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Abuse rife within trainee system, say NGOs

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Foreigners report harsh job conditions, poverty-line pay, mistreatment under notorious program

Started in 1993, the aim of the Technical Intern Training Program is to “provide training in technical skills, technology (and) knowledge” to workers from developing countries, according to the Japan International Training Cooperation Organization (JITCO), which oversees the program. But in practice, say advocacy groups, the majority of both trainees and the companies who accept them think of the relationship primarily as regular employment. A convoluted placement system complicates the situation: Between the trainees — the majority of whom come from China — and the workplace where they end up, there are usually at least three intermediary organizations involved, in Japan and the participants’ native country.

Until 2009, the number of trainees in Japan had been rising steadily, with more than 100,000 participating in the program in 2008. The majority of trainees are brought in under the auspices of JITCO. After the global economic crisis, the number of JITCO-authorized trainees fell in 2009 to 50,064 (down from 68,150). According to the latest figures, the total for 2010 was 39,151 as of October.

The Tokyo-based Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees has served as the national umbrella organization for trainee advocacy groups since 1999. The network’s members are 90 researchers, lawyers, journalists and other individuals, and 10 groups including labor unions and local trainee advocacy groups.

The network’s members exchange and compile information from cases they have dealt with locally every month, and meet once a year to draft recommendations to the government.

But information-sharing is often a one-way street, says [Zentoitsu Workers Union’s] Hiroshi Nakajima, one of the network’s organizers. When a company is turned in for abuses of the program, the Justice Ministry investigates and can punish the placement organization or company by putting a halt on new trainee visas. But Nakajima calls the process a “black box,”; questions go unanswered during investigations, he says, and the resulting punishments are not even made public.

The network is sometimes able to get information on banned companies from the ministry upon request, but not in every case. Often the group only knows that a placement organization or company has been punished when they find that a firm no longer has any trainees.

“Because the immigration authorities don’t publicize the names of the organizations that have been convicted of wrongdoing, we have no way of knowing which organizations should be banned from accepting trainees and until when,” says Nakajima.

Ichiro Takahara of the Fukui Advocacy Network for Foreign Trainees says the local labor bureau also fails to provide relevant public information. Takahara’s group has assisted around 250 interns and trainees since its formation in June 2000 following the Takefu incident.

“The fact that the Labor Standards Inspection Office doesn’t make public the names of the offending companies invites those companies to continue reaping the benefits of engaging in illegal activities,” says Takahara. This, he explains, accounts for the fact that 85 percent of the companies employing trainees that were investigated by the Fukui Labor Bureau in 2009 had committed labor or safety infractions. This was the lowest rate in five years.

“The sense of guilt over committing a labor violation is less than that over committing a traffic violation,” he says.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20101207zg.html

Diplomatic issues close door on families seeking status

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Around 300 Kurds live in and around Kawaguchi and neighboring Warabi. Most came to Japan in the 1990s, and many have applied for refugee status due to persecution by the Turkish government.

But support organizations say not a single one of them has been recognized.

According to the Justice Ministry’s Immigration Bureau, there were 1,599 applicants for refugee status in 2008, close to double the previous year’s figure. In 2009, there were 1,388. Only 57 were recognized in 2008, and 30 in 2009.

Japan’s refugee recognition rate remains in single figures and is low compared with other developed countries. That has given Japan a reputation for closing its door on refugees.

“Refugee recognition is closely connected to diplomatic relations,” said lawyer Sosuke Seki, a supporter of [a] Kurdish family [recently granted limited special permission for residence]. “Turkey and Japan enjoy a cordial relationship, so if Japan were to recognize these refugees, they would be acknowledging the fact that they have been persecuted by the Turkish government.”

The Japanese government’s unsympathetic treatment of refugees from nations it regards as allies has also generated feelings of disaffection among Tibetans and Uighurs living in Japan.

A member of nonprofit organization Japan Association for Refugees said, “Before accepting new refugees, we should be protecting the ones who have already sought refuge in Japan.”

The country’s poor record in accepting refugees and the opaqueness of its recognition criteria have given rise to suspicions that it will not grant refugee status to immigrants from countries it counts as allies.

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201012030367.html

Will there ever be a rainbow Japan?

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Government statistics suggest multiculturalism is on the rise, but social organizations for mixed-race Japanese say ‘hafus’ still face challenges

Japan, which closed its borders from 1639 to 1854 and later colonized its neighbors, has an uneasy history with foreigners, national identity, and multiculturalism.

Yet government statistics and grassroots organizations say multiculturalism in the famously insular country is now on the rise.

Japan: The new melting pot?

Japan’s national government recently announced it is turning to travelers in a foreigner-friendly mission to boost diversity — at least in tourist spots — by paying them to provide feedback on how to increase accessibility for non-Japanese speakers.

David Askew, associate professor of law at Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University, identifies more profound changes.

In 1965, a mere 1 in 250 of all marriages in Japan were international, he notes. By 2004, the number had climbed to 1 in 15 across the nation and 1 in 10 in Tokyo.

According to Tokyo’s Metropolitan Government, by 2005, foreign residents in the city numbered 248,363, up from 159,073 in 1990.

According to Askew, the upswing in diverse residents and mixed marriages has led to another phenomenon: between 1987 and 2004, more than 500,000 children were born in Japan with at least one foreign parent.

Celebrating diversity

A handful of new organizations are tied, at least in part, to the increase in multicultural marriages.

Groups such as Mixed Roots Japan and Hapa Japan, founded by children of mixed-Japanese couples, aim to celebrate the broadening scope of Japanese identity, both nationally and globally.

“There is a real need now to recognize that Japan is getting more multiracial,” says Mixed Roots founder Edward Sumoto, a self-described “hafu” of Japanese/Venezuelan ethnicity. “The Japanese citizen is not simply a traditional Japanese person with Japanese nationality anymore.”

The issue of the identity of hafu is also being explored in a new film titled “Hafu,” currently under production by the Hafu Project.

In support of multiracial families, Mixed Roots holds Halloween and Christmas parties, picnics and beach days.

The organization also sponsors a monthly radio show on station FMYY, and “Shakeforward” concerts in Tokyo and Kansai, accompanied by youth workshops and symposia.

“These events feature mixed-roots artists who promote social dialogue with their songs,” says Sumoto.

The next “Shakeforward” concert will be held on November 27 in Kobe.

One of Sumoto’s primary goals is to “enable mixed-race kids to meet and talk, so they know there are other people like them.”

Despite the statistics, achieving widespread recognition for Japanese diversity has been a struggle for Sumoto and other grassroots organizers.

“Mentally, do the Japanese think the country is becoming more multicultural?” asks Sumoto. “Possibly more than 20 years ago, because you see more foreigners, but people are still not sure what to do with it.”

Multiculturalism on the margins

Like Sumoto, Erin Aeran Chung, assistant professor of East Asian politics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, sees the issue of Japanese multiculturalism as multifaceted.

Chung has written extensively on Japan, ethnicity and citizenship, especially as relates to Zainichi Koreans, descendents of pre-war immigrants, many of whom were brought to Japan as slave labor.

Zainichi literally means “staying in Japan temporarily.”

“The concepts of ‘multicultural coexistence’ (tabunka kyōsei) and ‘living in harmony with foreigners’ (gaikokujin to no kyōsei)” — catchwords for multiculturalism used by local government officials and NGOs — “are based on the idea that Japanese nationals, assumed to be culturally homogenous, can live together peacefully with foreign nationals, assumed to be culturally different from the Japanese,” Chung said in a series of interviews.

“Rather than expand the definition of Japanese national identity to include those who are not Japanese by blood or nationality,” Chung argues, “the concept of kyōsei suggests that Japanese nationals must rise to the challenge of living with diversity,” instead of as part of a group of diverse citizens belonging to a truly multicultural nation.

A recent move by the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) suggests not even citizenship guarantees acceptance as “truly” Japanese.

At a meeting last February, the JSA administrative board mandated limiting foreign-born wrestlers to one per stable. The upshot: even if a competitor born abroad becomes a Japanese citizen, he’s still considered the stable’s token foreigner.

The myth of mono-ethnicity

Underneath the debate over Japan’s willingness to embrace multiculturalism lies the question of how mono-ethnic the nation ever really was.

According to Ritsumeikan’s David Askew, “The idea of Japan as mono-ethnic is actually a postwar belief.”

The Ainu and Ryukyuan ethnic groups, engulfed by Japan during its prewar colonial movement, are examples.

As for Taiwan and Korea, they “were part of Japan until 1945, so you could hardly talk about a homogeneous population before then.”

“The conversation about multiculturalism today is one that focuses on accepting ‘foreign’ cultures, ignoring the broad range of cultural practices within Japan itself,” says Askew.

“Unless the Okinawas and Osakas of Japan are accepted as different cultures, the discourse will continue to promote the idea of a homogeneous Japan,” says Askew.

http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/life/will-there-ever-be-rainbow-japan-341969#ixzz176ov3ZDy

Nova chief’s sentence shortened

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The Osaka High Court on Thursday shaved 18 months off the 3 1/2-year prison term of the founder and former president of Nova Corp., who was convicted of embezzling ¥320 million from the defunct English school chain’s employee benefit fund.

The counsel for Nozomu Sahashi, 59, plans to appeal.

Sahashi pleaded not guilty at his Osaka District Court trial and claimed the funds were diverted in an attempt to help the company, not for his personal benefit as charged.

Presiding Judge Sumio Matoba, however, upheld the verdict because the entity in charge of the funds was set up for the welfare of the employees and was thus separate from Nova by nature, ruling Sahashi inflicted damage on that entity.

Sahashi transferred all the funds in the entity to the bank account of a Nova subsidiary in July 2007 to reimburse a flood of students who had decided to cancel their lesson contracts over an advertising dispute.

But the judge shortened Sahashi’s sentence in recognition that his embezzlement was aimed at keeping the company afloat during the management crisis, and that his crime could be construed as containing a beneficial aspect for the employees.

Sahashi launched English conversation classes in Osaka in 1981 and set up Nova in 1990. His venture grew into Japan’s largest English school chain, boasting an enrollment of some 480,000 at its peak.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101203a4.html

High Court Gives Ex-Nova President 2-Yr Jail Term For Embezzlement

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The Osaka High Court on Thursday sentenced the founder and former president of English conversation school operator Nova Corp. to two years in prison for embezzling 320 million yen of employees’ benefit funds, reducing a lower court sentence of three years and six months.

The defense counsel for Nozomu Sahashi, 59, plans to appeal the ruling as he has pled not guilty to the charge since his first trial at the Osaka District Court, saying he used the funds for the company and not personal benefit.

Presiding Judge Sumio Matoba determined that the accusation was upheld, however, saying the entity in charge of the funds was aimed at the welfare of employees and was separate from Nova by nature, and that Sahashi had inflicted damage to the entity.

According to the ruling, Sahashi transferred the sum accumulated at the entity to a bank account of a Nova subsidiary in July 2007 to reimburse fees students had paid on contracts that they subsequently cancelled.

But the judge recognized in handing down the shorter sentence that the embezzlement was aimed at continuing operating the company amid its management crisis and had an aspect of benefiting employees.

Sahashi launched English conversation classes in Osaka in 1981 and set up Nova in 1990. His venture once grew into Japan’s largest chain of English schools, with some 480,000 people taking language lessons at its peak.

A month after Nova went bust in October 2007, some of its business operation were taken over by Nagoya-based G.communication Co.

In August last year, Nova’s bankruptcy administrator filed a damages suit against Sahashi at the Osaka District Court, seeking about 2.1 billion yen in compensation for breach of trust.

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20101202D02JF485.htm

Ex-Nova president sentenced to 2-year prison term for embezzlement

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The former president of English conversation school Nova was handed a two-year prison sentence for corporate embezzlement by the Osaka High Court on Dec. 2.

Nozomu Sahashi, 59, had been convicted of the offence by a lower court and sentenced to a three-year, six-month prison term in August last year. The high court decision on Sahashi’s appeal confirmed his conviction for embezzling money from employees, but reduced the sentence as the funds were used to pay back customer deposits and Sahashi did not himself profit from taking the money. Sahashi intends to appeal.

According to the lower court ruling, Sahashi wrote a check for the entire amount in the Nova employees’ Shayu-kai mutual aid fund account — some 320 million yen — and deposited it in an account held by a Nova-associated company.

“The entire purpose of the Shayu-kai was employee welfare, and you used it for an entirely different purpose,” said Presiding Judge Sumio Matoba in the high court ruling. “You were Nova’s primary shareholder, and there is no trace you ever committed to returning the money you took. Thus, this court can conclude that you had criminal intent when you embezzled the funds.”

Sahashi’s defense counsel argued that “The Shayu-kai did not exist as an independent entity, but was just one part of the company. The entire sum withdrawn was set aside for refunding customers, and thus was not embezzled.” Furthermore, “If Nova had not been able to refund its customers, it would have gone bankrupt, and Mr. Sahashi fully intended to return the funds once the company attracted new investment.”

Nova was founded by Sahashi, and at its peak had some 1,000 schools nationwide. However, it was ordered to suspend part of its operations by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in June 2007. Nova declared bankruptcy in October that year. A suit the company’s bankruptcy administrator filed against Sahashi for the recovery of over 2.1 billion yen is currently being heard at the Osaka District Court.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101202p2a00m0na009000c.html

Japan lifts visa restrictions for foreign dentists, nurses

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The Justice Ministry on Tuesday revised an ordinance concerning residence visas, lifting a set of restrictions for foreign dentists, nurses, maternity nurses and health workers who have Japanese state qualifications.

The step, which abolished limits on the number of years and the extent of areas in which they can work in the country, was taken on the grounds that Japan needs to accept a broad range of foreigners with specialized skills as it copes with a declining birthrate and rapidly aging population.

The revision allows foreign nurses and health workers without permanent resident status to continue working in Japanese medical institutions beyond the designated number of years. It also paves the way for foreign dentists to open their own clinics in urban areas and work at private clinics.

Until now, the ordinance limited the number of years foreigners could work under medical practitioner visas after obtaining Japanese state qualifications to six years for dentists, seven years for nurses, and four years for maternity nurses and health workers.

It also only allowed foreign dentists to work as long as they were doing clinical studies at university hospitals and to work beyond the designated number of years only while practicing in remote areas designated by the justice minister.

Abolishing the work visa restrictions was one of the agenda items cited in the government’s fourth basic plan on immigration set in March. Japan already lifted six-year working limits for foreign doctors in June 2006.

Foreigners registered under medical practitioner visas including doctors are gradually increasing, totaling 95 in 2000, 114 in 2002 and 220 in 2009.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101130p2g00m0dm059000c.html

Selective immigration for highly skilled urged

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The Japan Forum on International Relations, a Tokyo-based think tank, urged the government Wednesday to accept more foreign workers and tourists while being selective in accepting long-term residents.

It says municipalities and other entities should direct foreign residents who aren’t proficient in daily Japanese to take language courses and provide them with opportunities to master practical Japanese with minimum financial burden.

On arrangements for foreigners with insufficient Japanese proficiency, the forum advised the government to ascertain their language ability prior to their arrival in the country.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20101125f1.html

Japan urged to welcome more skilled migrants

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Under the proposal of the Japan Forum on International Relations, Japan would adopt a skills-based migration system and put in place social integration policies to prevent the kind of tensions seen in Europe over immigration.

While Japan historically has been reluctant to allow large-scale immigration, some opinion leaders now see it as the only way to boost domestic demand, re-energise the economy and fill labour shortages.

What Japan does on immigration will be keenly watched by multinational companies and capital markets. The country has lost favour as an investment destination because of economic and political stagnation, high corporate tax levels and a range of other factors, including the rise of China.

But it remains the world’s third-largest economy and a massive market for goods and services, so if a path to growth can be found, some of the lost interest and investment will come back.

Kenichi Ito, chairman of the forum’s policy council and one of the proposal’s main authors, said he saw Australia, Canada and the US as models for Japan’s ideal immigration system.

“If Japan wants to survive in a globalised world economy and to advance its integration with the burgeoning East Asian economy, it essentially has no other choice but to accept foreign migrants, while making full use of domestic human resources,” he said. “A key question is not whether we should accept foreign migrants or not, but how we should accept them.”

The number of foreigners moving to Japan has grown gradually from 1.5 million 10 years ago to more than 2 million now, but the growth has been very slow, particularly considering Japan’s population of 127 million.

Mr Ito told The Australian the forum had not set numerical targets for the migration intake, but that clearly a substantial increase in migration was needed.

“The annual intake is estimated to be 50,000 to 60,000 as far as the last 10 years is concerned. We think such a number is too small,” Mr Ito said.

Along with a large skills-based migrant intake, the report proposes that Japan learns from previous immigration mistakes. An almost impossible-to-pass exam for Philippine and Indonesian nurses allowed into Japan should be rewritten to focus on vocational competence rather than Japanese language proficiency; international qualifications should be more easily recognised; and foreign workers should be able to bring their families.

Mr Ito, a former diplomat who is now an emeritus professor at Tokyo’s Aoyama Gakuin University, said Japan must be careful to avoid the tensions over immigration that were affecting countries such as France, Germany and Britain.

“We should learn from Australia, the US and Canada. We should learn your system and infrastructure to adopt foreign migrants integrated into society,” he said.

To this end, the forum’s proposal suggests helping foreigners learn Japanese as the best way to “see that they do not form ethnic clusters within local communities, thereby generating communication gaps, misunderstandings or hostilities in their relations with the Japanese society or other groups of foreigners”.

The report advocates heavily subsidised Japanese learning and ensuring that municipal governments work to help migrants to settle in and establish their new lives in Japan.

Mr Ito envisages that most of the migrants would be from China, whose citizens have the advantage of knowing most of the kanji characters in use in the Japanese language.

Japan has had several tries at establishing an economic or labour-orientated migration program. The first was the disgraceful coercion of Korean migrants to speed up its pre-war industrialisation. The second was the wave of returnees it accepted from the expatriate Japanese communities in Brazil and Peru to satisfy the labour demands of its factories during the bubble economy period of the early 1990s.

The Korean community has faced prejudice but has largely prospered in Japan, although animosity remains between some Japanese and Korean-Japanese. The Latin American returnees have perhaps endured less prejudice, but are still looked down upon by some Japanese because of their jobs.

These attempts at integration were obviously not perfect, but Mr Ito said he believed Japan’s people and politicians were ready for another try.

“I feel the interest on the part of politicians on this topic is very high and keen, and public opinion will, I think, basically welcome our recommendations, though some people are concerned about the political and social consequences of too radical a shift, particularly in view of what’s happening in western European countries,” he said.

Mr Ito said Japan also needed to boost the tiny number of humanitarian migrants it accepted.

“I think Japan should be ashamed for the reluctance it has shown in taking humanitarian migrants,” he said.

The forum’s report has been 18 months in the making and has almost 90 signatories, including top academics, business leaders, former diplomats and ministerial officials and several current and former politicians.

As well as handing it to Prime Minister Kan, the group has also taken out newspaper ads drawing public attention to its contents.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/japan-urged-to-welcome-more-skilled-migrants/story-e6frg8zx-1225961131994

Group Appeals for Overhaul of Japanese Immigration

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A powerful group of politicians, academics and business leaders is set to launch an unusual campaign to urge Japan to pry open its doors to foreigners, saying the country’s survival hinges on revamping its immigration policy.

Japan has one of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world, and the debate over whether to allow more foreigners to settle in the country has long been a contentious, politically charged issue for the nation. But recently, calls to allow more foreign workers to enter Japan have become louder, as the aging population continues to shrink and the country’s competitiveness and economic growth pales in comparison with its neighbor to the west: China. A minuscule 1.7% of the overall Japanese population are foreigners, compared with 6.8% in the United Kingdom and 21.4% in Switzerland, according to the OECD.

The 87-member policy council of the Japan Forum of International Relations, a powerful nonprofit research foundation, will on Thursday launch a half-page advertisement in the country’s leading newspapers, urging Japan to rethink its immigration policy. They also submitted their policy recommendations to Naoto Kan, the country’s prime minister.

“If Japan wants to survive in a globalized world economy and to advance her integration with the burgeoning East Asian economy, she essentially has no other choice but to accept foreign migrants,” the advertisement says.

The policy council has issued several recommendations, including allowing more skilled workers to enter the labor market, particularly in industries where there are shortages of domestic workers, such as construction and the auto industry. Under economic-partnership agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines, Tokyo has allowed nurses and nursing-care specialists from these countries to enter Japan, but applicants are subjected to a grueling test in Japanese that only three people have passed. The council says these tests have to be made easier.

“Foreign employment may create employment for the Japanese—it’s bridging Japan with the rest of the world,” said Yasushi Iguchi, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University and a member of the policy council.

Despite Japan’s stance that it doesn’t accept unskilled foreign workers, these days, Chinese cashiers are a common sight at Tokyo’s ubiquitous convenience stores; South Asian clerks are becoming more plentiful at supermarkets and on construction sites. Their ability to work in these positions is often thanks to numerous loopholes in Japan’s immigration policy, which allows students studying in Japan to work a certain number of hours a week. The country also has a technical internship program that allows younger workers to come into Japan and work as a “trainee” for a year, though this has been maligned as a cheap way to exploit foreign workers and pay them menial wages.

Mr. Kan’s government has said it wants to double the number of high-skilled foreign workers as part of its strategy to revive Japan in its growth strategy report compiled in June. The government is eyeing the introduction of a points-based system, in which it gives favored immigration treatment to foreigners depending on their past careers, accomplishments and expertise. The government also aims to increase the number of foreign students to 300,000 through initiatives such as allowing them to accept credits earned in foreign colleges and accepting more foreign teachers.

But this doesn’t mean more foreigners will necessarily want to come to Japan: in 2009, the number of foreigners who live in Japan fell for the first time in nearly half a century. Only one group bucked the trend: the Chinese, one of the few minority groups to increase its presence last year. Chinese nationals now make up nearly a third of Japan’s foreign population.

“If we stop discussing this and stop reforming, our system will be inadequate to cope with the realities,” said Mr. Iguchi. “In rural areas, we can’t maintain local industries—it will increase our competitiveness.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704526504575634151044954866.html?mod=WSJASIA_hpp_SecondTopStories