The position of foreign employees is precarious in everyday life. A single policy change can shake the basis of their status of residence. Even if they speak the language, they have no way to reach the information they need. There are moments when simply speaking a foreign language makes them fear for their safety. All of this applies to foreign employees working in Japan as well.
This page was translated from Japanese by AI. If anything is unclear, please refer to the Japanese version.
Before thinking about how to deal with foreign employees, there is something you should know first: the position they are in every day.
This is not about surface-level issues like not understanding the language or having a different culture. It is about something more fundamental: the precariousness of not knowing when the foundation of your life might collapse.
Consider the situation in the United States since 2025. Even a country that has long called itself "a nation of immigrants" can completely change how it treats foreigners when the administration changes. People who were residing legally can suddenly, one day, face deportation.
This is not only about the United States. No matter how long foreigners have lived in a country or how much tax they have paid, they do not have the right to vote. For members of parliament, there may be little reason to prioritize people who do not bring in votes. Taking a cynical view, one could even feel that they are being disregarded.
Even in the United States, "the nation of immigrants," mass deportations of immigrants took place. No one has grounds to say for certain that the same will never happen in Japan.
The very fact that accepting foreigners is being "debated" is a source of anxiety for those concerned. Even without any clear ill will, they may feel "maybe we are not welcome." In Vietnam, too, there are facilities that charge foreigners a higher admission fee than Vietnamese people. That alone was enough to make me feel unwelcome. This is a trivial matter, but if so, how do foreigners feel when they hear about or experience far more serious situations?
Even if the debate over accepting foreigners reflects a minority opinion, for those on the receiving end it is not a matter of numbers. The very fact that their existence is up for debate is what makes them anxious.
Even with JLPT N1, reading laws, administrative procedures, local rules and company-specific regulations in Japanese is an entirely different ability. There is a wide gap between being able to hold everyday conversations and being able to understand systems.
But the real problem lies even before this gap. They do not know what they do not know. They do not know where the information is. They do not know whom to ask. The very means of reaching information is invisible to them.
Japanese people have a rough sense that they can "ask the city office" or "look it up online." They have that sense because of accumulated experience from being born and raised in Japan and getting information in Japanese. Foreigners do not have that accumulated experience. Even if they speak the language, they do not have a "map" for finding information.
This lack of a "map" affects every aspect of daily life. When some trouble arises, they don't know what to do. They alone don't know what everyone around them takes for granted. That state continues every single day.
Not being able to get information is not merely inconvenient. In itself, it is a source of deep anxiety.
The anxiety does not stop at information. When you live abroad, your safety can be threatened by events that have nothing to do with you.
I have lived in Vietnam for 13 years. During that time, there were several occasions when I felt fear precisely because I am Japanese.
At one point, resentment toward a certain neighboring country rose rapidly in Vietnam. There was a period when I was afraid to speak Japanese in public, because simply speaking a foreign language could get me mistaken for someone from that country. To Vietnamese people, Japanese and that country's language are indistinguishable.
That is not all. After a Vietnamese girl was murdered in Japan, there was a period when resentment toward Japan itself spread in Vietnam. Voices asking "Why isn't the culprit punished severely right away?" and "Does Japan look down on Vietnam?" spread mainly on social media, and the atmosphere called for some caution when going out.
In my case, these were temporary. But living abroad means always living alongside such situations. Foreigners living in Japan are in the same environment.
A single policy change can shake the foundation of their lives. They have no means of getting information. Their safety can be threatened by incidents unrelated to them. What I have described so far are the anxieties foreigners carry every day.
Yet these anxieties are almost invisible from the outside. They work, they talk, they laugh. Seeing only that, everything appears to be fine.
They are invisible because people don't talk about them. And people don't talk about them because they can't. Foreign employees are "labor," but they are also human beings with feelings, families and anxieties. Yet hardly anyone can voice those anxieties at work.
Hiring foreigners means welcoming people in this position into your organization.
This piece has no tidy conclusion, but as someone who has spent many years as a "foreigner," my honest wish is this: "Foreigners are in a vulnerable position, so please be kind to them."