Pakistanis in Japan
form the country's third-largest community of immigrants from a Muslim-majority country, trailing only the Indonesian community and Bangladeshi community. As of June 2023, official statistics showed 23,417 registered foreigners of Pakistani origin living in the country. There were a further estimated 3,414 illegal immigrants from Pakistan in Japan as of 2000. The average increase in the Pakistani population is about 2-3 persons per day. Migration history As early as 1950, only three years after the independence of Pakistan in 1947 which created the Pakistani state, there were recorded to be four Pakistanis living in Japan. However, Pakistani migration to Japan would not grow to a large scale until the 1980s. The later Pakistani migrants in Japan largely come from a muhajir background; their family history of migration made them consider working overseas as a "natural choice" when they found opportunities at home to be too limited. While Pakistanis saw North America as a good destination to settle down and start a business, Japanese employment agencies commonly advertised in Karachi newspapers in the 1980s, when Japan offered some of the highest wages in the world for unskilled labour; it came to be preferred as a destination by single male migrants, who