With Japan’s All-Star games coming up on Wednesday and Thursday, it is worth mentioning that the Central League will field four non-domestic signings on its roster, one short of the five players originally selected to play. The record for either league is six, set by the CL in 2014 and tied seven years later.

The number of imports on this year’s all-star rosters is of little real importance, except that NPB’s limits on foreign-player participation in its summer exhibitions highlights a question that plagues Japan now more than at any time in its past: What in the heck should the country do about non-Japanese?

Japan’s brand

It is no surprise that Nippon Professional Baseball has struggled with this issue since Japan has long invested heavily in branding itself as a nation with a homogeneous population comprised of ethnic Japanese–regardless of the fact that a huge number of Japanese citizens are not.

Among Japanese nationals are indigenous peoples, the Ainu from Hokkaido and Ryukyu Islanders from Okinawa, along with a huge number of ethnic Koreans and Chinese whose ancestors were born here, as well as more recent naturalized immigrants.

On Sunday, an election for one half of Japan’s legislative upper house, the House of Councillors, dealt hand-puppet Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s ruling coalition a severe blow, but the election also demonstrated voters’ current enthusiasm for rejecting foreign nationals.