Refuting baseless Allegation on kurds,kurds commit more crimes.
Though the exact number is unknown, estimates place Japan's Kurdish population at around 2,000 to 3,000 people, some of whom do not have stable residency status.
Kurds have been settling in the area since the 1990s, with many working in the demolition industry doing the kind of difficult, dirty and dangerous work eschewed by many native Japanese.
But despite years of uneventful coexistence, since 2023 Japanese social media platforms have become a hotbed of hate spread about and toward the Kurdish community.
Claims often involve alleged crimes by Kurdish residents and accusations that fleeing Kurds are "fake refugees" exploiting one of the world's strictest asylum systems.
The undercurrent of hatred directed at them, along with the continual sense of surveillance in public, has left many Kurds struggling to overcome the feeling that Japan is hostile to their presence.
Posts online would suggest that Warabi's Kurdish presence is pronounced. But walking around the residential area near the station reveals that not to be the case.
Compared with other foreign residents, their numbers are small. And while online hearsay blames them for rising crime, official figures demonstrate it is largely baseless.
According to the Saitama prefectural police, arrests by foreign nationality in 2023 showed Vietnamese people made up the largest contingent at 417 people, followed by Chinese individuals at 234.
Turkish nationals, a group likely to include Kurds, accounted for 69 arrests and just 5.9 percent of the cases.
"There is a lot of commotion happening on social media badmouthing Kurds for crimes, but I don't feel that there has been an increase in the crimes exclusively committed by them," one police official said.
Mamo, 35, a Kurdish man who runs a real estate and demolition company, spoke about his experiences while sitting at Kawaguchi eatery Happy Kebab, an establishment that has become a hub for the Kurdish community. A permanent resident now married to a Japanese woman, he left his homeland for Japan in the 2000s after his family's land was seized.