Japan's system of low wages and poor working conditions imposed on foreign technical trainees has been under strong criticism for years, with some members of government panels going so far as to call for its outright abolition.
Among the numerous problems blamed on the system are trainees fleeing their employers, committing crimes and finding themselves in various kinds of troubles.
On May 25, near a road intersection in Tamba Sasayama, a city located in eastern Hyogo Prefecture, the corpse of a male infant was found floating in an underwater conduit.
The corpse bore no signs of violence.
"The corpse was found caught in a net used to trap large objects or oily discharge from drainage of nearby residences," a local police official told Weekly Playboy (July 17).
It was unclear from where the infant's body was introduced, but following a door-to-door police investigation of the residents, a 21-year-old Vietnamese trainee, Tran Tu Phoung (phonetic) admitted to being the mother and was arrested on suspicion of abandonment of a corpse.
"Upon questioning, Tran said to the officer, 'You're asking about the baby, right?' She readily admitted to being the mother.
"A forensic autopsy determined that the child was stillborn," he added. "The infant weighed 240 grams and was estimated to be in the 16th to 19th week following conception, and therefore still too young to survive outside the mother's body."
On the evening of May 15 or the following morning, the mother had carried off the dead infant from the large printing plant where she worked as a trainee, saying she feared "getting in trouble."
"In addition to facilities in various parts of Japan, the printing company in Hyogo operates a plant in Vietnam, and therefore brings over people to train in Japan," the police source related. "Up to now, though, there's never been any trouble."
A local resident told Weekly Playboy's reporter that in the past that female workers at the same plant who became pregnant have taken maternity leave or temporarily repatriated. It has not been established why the suspect made efforts to conceal her pregnancy from co-workers and management. It's believed likely she illegally obtained an abortion drug.
In a similar case discovered last April, a 19-year-old Vietnamese woman working at an oyster-shucking plant in East Hiroshima City was arrested after being found to have left the corpse of a stillborn male infant in a cultivated field. Her name was not made public as she is still a minor.
The women at the plant where she was training wear bulky rubber work aprons, which apparently enabled her to conceal her delicate condition from onlookers.
From the timing of her arrival in Japan, it is believed she became pregnant before leaving Japan.
According to the article, between November 2017 and the end of 2020, no fewer than 637 cases of pregnancies among foreign technical trainees are known to have occurred, in which the woman was forced to interrupt their work. This situation clearly presents a risk for trainees and their employers alike.
In the past, however, other Vietnamese at the workplace who had acquired Japanese could be counted upon to serve as a liaison between young women in trouble and their employers, and trainees who became pregnant could either arrange to return home to give birth or undergo an abortion in Japan.
What changed things were the COVID travel restrictions over the past three years. At the start of the pandemic most of the trainees left Japan to avoid getting stranded. Since Japan only reopened to trainees from last autumn, Japanese-speaking Vietnamese at the workplace who could mentor the new arrivals and give them advice regarding unwanted pregnancies were in short supply. The absence of mentors also left the new arrivals more vulnerable to Vietnamese men working in Japan, with whom they appear to have made contacts via social networks. (In the three cases of abandoned stillborn mentioned in the article, the writer claims to have eliminated Japanese males as the fathers.)
With the double-whammy of working in Japan under an unfeasible trainee system, plus the legacy of three years of pandemic restrictions, we may be seeing more such tragedies involving young, lonely and easily exploited, foreign women, the writer concludes.
© Japan Today
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sakurasuki
More foreign workers will come to Japan, so we can see that 637 case will arise in the future.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-29/japan-to-face-11-million-worker-shortfall-by-2040-study-finds
NAM
This article is making it sound like there is nothing to be done about this problem, when a solution is very very easy. All these factories have a bathroom, right? Just write in Japanese about what to do if you're pregnant-your rights, the helpline you can call etc., put it into a translation software, then ask one of the Vietnamese workers to check it for mistakes. Print it, hang it up, and done. Also mention some people they can talk to if they're scared of management.
The solution to this problem would take like an hour.
dagon
It is truly pitiful, there is no other way to describe it. I have met foreign "trainees" , form Vietnam and Uzbekistan, students working in convenience stores and in hospitality and they tell me about trying to make a living while also supporting their relatives back home and saving for a future.
Having to make a choice at the end of month between paying the residence and pension taxes and rent and food on minimum wage salaries.
Having tax office officials come to their places of work and study to lecture them on the consequences of not paying these added taxes.
Having their companies use coercive tactics and withholding pay illegally.
It is a system engineered for grinding misery for the workers and unearned wealth for the owners.
Gaijinjland
@ dagon
Unfortunate these situations happen but Japan’s system is pitiful compared to what? The millions of illegal undocumented migrant workers in the US and Europe? Is there a country that has a better system for legal unskilled, uneducated migrant workers?
dagon
This is some classic what about ism and yeah the conditions for illegal migrants in the West is dog awful.
Keyword illegal.
This is about the LDP/Japan *nc. Combine slave labor program.This is a government program with zero oversight of the abuses and hardship on the participants, who have been drawn by the exchange rates but not for much longer.
Mr Kipling
It is so terrible that literally thousands are queueing up to come to Japan to work.
Gaijinjland
Dagon,
The sad truth is that most of the trainees coming to japan know all about the shortfalls of the Japanese system but come willingly, happily because they will still make more here than they ever will in their home countries and have no intention of staying in Japan long term.
On the other hand, migrants with higher education and some kind of savings from Southeast Asia will enroll in a Japanese language school on a student visa, work part time at family mart, instead of the trainee route because the schools help them find full time employment before graduation. That’s actually the smartest way.
My point is that I don’t know of any other country that has a better system for legal migrant workers.
The Original Wing
The trainee conditions discussion above is of course the most important point.
But as the title of the article suggests, socially, it's a tough life as well. As many of us can attest to, it can be hard to make human connections here. I can only speak about my own experiences in coming to Tokyo, but it took me several years to find a reliable circle of friends, and those first few years were quite lonely. And I speak English - an international language. For trainees coming from, say, Vietnam, it'd be much harder for those who only speak Vietnamese. Social networks are very important for your mental health and overall well-being, and without that, the difficult life of a foreign trainee becomes that much harder.
dagon
Again, the point is not that other nations are superior in their treatment of migrants, particularly the undocumented.
It is that the LDP and its Japan Inc. partners have a program with official imprimatur which allows massive, unenforced abuse. Not the technically illegal abuse of the undocumented present in other nations.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/21/national/social-issues/technical-interns-abuses/
Algernon LaCroix
Funny how one of the socialist fan club leaders here is busy pointing the finger at Japan rather that the socialist homeland the Vietnamese trainees are leaving in order to earn a better living. Why not concentrate on fixing the problem at its source? That's not to say many of the Japanese companies employing the trainees are paragons of virtue, but clearly the trainees are leaving Vietnam for a good reason.
Socialism. Delivering guaranteed misery since 1917.
Moonraker
It seems hard for Japan to deal with humanitarian issues, though there is a lot of noise about humanitarianism. I think it is possible to feel sympathy for human beings toiling under any exploitative, repressive ideology, whether capitalist, socialist, fascist, or whatever. Those who can't are just helping create a slave prison.