In August 2026, major Japanese convenience store operator FamilyMart announced a new dress code, giving shop staff a looser T-shirt uniform and more flexibility in their appearance. The goal was to help alleviate a severe labor shortage affecting as many as 30 percent of its franchisees. Given that 13 percent of its 200,000 shop staff are already foreigners, the move strives to make hiring foreigners even easier. Among the new permitted garb, FamilyMart explicitly allowed hijabs, even bringing in a hijab-wearing employee to the press conference showcasing the new uniform.

FamilyMart’s very public embrace of the hijab is a shorthand for the increasing importance of Muslims as both workers and consumers in Japan. While the entirety of the country had fewer than 110,000 Muslims, including Japanese converts, as recently as 2010, the community was estimated to have grown to around 350,000 at the end of 2023. The number of mosques, only three in the 1980s, has grown to around 150 as of the end of 2024. This rapid growth of Muslim residents does not even include the more than 1 million visitors from Muslim-majority countries that Japan welcomed in 2025.

Unfortunately, public attitudes have not been nearly as kind as FamilyMart’s. The announcement attracted comments that FamilyMart had crossed a cultural red line and is on a slippery slope that will ultimately lead to pork-containing items being banned from its stores. Even though FamilyMart’s rivals, Lawson and 7-Eleven, began permitting hijabs in 2024, some suggested the company’s move is essentially kowtowing to a symbol of religious persecution.

The hijab is just the latest example of how the distinct religious and cultural needs of Muslim residents have steadily drawn the ire of Japanese citizens because there seems to be little ground for compromise. For instance, cremation of the body is strictly forbidden in Islam, but few Japanese cemeteries offers burials in a country where 99.97 percent of bodies are cremated. Efforts to cater to Muslim needs face widespread opposition. The Miyagi prefectural government abruptly shelved a proposal to build a Muslim burial site in September 2025 after unanimous opposition from mayors. A local Muslim association’s plan for a cemetery in Oita prefecture was also abandoned due to locals’ concern about the public health hazards of burials.

Such opposition emerges from an unfortunate social distance that breeds distrust in Islam’s ability to adhere to Japanese cultural norms. After a fire broke out in Mie prefecture in August 2026, Japanese police explicitly debunked social media posts about Muslims burning temples, shrines, and pig farms in Japan, spread by netizens eager to portray Islam as intolerant of other beliefs. In October 2026, a man in Hokkaido was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for a February 2026 arson at a local mosque, based on an unsubstantiated belief that local Pakistani residents stole his farm tools. 

Even with major firms like FamilyMart tacitly accepting Muslims as integral to Japanese society and everyday life, Japanese institutions need to evolve in ways that can accommodate Muslim beliefs. Already, the Japanese far-right, most notably the Sanseito, has openly opposed accommodating Muslim cultural practices such as burials. Voters are already swayed by misinformation that more than 1,600 Muslim Kurds are receiving monthly welfare payments in Japan. In light of these views, Japan needs to urgently decide how to truly achieve multicultural coexistence.

Indeed, even more familiarity with Muslims may not be enough to overcome distrust if the government and citizens continue to believe that Islam is culturally antithetical to Japan, requiring forceful assimilation. As Japan continues to wrestle with how to handle its growing ranks of Muslim residents and visitors, it would be wise not to simply dismiss the public’s concerns about the presence of cultures seen as the opposite of theirs. Businesses that ignore such concerns can be perceived as tone-deaf if there is no systematic effort, involving policymakers and civil society, to publicly embrace multiculturalism. 

Expect plenty more conflicts in this process. It is easy for corporate Japan to accept that Muslims can be a productive part of its workforce by announcing a change in dress code. But the work gets much harder when thinking about how to embrace these same people as members of an integrated community outside the workplace, rather than pushing them toward creating a parallel one out of frustration that their cultural needs are ignored. Tensions will flare up when cherished social institutions need to change to accommodate nonnegotiable religious needs. But they must start, even if it is only with a hijab or a burial.