Purpose – This article examines how foreign nationals have been represented in the disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy discourse in Japan in recent decades and analysesthe consequencesthese representations have had for foreign nationals’ DRR there. Design/methodology/approach – The article reports on a monolingual, corpus-based, critical discourse analysis of 23 years of White Papers on Disaster Management in Japan to assessthe discourse representations of foreign nationals in the policy texts over three chronological periods: 2001–2008, 2009–2016 and 2017–2023. Findings – The article findsthat the way the Government ofJapan has communicated to stakeholders about foreign nationals through its policy has increasingly included them into a “whole community” discourse of DRR. This is significant because research hasshown thatforeign nationals have long gone un- or under-recognised in relevant DRR policies and have been insufficiently considered at local levels. If they are now better represented in policy as local community members, there is hope that their risk of negative consequencesin times of disaster will truly be reduced. Originality/value – This contribution is novel in that it addresses a nexus between discourse, policy communication and a social problem of inclusion and engagement of foreign nationalsin DRR that has not been published elsewhere, but that nonetheless engages with ongoing academic conversations about inclusivity, vulnerability and community-based DRR approaches