Vietnamese eclipse Koreans as second largest foreign group in Japan's census after 59% jump in 5 years

In Japan's 2025 census released on September 29, Vietnamese residents emerged as the second-largest foreign group, with 609,238 people accounting for 15.9% of the 3,840,039 foreign residents counted. Chinese nationals remained the largest group at 923,013, or 24% of the total. The Vietnamese population saw a significant rise of 226,100 residents, a 59% increase from the 2020 census, marking the largest increase of any nationality.

Meanwhile, the Korean group experienced a decline, shrinking by 36,122 to 398,495, and its share of the foreign population decreased to 10.4% from 15.8%. The census, conducted every five years, included everyone who lived or planned to live in Japan for at least three months, excluding foreign diplomats, military personnel, and their families.

It counted 29,843 Vietnamese in 2010 and 87,109 in 2015, indicating a substantial growth of about 20 times over the past 15 years. Men constituted 327,230 of the latest total, while women made up 282,008. Other Asian communities, such as Nepalese, Indonesians, and Myanmar residents, also experienced growth from smaller bases, with their populations rising more than threefold, fourfold, and nearly tripling, respectively.

Foreign residents overall increased by 1,093,525, or 39.8%, to a record 3,840,039, representing 3.1% of Japan's population of 122,972,528. The number of Japanese nationals decreased by 3.5% to 119,131,935, contributing to a 2.5% overall population decline. Tokyo hosted 784,222 foreign residents, or 20.4% of the national total, while five prefectures - Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka, Kanagawa, and Saitama - accounted for 52.6% of the foreign population.