Refugee-averse Japan welcomes Ukrainians after Russia war

• Published date: 26 February 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

Dmytro Remez quietly shows on his laptop before and after photos of buildings, clicking to once elegant offices and hotels that turned into lopsided abandoned rubble.

One crumbling building was right in front of his home in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine.

Remez, 24, a fledgling medical doctor studying at Juntendo University, is among the 2,291 Ukrainians who have moved to Japan since the war with Russia began a year ago.

"It's ridiculous. The main purpose is to destroy everything. If you look at the cities for which they are fighting, the cities are totally destroyed," he said, sitting in his tiny, but clean, modern dorm in Tokyo.

"No one will live in the cities in the future. So for what? Why? Why do you do this?"

His flight-to-safety story is a rare one in a nation that has a reputation for closing its doors to asylum seekers.

Japan accepted just 74 refugees, mostly from African nations in 2021, the latest year for which such data are available, according to the Justice Ministry. That's fewer than 1 percent of 2,413 applicants.

Technically, Ukrainians aren't even categorized as "refugees," but called "evacuees." The system for accepting Ukrainians works without Japan having to change its overall refugee policy. The Japanese government has repeatedly expressed its solidarity with the U.S. and other Western nations in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.

A significant portion of the money helping Ukrainians in Japan has come from Nippon Foundation, a nonprofit that directs motorboat racing revenue to philanthropy. Nippon Foundation initially committed 5 billion yen ($37 million) to help Ukrainians, including travel costs, housing and living expenses, and has since raised the amount to 8.58 billion yen ($64 million) over three years.

It's among the largest donations made in reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago, with other major gifts in cash and services coming from American technology companies like Microsoft as well as European foundations and companies with a charitable mission. Private donations tallied by the U.S. nonprofit Candid found that $1.2 billion was donated since the outbreak of the war. For comparison, the U.N. has received $3.4 billion in commitments or donations mostly from governments to fund its humanitarian response to the war.

Nippon Foundation, founded by politician and businessman Ryoichi Sasakawa in 1962, has now given aid to 1,921 Ukrainians in Japan. The group has been honored with various international awards.

The...