Brandon To: Japan demands integration – Britain just debates it

Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow.

I am writing this from Japan, where I have spent the past week rediscovering what it means to be unmistakably in someone else’s country.

The cultural signals are relentless. Bowing — so much that my back may never recover. Escalator etiquette (standing on the left, how deeply unsettling for a Briton). The absolute silence on public transport. The choreography of politeness in even the most mundane transactions.

Japan has an unshakeable confidence in its own way of doing things.

But something else struck me this time. Compared to my last visit over a decade ago, there are far more foreign faces. Not just tourists, but immigrants.

In Tokyo, I found myself speaking to a bank manager from Denmark in an izakaya (the Japanese equivalent of a pub), who was heading to his weekly onsen retreat. In Kyoto, I chatted with two Malaysian exchange students in a tea house. Convenience store workers, hotel staff, restaurant servers… many were from South or Southeast Asia.

Yet what surprised me was not their presence.

It was how unmistakably Japanese they were.

They spoke fluent Japanese (at least according to my Japanese friend). They bowed instinctively. They navigated the rituals of politeness with ease. They did not appear to be living adjacent to Japanese society; they were part of it.

And it made me reflect on a simple truth about immigration that Britain has spent years avoiding.

There is a spectrum, from tourist to student to worker to permanent resident to citizen. The duration differs. The legal status differs. But the core principle is the same: when you enter another country, adapt to it.

Integration is not an optional extra that begins after settlement. It is the starting condition of being a guest, be it two weeks or two decades.

Japan is unapologetic about this. If you wish to live and work there, you are expected to learn the language properly, respect public order, and internalise their etiquette. That expectation is not framed as hostility. It is framed as respect — both for the host country and for those who came before you.

It is, in effect, a country with faith in its own culture.

Britain once had that confidence too. We are a country famous for etiquette, from holding doors open to queuing instinctively. But more importantly, we are defined by deeper civic habits: respect for the rule of law, free speech, fairness in public life, and tolerance rooted in shared norms.

Where we faltered was not in allowing immigration. It was in losing clarity about the need for integration.

For too long, governments of different stripes treated migration primarily as an economic instrument. Integration was assumed to happen organically. Cultural cohesion was dismissed as either automatic or irrelevant. And don’t forget there’s the liberal flank that always confuse integration with “ assimilation “, framing any discussion of it as racist and xenophobic.

The result, in some areas, has been parallel lives rather than shared ones. When any group, especially religious ones, begins to “ claim “ certain neighbourhoods, and behave as if British freedoms such as free speech apply selectively, integration has clearly failed.

That failure has fuelled understandable public frustration. It has also created space for parties like Reform UK to argue that the only solution is a blanket hostility towards immigration.

But here is where we must think carefully.

Reform’s instinct is blunt. It risks suggesting that if you do not look British, you may never truly be British. That is not a confident nationalism; it is a brittle one.

A country unsure of itself excludes by default. A country secure in its identity integrates by expectation.

The Conservative answer should not be a return to liberal complacency. Nor should it be a race to outflank Reform on rhetorical hardness, a competition we will never win, because they can always go further.

In this immigration debate, the Conservative answer should be integration.

If you come to Britain, whether as a student, a worker, or a permanent migrant, you are expected to adapt. Learn English properly. Obey the law. Respect social norms. Participate in civic life. Contribute economically.

Those who refuse should not remain.

But those who do integrate should be more than welcome. They should be recognised as strengthening the country, and as Conservatives, we should actively speak up for them.

This is not “weakness in the face of the immigration crisis”. It is the ability to distinguish. To welcome the contributors, and stop the disturbers.

Japan’s lesson is not that it has no immigration. It is that it manages immigration with cultural clarity.

Britain does not need to become Japan. Our history, our diversity, and our institutions are different. But we do need to recover the confidence to say that British norms matter, and that adapting to them is the price of entry. That is the middle path between open-door policy and blanket hostility, and if the Conservative Party wishes to win again, it must articulate that difference clearly.

Welcome to those who adapt. Exit for those who refuse. It is just common sense, and it is long overdue.