Japan’s Ministry of Justice’s Immigration Bureau revealed preliminary report on documented foreigners living in the country as of 1 January 2011.
1) The number of documented foreigners in Japan decreased for the second consecutive year in 2011 to stand at 2,134,151, a 2.4 percent decrease from the year earlier or some 51,970. Documented foreigners accounted for 1.67 percent of the total Japanese population. The figure increased 2.3 fold or 26.5 percent when compared with the figure from a decade ago.
2) By gender, a total of 1,161,670 documented foreigners or 54.4 percent were female, while 972,481 or 45.6 percent were male.
3) Documented foreigners in Japan originally were from 191 different counties. By nationality, Chinese ranked top with the number amounting to 687,156 or some 32.2 percent, followed by South Kean at 26.5 percent, Brazilian at 10.8 percent, Philippines at 9.8 percent, Peruvian at 2.6 percent, and US at 2.4 percent respectively. Of this, 41,279 of them were from Thailand, a decrease of some 1,407 or 3.3 percent from the previous year. The figure increased by 11,990 or some 40.9 percent when compared with the figure from a decade ago.
4) By visa types, a majority of 964,195 documented foreigners or 45.2 percent held a permanent visa, an increase of 21,158 or some 2.2 percent from previous year. In a break down, 565,089 of them held a general visa while 399,106 held a specified visa. This was followed by 9.4 percent of foreigners with a student visa, 9.2 percent spouses of Japanese national with a specified visa, and 9.1 percent of foreigners with a long-term visa.
5) By the proportion of visa types held by foreigners, the number of foreign investors/business manager holding a working visa increased by the biggest margin at 10.9 percent, followed by students holding a student visa with an increase of 3.8 percent, skilled workers holding a working visa at 3.8 percent, spouses of Japanese national holding a specified visa at 3.5 percent, and permanent resident at 2.2 percent. As the number of foreigners decreased, the number of trainees fell by 85.7 percent — partly also due to the fact that as of July 2010 a visa for technical trainee was included as an alternative –, artist by 15.7 percent, long-term resident by 12 percent, spouses of Japanese national by 11.6, and engineer by 7.7 percent.
6) By residential location, the majority of 418,012 documented foreigners or 19.6 percent lived in Japan, a 2,914 rise or some 0.7 percent increase from a year earlier, followed by 9.7 percent in Osaka, 9.6 percent in Aichi, 7.9 percent in Kanagawa, 5.8 percent in Saitama, 5.4 percent in Chiba, 4.7 percent in Hyogo, 4.0 percent in Shizuoka, 2.6 percent in Ibaraki, and 2.5 percent in Fukuoka respectively. Seventy-seven percent of foreigners lived in the mentioned prefectures with over 100,000 of them living the first seven prefectures. Osaka took over the second place from Aichi after ranking third in the previous year while Fukuoka also swept place with Kyoto to take the tenth position. Apart from these, there was no change in the position of prefectures where documented foreigners lived in the most. Furthermore, the number of foreigners living in all these prefectures decreased except for Tokyo, Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Kagoshima, and Miyazaki where the figure increased.
