Japan let in 121,573 new international students between March – when the easing of border rules began – and August, recovering to levels seen before the pandemic.
At the end of February, right before the government loosened port of entry restrictions, roughly 110,000 international students were waiting to enter the country, according to the education, culture, sports, science and technology ministry. This was a result of a near full ban on new entries imposed in November last year.
By assigning priority entry slots to those students, Japan let in approximately 1,000 per day between March and May. The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies had 288 students on the waitlist for entry in March, but that number has been reduced to virtually zero.
From October, the college will welcome 180 exchange students, on par with 186 in October 2019. The school is restarting a volunteer programme to give language support and other assistance to foreign students.
At Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, roughly 30% of its international students were taking classes online because of entry restrictions. Now 90% have entered Japan. This spring, the school revived some on-campus programmes, such as mutual language lessons.
“Even small events are bustling with students,” said Kaori Okamoto, who heads an office at Ritsumeikan that provides support for international students.
Though foreign students are returning to campuses, colleges have deep-seated worries about Japan’s long-term prospects for attracting overseas talent. The education ministry estimates the border shutdown forced nearly 40,000 students to give up studying in Japan.
“Japan found itself in a lengthy sakoku state,” said an official at Akita International University, using the term for Japan’s isolationist policies in the Edo era. “We’ll need to monitor whether the recovery of new arrivals will be sustainable.”
Some exchange students who were due to enroll in Akita International this spring changed their destination to another country, according to the source at the school.
The number of international applicants at a private university in the Osaka area has dropped by 30% in the current fiscal year compared with the pre-pandemic period.
Word of mouth from relatives and friends accounts for 40% of the information gathered by prospective international students, according to the Japan Student Services Organization. It is the highest share among sources of information.
“If the number of people who studied abroad in Japan declines, even temporarily, Japanese representation will diminish in communities abroad that are home to talented students, and this could have a lasting impact,” said the head of a private Japanese university.
Including those in Japanese language schools, international students in Japan numbered about 240,000 in fiscal 2021, which ended March 31. The population is down sharply from the record 310,000 logged in fiscal 2019.
The education ministry has set a goal of restoring the number of international students to more than 300,000 by 2027. It sees foreign talent as essential to boosting the country’s competitive advantage in the global arena.
The education ministry is asking past government-sponsored exchange students for cooperation in spreading the message to potential applicants in their home countries.