It’s no secret that Japan’s current government is purposely kicking out as many foreigners as it can. Increasingly strict immigration control has not stopped at refusing entry to aspiring expats, but delved into denying visa and permit renewal applications for long-term foreign residents.

One could argue whether or not such an agenda is good for Japan in the shadow of its infamous population decline, or whether this is just good, old-fashioned xenophobia. Your political affiliation and opinion on immigration would likely shape your position on the matter.

But this isn’t the point of this story.

I am not here to tell you what’s the right course of action or policy.

In the greater landscape of statistics, it’s all too easy to ignore the individual stories of those affected. People who sought to live a simple life in a peaceful country but got caught in whatever storm of excrement (to put it politely) is going on, has been going on, and is sure to continue to go on for the foreseeable future.

This is a tale of suffering and injustice. A single drop representative of an ongoing deluge affecting innumerable lives in a world drowning.

A Man Named Felix

Our protagonist is a man named Felix Chan, a 51-year-old Chinese-Canadian born in Hong Kong. He spent half of his life living in Canada and the U.S., and the other half in China, before finally deciding to move to Japan in 2018.

This move was not an easy decision to make. If you know any expats, you know such decisions never are. In Hong Kong, Felix had a family: a wife and 2 sons, today aged 10 and 8. Moving to Japan meant uprooting his family, yet he believed it would also be the best move for his family.

Having visited Japan over 30 times before moving there, Felix was always fascinated by its unique culture and values, and enamored by how safe it is as a country. He wanted his children to grow up there. After all, what parent doesn’t want safety for their children?

After moving to Japan, he became a hotel business owner and up until very recently ran 2 hotel sites under the brand “My Home Inn”, one in Izumisano and the other in Sennan, both on the rural outskirts of Osaka not far from Kansai International Airport. Those are not luxurious hotels, but are modest and practical—just like Japan.

Both properties used to be old residential houses. When Felix purchased them, it was his vision to rejuvenate them by turning them into hotels. This would not only breathe new life into them but stimulate the local economy by bringing tourism to more rural parts of Japan.

Felix wanted to contribute to his local community; to uphold Japanese values and share them with his hotel guests. He made an effort to talk with his guests whenever possible and educate them about what makes Japan the way that it is, which is so different from anywhere else in the world. He wanted to give back to Japan—his home.

For the past few years, everything has gone smoothly. Felix ran his business, which has steadily gotten more profitable each year. He paid his taxes and made sure to abide by Japanese law in all his operations. He felt as if he were a Japanese citizen, contributing to its society and maintaining its culture.

But he wasn’t a citizen, because becoming one is an uphill battle unless you roll a critical 20 in life: you happen to be born there, get married to a citizen, or (in some cases) are obscenely rich. Felix checked none of these boxes, and so his stay in Japan required a routine renewal of his temporary residency permit.

Very recently, he was going through the process of renewing his permit. If you’ve never had the luxury or misfortune of going through this process, just know that it requires submitting a whole lot of documents for review.

By sheer accident, one document Felix submitted had an incorrect date. The year was off by one digit.

Now, I have been an expat for nearly half of my life, and though I do not and never have lived in Japan, I am no stranger to this process. I remember a time when the university I was studying in made an error in one of the documents provided to me for submission. It stated I was a part-time student instead of full-time. This was flagged during the document review process, brought to the attention of myself and the university, and we were given the chance to provide a corrected document.

This is all to say: such mistakes aren’t uncommon, and the people who work in immigration departments are well-aware of this, regardless of the country in question.

Which is why I don’t think anyone could have predicted that Felix’s single-digit error could have led to such a harrowing ordeal.

The Long Nightmare of Bureaucracy

The Immigration Bureau of Japan took his mistake as an opportunity to kick him and his family out of Japan.

Not only was he not given a warning or chance to rectify his mistake and resubmit a new, corrected document, he was accused of intentionally falsifying information and told his business was not making enough money—even though it was clearly profitable and financially growing each year. The idea is that a company owned by a foreigner must now be extremely profitable in order to justify its existence in Japan. Just being profitable isn’t enough anymore.

Felix’s application was simply denied, and he was told that he, as well as his wife and two sons—his entire family—had to leave Japan within 30 days.

Imagine that for a moment. Imagine having 30 days to move your entire family to a different country you have no home in. This is the threat expats residing in Japan are living under these days.

Since then, Felix lost his only bank account, his medical insurance and all other forms of social benefits, as well as the right to run the operations of his company.

But what truly broke his heart, as well as mine, is the impact this ordeal is having on his family. His sons are too young to understand why they are being taken away from their school, their friends—their lives. His family is undergoing tremendous stress and anxiety. Anyone with a sliver of empathy can understand just how difficult to deal with this must be.

Many of his Japanese friends and acquaintances wish to support him. His neighbors, his children’s schoolteachers, have all sent the Immigration Bureau letters asking for his family not to be deported. Their pleas have gone unanswered.

Felix and his family were deported. There are no words to describe the amount of stress and duress Felix has been under, but he has not given up the fight. His lawyer believes this is a human rights violation, and he must fight for his family’s rights.

He doesn’t believe this is all happening because of a clerical mistake on his part. He thinks many in Japan understand that the current government is on a mission to remove as many foreigners as possible from Japanese society, as though they are a sort of plague that needs curing. He accidentally gave Japan an excuse, but Japan was all too eager to capitalize on it.

Felix’s family is not a plague on Japanese society. They uphold Japan’s values, pay their taxes, contribute to their local community and help stimulate its rural economy. His sons attend public school. Their lives are in Japan, and their lives are being taken away from them simply because they are foreigners.

How many people, do you think, are forced to fight for their family’s rights as you read these very words?

It’s a cruel truth of the world that much of who we are, in the eyes of others and especially in the callous eyes of systems, is defined by circumstances we had no say in. Where we happened to be born. Our parents’ financial situation. Whether or not another country decided to wage war on us.

It is good to remember, I think, that all human beings are 99.9% genetically identical.

What Does It Mean to Fight?

As one of the claims of the Immigration Bureau is that Felix’s company doesn’t make enough money, he’s been developing plans for increasing its revenue. Not because he wants to, really. It was never his goal to be rich, and the salary he assigned to himself is strictly average by Japanese standards. He simply wanted to live a modest, peaceful life.

But when a higher revenue may safeguard his family in the future—assuming they are allowed to live in Japan again—one’s contentment with an average salary becomes irrelevant.

For the past few years, Felix has been writing a book, which he calls “Japan – The World’s Last Utopia”. It is an in-depth analysis of Japanese society through the lens of “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, a 2011 global bestseller by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

In his book, Kahneman presented 2 modes of thinking. The first, called “System 1”, is fast, automatic thinking done unconsciously. The other, “System 2”, is slow, deliberate thinking done consciously. As an example, you reading these very words and understanding them is System 1 doing its work. If you were asked to translate these words into another language, your brain would use System 2.

Felix believes that Japanese society operates on a perfect balance between System 1 and System 2, and that the world could gain much by learning from it. It is also his belief, despite everything that has happened to his family, that Japan truly is a utopia.

His plan now is to publish this book and use it to pivot his hotel business into a corporate training business. To develop a program for foreign companies to send their employees into what one could call a “cognitive retreat”, where they will live a few days in his hotels, view Japan from a local perspective, and learn about what makes Japan the way that it is.

This would not only increase his revenue, which the Immigration Bureau currently sees as an issue, but would also further realize his goal of helping Japan. It would bring more funds from outside the country. It would divert tourism from major hotspots (which the Japanese often complain about) into rural areas and boost local economies. It would allow him to hire more Japanese employees. It would educate the world about authentic Japan.

There are many ways to interpret this story. A savvy businessman would claim this crisis is an opportunity, to which I would ask them to kindly shut up and go away to whatever comfortable hell they crawled from.

When talking to me, Felix did not sugarcoat things. He does not enjoy reality forcing his hand this way. He fears what will happen to his family in the very near future, of not knowing where they will live long term, if they will be able to come back. If Japan would accept them.

I wish I could say Felix’s story was unique. It isn’t. The world only gets less kind towards expats as time goes on—people who often simply wish to live a peaceful life.

He asks anyone who reads his story and believes that what is being done to his family is wrong to please help in any way they can, even if it means just spreading the word.

The world needs to know.