It is late evening in a Japanese city, and a person is scrolling through social media after a long day. A video appears in their feed, grainy and dramatic. The caption says “metal theft by foreigners,” and the footage seems to show people cutting cables along a railway track. The comment section is already filled with anger, fear, and fury. “This is why the country is changing,” someone writes. Another person shares the clip to a group chat, adding a few worried words. The viewer feels a knot in their stomach. Without thinking, they tap the share button too. But the clip, as researchers later discover, was not what it appeared to be. It may have been filmed years earlier, or in a completely different country, or edited in a way that strips away all context. The people in the footage may not have been migrants at all. But by the time the truth catches up, the damage is already done. This is not a rare or isolated moment. It is part of a broader pattern now sweeping through Japan, one that experts describe as a dangerous spiral of online disinformation about foreign crime — a spiral that is stoking xenophobia, deepening social divisions, and playing directly into the hands of far-right movements.
Researchers are increasingly worried that Japan is being pulled into a trap that other countries have already fallen into. A country that once prided itself on social cohesion, public safety, and trust in institutions now finds itself vulnerable to a new kind of rupture — one that happens not on streets or in schools, but in the endless, buzzing chaos of online platforms. The mechanism is familiar to anyone who has watched disinformation spread in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere: a false or misleading story about a crime committed by a foreigner appears online. It triggers fear, anger, and outrage. It is shared thousands of times before any fact-checker can raise a hand. The story then becomes proof for people who already hold xenophobic views, and it feeds into a political narrative that says foreigners are dangerous, disrespectful, and a threat to the nation’s safety. In Japan, where crime rates have remained relatively low for decades, the gap between actual statistics and public perception is widening. Many people now believe that foreign crime is surging, even when evidence suggests otherwise. This perception is not accidental. It is manufactured by a toxic mix of social media algorithms, sensationalist content, political opportunism, and the deep psychological pull of fear. And as the spiral continues, it becomes harder and harder to break, because every new false story reinforces the last one, and every wave of outrage makes the next wave more likely.
In August, a Tokyo-based cybersecurity firm called Constella Security Japan hosted a webinar aimed at addressing this growing problem. The company, which was commissioned by the Japanese government to counter online disinformation, brought together officials and media representatives to examine how fake news targeting foreign residents is created and spread. The examples they presented were striking, not because they were sophisticated, but because they were so crude — and yet still wildly successful. Among the cases highlighted were viral social media clips with titles like “metal theft by foreigners” and “stealing metal from railway tracks.” These short videos claimed to show migrants cutting railway cables, supposedly for scrap metal. The images were dramatic, unsettling, and instantly shareable. By mid-September, the videos had racked up roughly 4.3 million views across various platforms, according to Kyodo News. Millions of people had seen them, and many had accepted them as evidence of a crisis. The fact that the videos were misleading, outdated, or staged did not matter. The emotional impact was already locked in. The webinar was an attempt to alert those in positions of influence to the scale of the problem, and to urge them not to be fooled by content that plays on anxiety. But the deeper point was even more unsettling: social media platforms are not neutral spaces where people simply exchange information. They are machines designed to hold attention, and content that provokes fear and anger is the most effective fuel. Disinformation about foreigners is not just a side effect of these platforms. It is the perfect product for them.
The consequences of this trend are not abstract. They are being felt across Japanese society in ways that are both visible and quietly corrosive. In neighborhoods where foreign residents have lived for years, trust is beginning to fray. A Brazilian mother walking her child to school might notice a neighbor staring a little longer than before. A Vietnamese student working the night shift at a convenience store might hear a customer mutter something under their breath after a story about “foreign crime” trends online. A Chinese couple who run a small restaurant might find their business suddenly empty, not because the food has changed, but because a viral video has made people suspicious of anyone with a foreign accent. These are not imagined scenarios. They are the everyday human costs of a disinformation ecosystem that treats entire communities as threats. Far-right groups have been quick to exploit this atmosphere. They take the raw material of fear and shape it into a political agenda, calling for stricter immigration policies, harsher policing, and the exclusion of outsiders. The language they use is often coded, but the message is clear: Japan belongs to the Japanese, and foreigners are a danger to the nation’s soul. The researchers who study this phenomenon describe it as a feedback loop. Disinformation creates fear. Fear creates demand for hardline policies. Hardline policies validate the original disinformation. And the cycle repeats, with each turn making it harder for reasonable voices to be heard. Corrections and fact-checks do appear, but they rarely travel as far or as fast as the lies. A lie that says “foreigners are attacking the country” is scary. A correction that says “this video is old and has no connection to recent events” is boring. In the economy of attention, fear always wins.
But behind the headlines and viral clips there are human beings, and it is their stories that are too often erased. There is the family from the Philippines who moved to Japan because there was a need for caregivers, and who give hours of their lives every day to elderly people who depend on them. There is the young man from Nepal who came to study, works three part-time jobs, and sends money home to his parents every month. There is the woman from South Korea who married a Japanese man, learned the language, raised her children in a small town, and considers Japan her true home. None of these people asked to be transformed into symbols of crime or chaos. None of them deserves to be treated as a threat because of the actions of a few, or because of false stories invented by malicious actors. And yet, in the current climate, they are increasingly forced to defend their place in a country they already belong to. They face stares, insults, and discrimination. They worry every time they leave their homes, especially when a new viral story is circulating. Some have even begun to think about leaving Japan altogether, not because they want to, but because they feel unwelcome. This is the quiet tragedy of the disinformation spiral. It does not just change policies or politics. It poisons relationships, breaks communities, and turns neighbors into strangers. It makes people forget that migrants are not an abstract problem to be debated. They are workers, students, parents, friends, and partners. They are part of the texture of Japanese life, woven into its daily rhythms. When we stop seeing them as human, we lose something essential about ourselves.
Yet none of this is inevitable. The spiral can be broken, but only if people are willing to do the difficult work of resisting it. That begins with media literacy: teaching young people to question what they see online, to ask who made the content and why, and to check whether a story is true before sharing it. It continues with responsible behavior from media outlets, which have a choice between chasing clicks and serving the public interest. It also depends on social media platforms, which must be transparent about how content is amplified and take real responsibility for the harm their algorithms can cause. Governments, too, have a role to play, not by censoring inconvenient speech, but by supporting independent fact-checking, public education, and community dialogue. In Japan, the effort to counter online disinformation is already underway. The government has commissioned experts to track and analyze false narratives. Civic groups are working to support foreign residents who feel targeted. Teachers are introducing digital literacy into classrooms. And there are signs that some citizens are becoming more cautious, more thoughtful, less willing to share a clip that stirs their emotions without first asking basic questions. But this work is slow, laborious, and unglamorous. It does not generate viral moments or dramatic headlines. It is the quiet, patient work of rebuilding trust in a fragmented world. The question for Japan is not whether disinformation will continue to appear. It will. The question is whether the country will allow itself to be consumed by it, or whether it will find the courage to remember that strangers are not threats, that fear is a poor advisor, and that a society is strongest when it refuses to let hatred define its future. The spiral is real, but so is the choice to step out of it. And that choice, ultimately, belongs to everyone.