Japan granted asylum to only 27 people in 2015 amid record-high requests

The numbers of applications and successful applicants both rose sharply from 2014, when 5,000 people applied and 16 were granted asylum.
The ministry has attributed the swell in applicants to a rising trend of people seeking to use refugee status to find work, as well as the easing in 2014 of restrictions on entering Japan from Indonesia.
The decade between 2005 and 2015 saw a roughly 20-fold increase in the number of applicants, and ministry officials said the upward trend is likely to continue into the future.
Through a separate process, the ministry granted residence to 79 people on humanitarian grounds last year.
The applicants for asylum came from 69 countries. Nepalese nationals formed the largest group with 1,768 people, followed by 969 from Indonesia, 926 from Turkey and 808 from Myanmar.
Just five Syrian nationals applied for refugee status in Japan, a far cry from the massive influx into European countries last year.
Three of the Syrian applicants were successful, along with applicants from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and other countries.
According to the ministry, applications have been on the rise following a 2010 reform allowing asylum seekers to work in Japan once their applications have been under consideration for longer than six months.
Ministry officials said some applications were filed for reasons not recognized as persecution under the U.N. convention governing refugees, including fleeing from debts and neighborhood disputes.
In light of concerns over the applications, the ministry last September introduced a prescreening process to weed out those who repeatedly apply for refugee status citing such reasons, giving priority to those deemed to be in genuine need of protection.