/MAY DAY/LABOUR: Fortress Japan Warming to Foreign Workers

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Apr 22 2003 (IPS) - Mai is 32, lives in Tokyo with her daughter, and has come a long way from her days of selling chicken in Thailand. A Thai, she asks that her Japanese name, ‘Mai’, be used to refer to her.

"I first came to Tokyo after marrying a Japanese man," she said, recalling her arrival 10 years ago. "But we divorced later and I decided to carry on my life here with my daughter who came with me from Thailand."

She earns about 200,000 yen (around 5,000 U.S. dollars) a month, is paid transport and is covered by health insurance. Mai is also happy that her daughter gets a good education and the benefits of a standard of living that is higher than what she would have had in her native Thailand.

Mai represents the "success stories" that Thailand’s ambassador to Japan, Kasit Piromya, spoke of in a recent interview with IPS. "There are hundreds of successful stories of foreign labour in Japan," he said. "Foreign workers provide important skills and unique ideas that invigorate the local economy. They should therefore be welcomed in this country."

Migrants like Mai are opening restaurants, massage parlours and language schools in Japan. Although according to official data there are over 700,000 foreign workers in Japan, the country’s greying population has led labour exporters like the Philippines and Thailand to promote the acceptance of their health care workers.

There is reason enough for such a request. In 2001, Japan was short of about 35,000 licensed health-care workers like nurses and midwives. But the number of foreign workers who overstay their visas – now estimated at 210,000 – is also the subject of acrimonious debate.

The signals seem contrary, but in fact resolve themselves. Japan’s foreign workers – 60 percent of which are from Asia – are grouped as being professional and technical workers who are granted visas, unskilled labour which fills low-paying positions in factories and farms, and under the construction and entertainment industries.

"Foreign workers help small and medium companies stay afloat. The Japanese simply do not want these difficult jobs," said university professor Kiyoto Tanno, a sociologist who is an expert on Japan’s labour dynamics.

Ambassador Piromya emphasised the same point. "There are simply not enough Japanese workers in these professions. Foreign labour is needed," he said.

Migrants like Mai, and the success they have made of their transplanted lives, are thought to be signalling a historic shift in Japan’s labour composition and in the country’s perception of imported labour.

"Despite the laws, foreign workers are here and finding jobs," said Tanno. "There are signals which indicate that Japan may, for the first time in its history, develop a comprehensive policy to ease restrictions on foreign workers."

Among the strongest of those signals came in January 2003, when the very influential Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) issued a report titled, ‘Toward Making Japan a Country Full of Vitality and Attractiveness’. What aroused much comment was the federation’s call for flexibility in Japan’s labour market.

"The success or failure of achieving the goal of restoring and enhancing Japan’s vigour, hinges on how effectively the labour market is opened to the rest of the world and on its subsequent flexibility," the report states.

The flexibility referred to is the easing of visa regulations for foreigners. With the Keidanren head being Hiroshi Okuda, managing director of Toyota Motor Corp, the largest Japanese company ranked by revenue and the 10th largest globally, that recommendation carries significant weight.

Despite proponents of labour rights arguing for equal rights for labour, whether foreign or Japanese, the historical perspective – that foreign labour must be shunned – remains a powerful force, as Tanno explained.

In the early 90s, Japan allowed only ‘nikkei’ (descendants of Japanese emigrants in Latin America) to supply workers to medium-sized companies facing a worker shortage during the boom years of the bubble economy. Even today, the ‘nikkei’ comprise around two-thirds of foreign workers in Japan.

Even so, Japan as the richest country in Asia and the world’s second largest economy despite its woes, is a major destination for foreign workers from poorer countries.

Tens of thousands of men and women have paid and continue to pay around 1 million yen(about 8,300 dollars) to brokers to get through or around Japan’s tough barricades aimed at keeping foreigners out.

Professor Jiro Nakamura, who teaches economics at the Tokyo Toritsu University, is a member of the team of researchers set up by the government to help develop a new policy on workers. "The pros and cons of permitting foreigners to work in Japan must be weighed carefully," said Nakamura. "Steps must be put in place to prevent such problems as crime and social unrest."

Such concerns do not dominate the reports put out by major business organisations like the Association of Corporate Executives, which is noted for its analyses of economic issues, and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which represents small and medium enterprise and which has stressed the importance of making better use of foreign workers given the domestic economic climate.

Mai could well be a poster child for the proponents of a more liberal, albeit still carefully controlled, foreign worker policy. The masseuse plans to make good use of the experience she has gained in Tokyo and her savings to start her own business.

Her employer is Yoshihara Nagahama, who owns a traditional Thai massage parlour, and has hired four other Thai women. "By employing Thai masseuses I offer the Japanese something original," explained the young entrepreneur. "This concept has been a hit," he said, and added that he is grateful to his foreign employees for creating such a business opportunity.