Long seen as one of the most insular of nations, Japan is surprising its neighbors (and perhaps itself) by opening its doors a bit wider to foreign workers.<\/b>
\nKASHIWA, Japan \u2014 When it comes to immigration to Japan, Koichiro Goto is blunt. He\u2019s against it.
\u201cTo accept a lot of immigrants would break down the borders of our singular nation,\u201d said Mr. Goto, director of a nursing home company in Kashiwa, a suburb of Tokyo.
Yet Mr. Goto, who also serves on the local city council, supported a bill that passed Japan\u2019s Parliament early Saturday, allowing for a sharp increase in the number of foreign workers who will be admitted to Japan starting next year.
As immigration roils the politics of the West, and the United States and Europe seek to lock down their borders, Japan \u2014 long considered one of the most insular of nations \u2014 is moving in the other direction, surprising its neighbors and perhaps itself, by opening its doors just a bit wider to immigrants.
Mr. Goto\u2019s reasoning for endorsing the measure is purely economic: He is desperate to hire caregivers at Mother\u2019s Garden, a 70-room nursing home where there is a waiting list of 60 would-be residents and want ads almost never attract job applicants.
\u201cIf we aren\u2019t helped by foreign workers,\u201d Mr. Goto said, \u201cthis business would not survive.\u201d
Under the bill that passed Parliament\u2019s upper house on Saturday, Japan will offer five-year work visas to unskilled guest workers for the first time. Between 260,000 and 345,000 will be made available, for workers in 14 sectors suffering from severe labor shortages, including caregiving, construction, agriculture and shipbuilding.
The bill also creates a separate visa category for high-skilled workers, who will be allowed to stay for unlimited periods and enjoy greater benefits, including permission to bring their families to Japan.
The new law appears to mark a significant turnaround for the right-leaning administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. As recently as three years ago, Mr. Abe said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly that \u201c there are many things that we should do before accepting immigrants.\u201d
To cope with labor shortages resulting from a declining population, he advocated for more women in the workplace, delaying retirement and using robots to do jobs once filled by humans .
But Japan\u2019s shrinking work force and rapidly aging population put pressure on Mr. Abe and his conservative supporters to accept that the nation\u2019s demographic challenges could not be solved by internal measures alone.
In the absence of immigration, Japan\u2019s population is projected to shrink by about 16 million people \u2014 or nearly 13 percent \u2014 over the next 25 years, while the proportion of those over the age of 65 is expected to rise from a quarter of the population to more than a third. In caregiving alone, the government estimates that employers will need an additional 377,000 workers by 2025.
The shortage of workers is \u201can urgent matter,\u201d Mr. Abe said during a parliamentary session late last month. The country, he said, needs \u201cforeign workers as soon as possible.\u201d
Yet the new law, which came under considerable criticism from opposition parties, does not represent an embrace of immigration so much as a deeply ambivalent business calculation. The bill, strongly pushed by industry groups, is vague in some aspects and is designed to limit the kinds of work that foreigners can do, as well as how long they can stay.
\u201cThis isn\u2019t about Japan becoming a multicultural society and it\u2019s not about Japan opening its doors to become more globally oriented,\u201d said Gabriele Vogt, a professor of Japanese politics and society at the University of Hamburg who has studied migration. \u201cThis is just very plain labor market politics.\u201d
Although the new law marks a shift in official policy, Japan has long accepted foreign workers through backdoor routes, such as visas granted to Brazilians and Peruvians of Japanese descent or technical programs for interns, mainly from China and Southeast Asia, purportedly so they can be trained in skills to take back to their home countries. As of October, there were nearly 1.3 million foreign workers in Japan, according to the government.
Many employers use the trainees as cheap labor, and they often are abused. Between 2015 and 2017, the government reported that 63 foreign trainees had died from accidents or illness in Japan, with another six committing suicide.
Critics fear the new law could simply extend the exploitation of foreign workers. \u201cWithout monitoring or an inspection system, the system won\u2019t be managed properly,\u201d said Chikako Kashiwazaki, a sociology professor at Keio University in Tokyo.
In a sign of how deep suspicion of foreigners runs here, politicians from both the right and the left have questioned whether accepting more workers from abroad will disrupt society.
\u201cWe need to secure jobs for old and middle-aged people, women and the youth who could not get jobs because of social withdrawal or depression,\u201d Shigeharu Aoyama, a lawmaker from Mr. Abe\u2019s governing Liberal Democratic Party, wrote in Ironna, a right-leaning online magazine. \u201cWe need to stop foreigners from using Japan\u2019s social welfare system.\u201d
Addressing the House of Representatives late last month, Shiori Yamao, a lawmaker from the left-leaning Constitutional Democratic Party, the largest opposition group, warned that \u201cif we open up the door without carefully designing the system, we will not be able to shut the door easily.\u201d
At Mother\u2019s Garden, the nursing home in Kashiwa, where Christmas decorations blanketed the halls, Mr. Goto, the director, said he worried about cultural clashes between Japanese and incoming foreign workers.
\u201cI think it might be difficult for foreigners to understand\u201d Japan\u2019s spirit, he said.
But Kanako Matsuo, the nursing home\u2019s facilities director, said the handful of workers from Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam who already work there \u201chave the same hearts\u201d as their Japanese colleagues.
\u201cI don\u2019t feel any gap in working with them,\u201d Ms. Matsuo said.
At lunchtime on Thursday, Ayuko Iwai, 29, a Japanese caregiver, spooned mashed chicken and soft-boiled rice into a resident\u2019s mouth. A colleague was helping someone else, but five other residents sat listlessly in wheelchairs before a television. Soon it would be time for the colleague\u2019s break, and Ms. Iwai would be left to supervise 10 residents on her own.
\u201cIf we had more staff we could care for each patient more individually,\u201d said Ms. Iwai.
Some employers say foreigners may not want nursing home jobs. \u201cIf we don\u2019t elevate the status of caregiving we won\u2019t be able to recruit enough workers,\u201d said Kaoru Sasaki, vice chairman of an association that represents 2,800 operators of group homes for elderly patients with dementia.
The job can be grueling. At Mother\u2019s Garden, caregivers bathe residents, change diapers and help them get dressed. They clean bathrooms and kitchens and take care of a pet rabbit. The average monthly pay after three years on the job is 200,000 yen (about $1,775, which works out to roughly $11 an hour).
Lower-skilled foreign workers on temporary visas are unlikely to have much choice of jobs and won\u2019t be allowed to bring their families. Analysts worry they will be treated as mere cogs.
\u201cIt raises these much broader ethical questions that I don\u2019t think the administration has thought through quite yet,\u201d said Erin Chung, a professor of East Asian politics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. \u201cIf anything, the administration might feel quite emboldened during the Trump era to enact policies that treat migrant workers and value them only for their labor without acknowledging their humanity.\u201d
Mr. Abe has emphasized the temporary nature of the visas. But analysts say the government needs to develop a longer-term immigration policy.
Lully Miura, a lecturer on international politics at Tokyo University, predicted that China, which will also soon face a declining and aging population, would eventually start to recruit foreign workers as well. \u201cSo we have to create a proper system for foreign workers in order for them to stay and live and work happily in Japan,\u201d she said.
Local governments struggle to provide services for foreigners. Katsutoshi Murayama, an official at Kashiwa City Hall, said workers had to publish guidelines for emergency evacuations and trash disposal in several languages. He wondered whether newcomers would acclimate to Japan\u2019s rules-based culture.
\u201cOur biggest worries are about whether they will be able to follow rules, like sorting the garbage,\u201d he said.
Such concerns are often cited by Japanese who fear an influx of foreigners. Michelle Fukai \u2014 who was born in the Philippines, moved to Japan for work 13 years ago and married a Japanese man \u2014 said her neighbors had recently asked her to explain to a new Pakistani neighbor how to sort his recycling.
During a potluck lunch on Thursday at the Kashiwa Cross-Cultural Center, where a couple dozen foreign-born residents and Japanese volunteers shared homemade treats like pancit palabok, a Filipino noodle dish, Ms. Fukai said she hoped to become a caregiver at a local nursing home.
\u201cJapan,\u201d she said, \u201cneeds to be rescued by foreign workers.\u201d<\/p>\n