With thousands of students awaiting entry, Japan to raise daily arrival cap to 7,000

Japan plans to raise the daily limit of people allowed to enter the country to around 7,000 from the current 5,000, government sources said Wednesday.

Foreign nationals planning to attend schools in Japan will be accepted regardless of the limit, as many students are waiting to enter the country ahead of the April start of the school year, according to the sources.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to announce the additional easing of COVID-19 border control measures during a news conference Thursday.

The plan comes after the government lifted its ban on new entries by foreign nationals for purposes other than tourism on Tuesday, while also raising the daily limit to 5,000 from 3,500. The ban had been in place since November to contain the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant.

Still, there has been criticism that it will take too long for Japan to admit the roughly 400,000 foreign nationals waiting to enter the country, particularly the 100,000 international students awaiting entry. The government is considering starting to accept such students in mid-March.

“We’ll open the borders in stages,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference on Wednesday.

“For the national interest, it’s better to open our borders. We need to increase the number of people entering or returning to Japan,” a high-ranking government official said.