On March 15, Japan announced its decision to abolish the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) and introduce a new foreign labor program called the New Skill Developing Program for Foreign Workers (the “Ikusei Shuro” system).
The milestone was achieved as a result of three decades of internal and external pressures against the TITP. Japan first enacted a foreign labor program to invite unskilled laborers to Japan, called the Industrial Training and Technical Internship Program, at the beginning of the 1990s. This program was later replaced by the TITP. To address the workforce shortage in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Japan expanded the TITP workforce under the structural reform proposed by the Koizumi cabinet in the early 2000s.
Despite this, Japan has never admitted that it has an immigration policy, instead explaining the TITP as an international contribution to provide knowledge and skills to foreign interns and trainees from its neighboring developing countries.
The abuse of labor rights under the purview of the TITP has been well documented, including cases of forced deportation, sexual harassment, and forced abortion. The reasons for the disappearance of these workers can vary, but in 2022, the number of TITP workers who left their workplaces without notice reached over 9,000. To address these issues, civil society groups, as well as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking, have warned Japan to terminate the TITP.
In response to such criticisms, Japan introduced new legislation in November 2016 to ensure the labor rights of the TITP workforce, with the law entering into force in November 2017. While emphasizing its efforts to address human rights abuses in business, Japan further revised its Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in December 2018 to establish a new immigration channel called the Special Skilled Workers Program. The revision would allow existing TITP laborers to invite their families and work long-term in Japan.
At this point, Japan had decided to retain the TITP and did not express any intention to abolish the program. However, the direction has changed since the Expert Committee on the Future of Technical Intern Training Program and the Specified Skilled Worker Program were set up in December 2022 and discussed whether the TITP should be abolished.
The current shift in Japan’s decision to abolish the TITP and replace it with Ikusei Shuro has two implications. First, a global effort initiated by the European Union and U.N. organizations such as the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) has shed light on human rights and environmental protection in business since the U.N. Global Principles on Business and Human Rights was proposed by John Ruggie in June 2011.
A series of international events – the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine in particular – has facilitated the establishment of new legislation requiring human rights due diligence in European countries and the United States to promote human rights and eco-friendly business practices in global supply chains. These principles are represented by the United Kingdom’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act, France’s 2017 legislation on parent companies’ duty of vigilance, Germany’s 2021 act on due diligence in supply chains, and the European Union’s 2023 Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Setting up a legal binding instrument on labor rights has been discussed during the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group at the U.N. Human Rights Council since 2015. Rather than imposing fines to legally bind business conduct, the United States focused on trade sanctions, restricting imports of specific products made by Uyghur forced labor by revising the Tariff Act of 1930.
This spillover effect of human rights due diligence has pressured Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to reveal its National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights in 2020, followed by the Guidelines on Respect for Human Rights in Responsible Supply Chains in September 2022. Along with several European and North American countries, the government of Japan contributed $2.5 million to one of the leading international organizations, UNDP, to promote human rights and eco-friendly business operations, especially in Asia and the Pacific. Japan has also contributed $4 million annually to the ILO, which has been implemented through the ILO/Japan Multilateral Program and the U.N. Trust Fund for Human Security.
The new wave of human rights due diligence has provided Japan’s METI with incentives to revise policy on foreign laborers, including the TITP. Japanese enterprises are afraid of the potential for large fines imposed by international norms such as the EU’s CSDDD. Japanese SMEs account for 99.7 percent of all enterprises in Japan, and most of these SMEs rely on the TITP workforce. Now that member states of the Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group have begun negotiations in the drafting process of the legally binding instrument and the European Union has started to support this movement aligned with its CSDDD, Japanese SMEs’ compliance matters for the future Japanese economy – hence the abolishment of the infamous TITP.
Second, the replacement of the TITP with Ikusei Shuro has shown the government’s continued preference for incremental changes in its foreign labor program without pronouncing a true immigration policy. As a response to indigenous and exogenous pressures against Japanese SMEs’ treatment of TITP laborers, the government not only abolished the TITP but also imposed several new rules on SME owners under the purview of Ikusei Shuro. This included setting up a third party to oversee labor conditions and allowing laborers to change workplaces. However, these practices have already been implemented on a case-by-case basis for a long time. For this reason, a leading human rights lawyer, Shoichi Ibusuki, has been strongly against the new labor program, arguing that it is substantially the same as the TITP.
A similar ambiguity can be observed in Japan’s standpoint of immigration policy. While introducing the Specified Skilled Worker visa to let the existing TITP laborers (or future foreign workers with Ikusei Shuro visas) stay longer and invite their families, Japan has not yet officially admitted the existence of an immigration policy.
When the U.N. Population Division in the UNDP estimated in 1999 that Japan would need about 10.5 million new immigrants between 2000 and 2050, the Obuchi Cabinet discussed whether the government should establish an immigration policy. The Fukuda Cabinet revived this discussion in 2008, proposing the opening of Japan to accept immigration, especially to workforces from abroad. However, due to internal criticisms from the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the public, the establishment of an immigration policy has been denied – even while Japanese governments increase the number of foreign workers and international students.
This obscurity – incrementally increasing labor migration without pronouncing an immigration policy – has remained, as reflected in Prime Minister Kishida’s comment on May 24, 2024: “In order to preserve the country, the government has no intention of adopting a so-called immigration policy by accepting foreigners and their families without imposing limits on their stay.”
This has raised a question of how to ensure consistency between promoting human rights due diligence for foreign workers in Japan and retaining a strict standpoint of labor migration without pronouncing an immigration policy.
The LDP in Japan published its policy idea regarding the acceptance of foreign workers in 2016. In this report, the LDP defined “immigrants” as people who possess a settlement visa at the time they arrive in Japan – which would exclude foreign workers. Without filling this gap between political sophistry and reality, human rights due diligence for foreign workers cannot be secured in Japan.