Tokyo has continuous growth, and almost no NIMBYism. While Japan as a whole has negative birthrates and restrictive immigration policies, Tokyo has neither.

The comment you’re responding to is a real, important difference between Japan’s response to growth (in the Tokyo area) and other cities and regions’ responses to growth. Handwaving it doesn’t help.

I'm curious what you think is the difference between Japan's response to growth versus other places. Given the fact that Japan zones on a federal vs local level, this already reduces the potential of NIMBYists blocking new development. However this does not mean that NIMBYism does not exist there.

It largely doesn’t exist there because they’re so monocultural. Zoning in the US was created explicitly to preserve racial divisions in neighborhoods.