korea's promise to buy Boeing airplanes and Japan's commitment to purchase Ford trucks.

“The America First policies have effectively put the custodial burden of maintaining the alliance on the partner,” Cha said. “Whether it's Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, or whoever it might be, the burden traditionally has been on the United States, but now it's on the partner. They're the ones who have to try to maintain this relationship. So it's about minimizing risk.” 

South Korea's recent summit with Trump yielded a $350 billion investment package, yet soon after, U.S. immigration authorities raided a Hyundai facility, and Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Korea.

"Why take all this abuse?" Cha asked. His answer: South Korea and Japan see no alternative to the United States on security, and they secured previous concessions in areas such as nuclear submarines, ship building, and enrichment and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which they do not want to renegotiate. 

One positive outcome, Cha pointed out, has been the unexpectedly warm bilateral relationship between Japan and Korea. Despite having leaders who would normally clash – a far-right conservative in Japan and a progressive in South Korea – the uncertain geopolitical environment has brought the two countries together.

He predicted China would eventually use economic coercion against South Korea over the U.S.-Korea nuclear submarine agreement, just as it did during the 2016-17 THAAD dispute and is currently doing to Japan. "It's not happening now because I don't think China wants bad relations with Japan and Korea at the same time, but it's coming," he said, adding that this development will likely push South Korea closer to the United States and Japan.

Japan Reconsiders Alliance Dependence as Its "Too Big to Fail" Status Proves No Shield

Katherine Monahan, a 2025-26 visiting scholar and Japan Program Fellow at APARC and a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State, said Japan's relationship with the United States is "too big to fail," but that has not prevented serious strain between the two allies.

Having served in Tokyo as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Japan until April 2025, Monahan shared that, when Trump's Liberation Day tariffs hit Japan with a 25% rate, the Japanese could not believe that was the figure next to their name, while other allies were at 20% and 15%. They wondered, “Don't we have any special relationship at all?”

Monahan called attention to a recent Foreign Affairs article by Masataka Okano, Japan's former national security advisor, in which he argues that Japan needs to take strategic autonomy more seriously. When made by a former Japanese official, such a statement represents a significant shift in the nation’s mindset, she said. 

Japan is also reconsidering previously used language around "de-risking" from China in favor of diversifying trade with multiple partners, including China, Canada, and Europe. This shift is happening on the backdrop of the current war with Iran, as 90% of Japanese oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz. “Japan has to start balancing sources and supply chains,” Monahan argued.

Russia Exploits American Unreliability

Russia expert Kathryn Stoner, the Satre Family Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said America’s unpredictability under Trump represents pure opportunity for Vladimir Putin.

"Putin knows Trump. He gets him," Stoner said. "They have a not-completely dissimilar worldview." Trump's red carpet welcome for Putin at last year's Alaska summit, despite the Russian leader's indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, sent a powerful message, Stoner asserted. So did Trump's lack of concern for democratic values and his criticism of U.S. allies.

She reminded the audience that Putin has been in power for 26 years and has watched multiple U.S. presidents come and go, adapting successfully to each. Putin wants multipolarity, she said, and Trump’s actions have emboldened him. Putin’s goal is to “reclaim Imperial Russia as a global power and restore what he views as its proper sphere of influence,” extending through Ukraine and Belarus into Poland, up to German borders in the west and to the south, through Moldova, Serbia and Bulgaria, to the Black Sea in the east, all the way to the Kamchatka Peninsula. 

According to Stoner, the Russia-China relationship is significantly more durable than many believe. The relationship between the two powers extends beyond oil sales to investment, defense coordination, and sophisticated military exercises. “It kind of doesn't matter whether there's love lost or not. There's an opportunity to be gained on both sides."

"Russia's economy is actually not on the verge of collapse," Stoner added. "It has completely retooled toward the military."

India Feels Betrayed

Emily Tallo, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, who studies how political elites structure foreign policy debates in democratic countries, especially in India, explained that New Delhi felt especially betrayed by Trump's foreign policy pivot.

The first Trump administration had centered India as a key partner against China. In May 2025, however, when an India-Pakistan conflict flared up, Trump claimed credit for brokering peace, but India took issue with his threat of trade measures to bring an end to the conflict. He then hosted Pakistan's army chief at the White House and signed deals with Islamabad. "This was a twist of the knife for India," Tallo said.

Trump also imposed 50% tariffs on India, including a penalty for buying Russian crude oil, which was not applied to China, and backed out of a QUAD summit in New Delhi.

India now views China as its primary security threat, and the recent India-Pakistan crisis, in which China supplied all of Pakistan's weapon systems and possibly intelligence, made New Delhi’s two-front threat fears a reality. "India is really sensitive to any hints of U.S. retreat in the Indo-Pacific, and any acceptance of Chinese Hegemony in the region," according to Tallo.

She concluded that, like other regional powers, India is committed to preserving the U.S. partnership but is diversifying and seeking a “Plan B.” It finalized free trade agreements with the European Union and the United Kingdom, agreed to purchase French Dassault Rafale jets, and conducted a pragmatic reset with China, citing U.S. unreliability as cover to stabilize a difficult bilateral relationship.

“India wants to be a regional power aligned with but not allied with the United States [...] They want to be considered as the United States’ main partner in Asia and a major counterbalance to China.”

Japan is confronting an intensifying national debate over outsiders, including tourists, immigrants, and foreign workers, fueled by concerns about social cohesion, national identity, and economic stagnation. A three-wave panel survey of the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB), fielded around the February 8, 2026, Japanese general election, reveals that Japanese public opinion on immigration is highly conditional on the attributes of immigrants considered for admission and the framing of the immigration debate.

The findings show a strong preference for high-skilled, Japanese-speaking professionals and suggest that framing immigration as an economic benefit can boost public support, while invoking security and cultural rhetoric has the opposite effect.

SJB is a large-scale, multi-wave public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues in Japan. A project of the Japan Program at Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), SJB is led by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the director of APARC and the Japan Program, and political scientist Charles Crabtree. 

To identify what drives public attitudes toward potential immigrants and the arguments that resonate or backfire in the public debate over immigration, SJB conducted a series of experiments across a three-wave panel: before the 2026 Japanese general election, a week after the election, and a month after the election.

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An Experiment in Preferences

Using conjoint experiments, the survey presented respondents with pairs of hypothetical profiles of potential immigrants and asked them to choose which one they preferred for admission to Japan. Each immigrant profile varied randomly across nine attributes: country of origin, reason for application, prior visits to Japan, occupation, work experience, employment plan, sex, Japanese language ability, and education. By analyzing thousands of these choices, the researchers can precisely measure how much each attribute drives public preference.

Key Finding 1: Strong Preference for Highly Skilled, Japanese-Speaking Applicants

The findings reveal that occupation and language skills rank top of mind in determining public attitudes toward potential immigrants. Respondents overwhelmingly favor high-skilled professionals – physicians, IT engineers, and research scientists – over care workers, construction laborers, cleaners, and convenience store clerks.

Japanese language ability proved to be another critical gateway. Fluency in Japanese was one of the single most powerful positive traits an applicant could have, suggesting that language integration is a cornerstone of public acceptance.

Key Finding 2: Clear Preference for Western Applicants

Respondents strongly favor immigrants from Germany and the United States (around 55%), with Vietnam, India, Turkey, and Brazil close behind (51–53%). South Korean applicants fall slightly below average (48%).

Applicants from China, however, are chosen only 37-39% of the time, a dramatically lower percentage than every other origin country tested. This gap persists even when controlling for occupation, education, and language ability. Thus, for Chinese applicants, Japanese language fluency provides a much smaller boost than for applicants from other countries. These findings suggest the resistance to Chinese immigrants stems from geopolitical concerns rather than doubts about skills or integration.

The February 8, 2026, election and the subsequent government formation do not appear to have meaningfully shifted the conjoint-measured immigration preferences by occupation, language ability, and national origin.

The Power of Framing

In a companion experiment, the researchers tested how framing influences the Japanese public’s opinion on immigration. Participants were randomly assigned to read a short article framing immigration as an economic benefit, a cultural challenge, a security concern, or using no framing at all. They were then asked to answer a question about their views.

Key Finding 3: Economic Framing Opens Minds; Cultural and Security Fears Close Them

The way immigration is discussed matters immensely. The results show that positive economic framing significantly increases support for immigration, but positive cultural and security framings had no such statistically significant effect in any wave. By contrast, fear appears to be a powerful motivator, as negative framing of immigration reduces public support, with security-negative framing showing the largest and most consistent effect observed. 

Furthermore, the February 8, 2026, election and the subsequent government formation appear to have had a meaningful impact on immigration preference by framing. The impact of negative framings has become measurably larger one month after the election, suggesting that the Japanese public may be more responsive to anti-immigration rhetoric.

"The election — and the subsequent government formation — does not appear to have meaningfully shifted conjoint-measured immigration preferences," the researchers write on the SJB website. "The framing experiment tells a somewhat different story, however: while the direction of all effects is consistent, negative framings have become numerically larger in the third sub-wave, suggesting that one month after the election, the Japanese public may be more responsive to anti-immigration rhetoric."

Immigration Becomes Key Issue in Japan’s Gubernatorial Races

In a March 2, 2026, report on the prominence of the "foreigner problem" in Japan's gubernatorial races, the Asahi Shimbun cited the latest data from SJB.

The Asahi Shimbun reporter, Mari Fujisaki, writes:

“Data also shows heightened election interest in ‘foreigner issues.’ The Japan Barometer – a Stanford University Japan Program online survey of thousands on Japanese society and politics – presented over 10 policy options in November 2022, April 2023, and February 2026 (twice), asking respondents to rate their level of support or opposition. Regarding one policy, ‘accepting foreign workers,’ opposition stood at 35.5% and 36.6% in 2022 and 2023, respectively. By contrast, in the two surveys conducted in February 2026, opposition rose to 53.1% and 53.4%, marking an increase of approximately 17 percentage points between 2022 and 2026. For most other items, opposition rates either decreased or remained unchanged, with increases limited to a few percentage points at most.”

You can view a PDF version of the article. The online version and further reporting by the Asahi Shimbun on the SJB’s latest survey findings are forthcoming. 

SJB has published findings on Japanese public opinions on issues ranging from national security policy and the Taiwan contingency to same-sex marriage, marital surname choices, and women's leadership. Learn more  >