When a young Siberian engineer met the love of his life in a “small chat dedicated to Japanese poetry”, the decision to move to Tokyo became inevitable.
Gleb Cherdantsev quickly found a job in 2024 with Rakuten, a large Japanese technology conglomerate with interests from ecommerce to mobile. It was the perfect place for an ambitious, foreign-born engineer to land.
“I began studying Japanese casually, exactly because I wanted to eventually become able to read Japanese literature and poems. However my language proficiency has never been enough to seriously consider moving to Japan until I found the opportunity offered by Rakuten,” says Cherdantsev.
The engineer is one of a wave of well-educated foreigners who have found jobs and built lives in Japan. His story is mirrored in many other countries around the globe, despite often mounting anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. Across Asia, demographic challenges are being met in various ways. But in Japan, where labour shortage is a key constraint, companies increasingly have no choice but to rely on immigration to find the talent they need.
Despite obstacles of language and politics, the number of foreign residents reached almost 4mn as of June this year, an increase of 5 per cent over the previous six months and almost doubling since 2012. By October last year, there were roughly 2mn foreign workers in the country.
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Cherdantsev says: “I could never say that my life in Japan in general is frictionless because English isn’t that popular and widespread here. However, speaking about Rakuten specifically, I feel zero to no obstacles, or challenges because English is the official language of communication inside the company . . . all communication, verbal communication, emails and documents are created and maintained in English.”
He says his own team at Rakuten is made up of people from France, the US, China, Canada and India, while the company overall says that roughly 70 per cent of its more than 6,000 engineers come from abroad.
It is a deliberate strategy. In 2010, Rakuten’s founder and chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani told his shocked workers that from then on, they would conduct all of their “business, from official meetings to internal emails, in English”. It also puts on seminars to help foreign workers understand Japanese workplace culture, which can be demanding.
Although still far from common, other companies, like Fast Retailing which owns the Uniqlo brand, have similar policies in place as they try to internationalise their businesses and bring in talent that is in short supply in Japan — last year the country lost close to 900,000 of its fast-ageing population of roughly 120mn of nationals.
Smaller companies are making similar efforts, including a mid-sized construction firm in Okinawa — called Okinawa Denshi — which introduced an AI-powered intercom app to help Japanese supervisors talk to the foreign workers who are increasingly important to myriad sectors, including construction. Others, like Fujitsu, have set up mentoring programmes for foreign workers as well as language-exchange groups and clubs.
Cherdantsev says his team is made up of people from France, the US, China, Canada and India © Yutaro Yamaguchi for the FT
By making language less of a barrier, and trying to reduce the culture shock of working in Japan, they hope to widen the available pool of talent. It is now common to find workers from South and Central Asia or eastern Europe working at Japan’s convenience stores, having taken intensive courses in the vocabulary and grammar needed to do a service job in the country.
But despite the obvious pressures that are building for businesses struggling to find workers, immigration is still largely taboo and politicians are wary of tackling the issue directly.
“Society needs foreign workers, but it is a delicate situation in Japan, because immigration has a very negative connotation,” says Toshihiro Menju, visiting professor at Kansai University of International Studies. “I call the situation an immigration dilemma.”
Japan’s biggest companies are not willing to wait around, particularly those that are already international and that have been forced abroad in search of growth by precisely the same dynamics producing a labour shortage at home.
Society needs foreign workers, but it is a delicate situation in Japan, because immigration has a very negative connotation
Toshihiro Menju, Kansai University of International Studies
A few years ago, Japan Tobacco started to bring together its international and domestic businesses. Now the tobacco group, with its research headquarters in Switzerland, is moving staff into Japan to further that effort.
“I was sent over to internationalise the lab in Japan . . . to hold their hand and make it easier to serve the international business,” says Ian Jones, the first foreign-born head of a research laboratory in Japan for the company.
His task has been helped by a few key factors: English is the language of businesses across the company and for science more broadly; and modern translation tools make everything “a lot less stressful”.
“I’m not trying to make this lab a European lab. As with everything, everyone needs to meet halfway,” he says.
“It is now much more common for non-Japanese colleagues to work here in other departments too, like finance . . . in science, we just lagged behind. It wasn’t they didn’t want to come, it was just the last under the spotlight,” Jones adds.
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But while immigration is climbing, and the government has been gradually making it easier for people to stay long term, including manual workers — politics could still present a significant and growing barrier.
The recent rise of the rightwing, anti-immigration party Sanseito has led to a hardening of policies across the political landscape. One of newly appointed Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s first acts was to put a minister “in charge of a society of well-ordered and harmonious co-existence with foreign nationals”.
Kansai University of International Studies’ Menju says: “I think the Sanseito party got very powerful recently by pushing the slogan of ‘Japan first’, and for people with frustrations with the LDP [ruling Liberal Democratic party] and other Japanese parties, Sanseito candidates — looking very young with new ideas — are breaking a taboo by talking about immigration.
“So it is really a movement against the status quo that is new and exciting for some people. It is hard to know how long it will last, but Takaichi is trying to take advantage of it,” he adds. “No matter what, in the longer term, Japan needs more younger workers . . . so whatever the Takaichi administration says against immigration, it doesn’t change that fact.”
Japan’s first foreign-born tour bus driver Iyus, who is from Indonesia, spent years ‘learning Japanese customs and manners’ © David Keohane/FT
But for Iyus, the first foreign-born tour bus driver in Japan, the political situation is irrelevant. He has not only learnt Japanese to a good standard, but has also spent years “learning Japanese customs and manners”.
After moving to Japan from Indonesia in 2013 on a student visa, he is now planning his life here with his wife and two children, the youngest of whom was born in his adopted country.
He has plans to expand the business of Nikko Kanko Bus, the bus company where he works, by using his connections to Indonesia, but first he wants to demonstrate to Japan that he can do the job he has spent so long preparing for.
It is a slow, iterative process that is being forced by demographics and that will either change minds in Japan or reinforce old fears.
For Iyus, his role is clear: “I see this job as not only driving, but building trust and proving that a foreigner is able to work like a professional driver. And I will try my best to do that.”
AloJapan.com