AROUND 9m people have fled their homes in Syria. Over 3m have taken refuge in neighbouring countries. But thousands more have fanned out across the world, some to as far away as Japan. There, they have found the drawbridge up. The world’s third-largest economy has yet to grant asylum to a single Syrian.

The treatment meted out to Syrians is consistent with Japan’s stingy record on sheltering people fleeing conflicts of all kinds. In the decade to 2013, the country gave asylum to just over 300 refugees. In 2014, the number fell to 11.

These figures are all the more remarkable considering that the number of stateless people is growing, and that many are knocking on Japan’s door. Last year, the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people topped 50m worldwide for the first time. In Japan there were more asylum applications than at any time since the country signed the UN refugee convention in 1981.

Once they arrive, asylum seekers can face a grim experience. Some are locked up for years while their claims are processed. Immigration officials give the impression that they just want refugees to leave, says Gloria Okafor Ifeoma, a Nigerian asylum-seeker who arrived in Tokyo in 2007 and has spent about 30 months under lock and key. Japan’s media revealed last month that there are no full-time doctors in the country’s three immigration centres. (Part-time doctors visit a few hours a day.) Last March two foreigners died in detention.

Not surprisingly, criticism is growing. On a visit to Tokyo last year, Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said Japan’s asylum system is rigid and restrictive. Hiroshi Miyauchi, a lawyer, calls the rejection of all 61 applications from Syrian refugees since 2011 “appalling”. He represents four Syrians who are suing the justice ministry to reverse its decision. Eri Ishikawa, chair of the Japan Association for Refugees, a non-profit organisation, says Japan’s system for gathering information about asylum seekers from the refugees’ countries of origin is primitive. She claims that many claimants are being needlessly rejected.

The government bristles at such criticisms. Japan, it points out, is the world’s fourth-largest financial contributor to UNHCR. Immigration officials merely apply standard criteria when reviewing asylum applications. If the approval rate is low, insists a spokesperson for the justice ministry, that’s a problem with the criteria. Anyway, over half the Syrian applicants have been granted special permission to stay on humanitarian grounds.

But pressure for change is building. The justice ministry is reviewing how it processes asylum claims. The UNHCR is helping draw up its final recommendations. Optimists expect the result to be fairer and more transparent. Perhaps. But Mieko Ishikawa, director of Forum for Refugees Japan, a network of refugee associations, fears it might actually make things worse. Immigration officials, she worries, could get more power to weed out “abusers” from the desperate human flotsam that increasingly washes up on Japan’s shores.