As a foreigner myself having lived in Japan for a better part of a decade I’ve always thought it’s the perfect place for mainland Chinese to move to—more so than the US now that strategic competition has raised its troublesome head. Japan is still the 3rd largest market in the world; it’s a 2.5 hour flight from Beijing with a 1 hour time zone difference, its writing system is based on Chinese, and frankly its culture is a much easier transition to than to the West.
So it was with this knowing attitude that I read the new book, “潤日 Runryi- The Great Escape to Japan: Chasing China’s Wealthy Elite.” Runryi means “Run to Japan”, and the book uses portraits of individuals as a kaleidoscope of the recent wave of mainland Chinese immigration to Japan.
The TLDR is that Chinese immigrants to Japan are doing what they do in the Anglosphere: rapidly settling, achieving and ascending educationally and commercially. I always mention the example of the first female CFO of a major Japanese group company ever appointed, in April 2025, who is an ethnic Chinese (Lin Tao), as emblematic of that rise.
Along with their successes (and of course home ownership) comes the usual concerns from citizenry, including increasing real estate prices and impact on domestic “values.”
Chinese immigration to Japan has increased from 667,000 to 873,000 from 2015 to 2024, representing the country’s largest immigration group and the fastest increase of Chinese in history. So I knew this topic, long simmering for the past decade, would eventually surface soon enough here, and I predict it will become more prominent with the election of the conservative Takaichi as Prime Minister.
Author Masutomo Takehiro provides a very balanced, nuanced, and mostly non-prescriptive look at Chinese immigration (his strongest prescription is that Japanese society become more aware of this issue).
The subtitle, “Tracking the Exodus of Wealthy Chinese to Japan” is a bit misleading as the author was quite varied in his portraits—in fact his prologue and epilogue are a kind of tribute to the tragic death od a young Chinese woman, a friend of his, who had moved to Japan and struggled to find work—hardly a wealthy person.
He looks at the ultra wealthy by cyberstalking Jack Ma. Now we know what Jack was up to during his semi-exile from China: apparently buying up half of Japan real estate, both personal and commercial, from Tokyo to Kyoto to Niseko.
He looks at the well-to-do business owners who are moving to Japan to protect their wealth and provide for their children’s education.
He also looks at political dissidents, suggesting perhaps it’s time for another 1925 Kyoto (where Sun Yat Sen formed his idea for the republic of China). That was probably his biggest overstretch.
And last, but not least, he looks at recent college graduates who move to Japan seeking better careers. This last segment is the one that I am most familiar, as I have hired, and now have many friends, who are in this bucket. By no means are they wealthy. They’re from the middle class and they are here not for political reasons but for the same reasons most people move to another country: for better opportunity.
Unfortunately missing is any portrait of the working class—I don’t know what the statistics are but there are, or used to be, a fair number of blue collar Chinese who moved to Japan as well. But to be fair, that probably was not in Masutomo’s network.
It outlines perhaps his greatest strength which is that he writes about what he knows and personally experiences. There are elements of gonzo journalism here that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud (going undercover to a money laundering shop, under a false identity, using a fake name for a referral—is super ballsy! I was scared he would be kidnapped).
In it are some very useful comparisons to China-US immigration—in some sense, this recent wave is like every immigration pattern from China, and other countries, in the modern era. But in some ways it could be completely novel—the author makes some comparisons to the post-WWI era when Sun Yatsen famously set up shop in Kyoto with other exiles to formulate his republic vision. I think this was a stretch but understandable given some of the characteristics of the recent immigration wave.