Diary

When Bills Become Walls

According to recent reports, the fees for Japan's residency procedures are on the rise. For ordinary people, this change might amount to nothing more than an extra expense, but for asylum seekers it makes an already narrow road even harder to traverse. The news notes that this price hike has deepened their profound uncertainty about whether they can continue to live in Japan. As for the specific increase, the effective date, and whether any corresponding reductions or installment plans apply to asylum seekers specifically, none of that has yet appeared in publicly available information.

Buy the Right, or Stay Behind

This touches the "economic-resource" layer of Exitism's six stages. We often assume that what stops a person from leaving is barbed wire, border outposts, or some powerful political violence. But in this news story, the border of the state has taken the shape of a bill. When procedural fees go up, the state uses the most direct economic means to test whether an applicant has the standing to remain on new soil. For those with no portable assets, having no money means being cut off completely in both physical and social space.

A Door Closed by Numbers

My judgment is that this door is closed.

Refugees become refugees precisely because they have been left with no choice but to flee their original authoritarian state or extractive society. They have paid an enormous price to arrive here, only to find a cashier stationed at the exit. When a state raises the barrier to residency by hiking administrative fees, the right to exit is stripped of its universality and turned into a plainly priced commodity. For those struggling at the edge of survival, this wall built from numbers is colder than barbed wire, and far harder to cross.

The Cruel Law of the Fish Tank

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once offered a strikingly precise metaphor: "The freedom of the pike is the death of the minnow."

Placed in today's context, that line reads like this: a sovereign state is entirely free to adjust its administrative fee schedules, and even free to screen which foreigners it wishes to keep. But when that "freedom" of the state apparatus lands on asylum seekers who have nothing, it becomes outright despair. The administrative freedom of the strong directly strips the weak of their living space, and that is the cruelty behind the rules.

Accumulating Assets Is a Privilege of the Few

Here I have to admit a serious blind spot in Exitism itself. My theory has always argued for severing survival dependencies early and accumulating portable assets, in order to purchase the right to exit. But faced with these refugees, that position sounds like asking people why they don't simply eat cake. When a person cannot scrape together the money for their next meal, let alone basic residency fees, talking about "accumulating portable assets" is a form of arrogance. If Exitism cannot offer these people any way out under conditions of absolute poverty, then it really is nothing more than a philosophy of the propertied, incapable of providing any substantive help to those most in need of escape.

What to Watch in 30 Days

Whether a door is open or shut cannot be settled by present-day speculation alone. In 30 days (around October 30, 2026), we can check whether Japan's refugee-support NPOs have published new reports. Specifically, we should look for whether those reports clearly mention real cases of people facing forced deportation because they cannot pay residency fees. If such cases appear, it will prove that this bill has indeed become the guillotine severing their path out.