Fears over possible fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have hurt many apparel companies and farms, which are having trouble finding workers as hard-working foreign trainees and interns have fled for home.
Fears over possible fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have hurt many apparel companies and farms, which are having trouble finding workers as hard-working foreign trainees and interns have fled for home.
For example, on March 18, one week after the devastating quake and tsunami, all 16 Chinese interns who had been working at the Ichinoseki plant of Iwate Suntop Co. returned home.
The reason they gave was fears over the effects of the accident at the Fukushima plant.
Company executive Takaki Fujiwara said, "There will be a major effect on production."
The plant has about 100 workers, and the Chinese interns who had been in Japan for two to three years were among the key workers.
Although the plant was damaged by the quake and operations temporarily suspended, work resumed on March 22. However, one of the two production lines could not be started and company officials were forced to ask for a reduction of production and an extension of deadlines from the manufacturers they subcontracted for.
The company had been accepting foreign interns for about 10 years.
"They do not take days off even with low wages and their work is fast because they are young and serious," Fujiwara said.
At one time, the company had 30 interns. However, because of the interns, the company did not hire many young Japanese recruits fresh out of school and the average age of the workforce increased.
Company officials had begun a review of personnel policy with an eye toward the future when the quake hit.
With no prospect of the interns returning to Japan, company officials have strengthened their desire to move to a system that does not depend on interns.
Shigeru Chiba heads the Iwate Prefecture Apparel Cooperative, which serves as the agency to accept interns for member companies.
"While there are many companies that say interns are absolutely necessary, there are also moves afoot to switch to Japanese workers," Chiba said.
Thirteen cooperative member companies had a total of 106 interns, but after March 11, 89 of those interns returned home.
However, it will not be easy to switch to Japanese workers.
"Help wanted" ads placed with conditions similar to those under which interns work--a salary close to the minimum wage as well as overtime or work on days off when deadlines are close--produce very few responses from Japanese applicants.
"This is particularly hard work especially for younger Japanese," said Shoji Watanabe, the president of Sunlady Co., which manufactures women's clothing in Fukushima city.
He said there were many examples of new Japanese graduates who quit after six to 12 months on the job.
After the disasters, all 18 Chinese interns at the company returned home. The number of production lines was reduced from three to two.
The company's scale of operations will have to be reduced if it uses only Japanese workers. After workers did their best on the assumption the Chinese interns would eventually return, 14 actually did return by June.
"While there are various opinions, we would not be able to continue without interns," Watanabe said.
The return to their homes of large numbers of foreign interns after the disasters highlighted the wide range of sectors in which interns play important roles.
Farming is one such sector.
Koichi Gunji, 55, is a farmer in Hokota, Ibaraki Prefecture.
"While the best thing would be to have them return, it will likely become more difficult the more time goes by," he said.
Of the six Chinese interns who had worked on his farm, five returned home, with the only one remaining being an intern who came to the farm on March 9.
Gunji grows spinach, tomatoes and "mizuna" greens, which can all be harvested several times a year.
Because of the Fukushima nuclear accident, a temporary ban was placed on the spinach grown on his farm. With having to dispose of the spinach and work to manage the tomatoes, Gunji had no income from his farm over a two-month period.
Although Gunji's son quit work as a salaried employee two years ago to help on the farm, Gunji must now depend on his daughter-in-law as well as part-time workers.
While he has applied for new interns, Gunji has no idea when, if ever, those interns will come to his farm.
With the tomato harvesting season in late June and July, Gunji said, "I have to either reduce the harvest or work overtime."
Gunji was able to expand operations because he had depended on interns.
"I do not have the alternative of not accepting interns," he said. "I want to increase their number one by one in order to return my farm operations back to former levels."
Ibaraki Prefecture has the nation's second largest volume of agricultural production. It has about 6,000 foreign interns working on farms in the prefecture, with most from China.
In Hokota, about 400 of the 2,000 Chinese interns who had been working there have returned home.
While the local agricultural cooperative considered hiring senior citizens or disaster victims as replacement workers, it ran into problems, including working conditions and finding housing for the disaster victims.
Another Hokota farmer with problems is Hidehiro Morisaku, 55, who grows strawberries and tomatoes.
One of the two interns who had been working on his farm has returned home. Because he could not harvest the strawberries in time, he had to dispose of fruit on close to one-third of his farmland.
"The precondition for my farm is having two interns," Morisaku said. "I will be in a panic if a new intern does not show up."
In the worst-case scenario, Morisaku is considering reducing farm acreage to less than half of current levels in order to be able to work the farm with only family members.
The system of accepting foreign trainees and interns began in 1993 with the goal of transmitting technology and know-how about the industry to developing nations.
However, after problems emerged of interns being forced to do manual labor at low wages, the immigration control law was revised in July 2010 to strengthen measures to protect the rights of interns.
In 2008, a high of close to 200,000 interns worked in Japan, with about 80 percent coming from China.
There were many examples of local business groups or cooperatives serving as the agency to accept the interns.
Because the interns did work that many Japanese shunned, their importance in the workforce increased.
In the disaster-stricken areas, interns are a major presence in food manufacturing, including the processing of maritime products, in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. Similarly, textile and clothing companies in Fukushima Prefecture and agricultural concerns in Ibaraki Prefecture depend on interns.
According to the Justice Ministry, a total of 11,457 interns left Japan in the month or so after the March 11 quake and tsunami.
Although the ministry allowed interns who had not obtained re-entry permits to return to their original place of work, only 574 interns re-entered Japan in April.
There are said to be many cases in China of families refusing to allow family members to return to Japan because of concerns about the effects of the nuclear accident.