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This is a shift away from pragmatism; pragmatism would be acknowledging Japan's economic need for immigration.

Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.

This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.

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This is a government that needs anything to distract from its failures indeed. But that's not changing unfortunately - given there seems to be no real direction to fix the economy that is currently in a gutter, I think it's pragmatic to restrict immigration. Crime is skyrocketing, both Japanese and immigrants - even the Yakuza are getting into scam operations on Katagi, i.e. normal people. This basically never happened before and is a turning point. It's what happens in a bad economy and will just continue to get worse.

Low wage immigrants will not be able to fix the economy (demographics related decline is still decades away, yes it is important long term but not if the fundamentals don't improve). They will increase crime though since that's just what happens when you are poor in a bad economy. There won't be culling of poor locals but restricting inpu where possible, immigration, seems ok given the overall picture.

Not sure where you got the idea that crime is skyrocketing in Japan, but government crime rate statistics show a plummeting trend since the already-low 2000s, with a very minor uptick in the past 2-3 years.

https://opengov.jp/en/society/crime/

I’d say having a wealth and language filter is pragmatism.

Pragmatism could just as easily be a decision by the public collectively to have more babies. There’s nothing about immigration that makes it inherently pragmatic. It could be, with the agreement of the electorate, away to compensate for the electorates decisions to have fewer babies. But it’s not up for us outside of Japan to lecture them on whether or not they are being consistent on this.

What's pragmatic depends on your values.

I think most people would say that's sort of the opposite of the meaning of the word "pragmatic", actually.

Technically you're probably right, since most people are not terribly rational. Most people believe their values are the only correct ones, in which case there is exactly one "pragmatic" path.

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