Japan arrests recruiters over illegal Vietnamese hiring

Images

×

The Metropolitan Police Department has arrested three men over alleged involvement in employing Vietnamese nationals without work permits in Fukuroi, Shizuoka Prefecture. japantimes.co.jp

A solar farm in Nakai, Kanagawa Prefecture, in March 2016. Japan gets about a tenth of its electricity from solar panels despite having nearly no domestic production of photovoltaics (PVs). japantimes.co.jp

As Japan accelerates AI adoption, policymakers and corporations frame the technology as essential to offsetting a projected labor shortfall of 11 million workers by 2040. japantimes.co.jp

Inaka no Taiho: Chinese restaurant offers experience of ‘receiving life’ japantimes.co.jp

‹ ›

Tokyo police arrested three men over an alleged scheme to place Vietnamese nationals without work permits into a metal-processing factory in Fukuroi, Shizuoka Prefecture, the Japan Times reports. Investigators say four Vietnamese workers—who had left Japan’s technical intern facilities and were believed to have overstayed—were employed at Nippon Kenma between November 2024 and January 2026 after being introduced through brokers on social media.

The arrests point to how Japan’s labour shortages are being filled through a parallel market that sits beside the formal visa system. The factory head, Tetsuya Nakamura, told police the plant could not secure workers even after advertising, a familiar complaint in regional manufacturing. The staffing agency run by Kazuhiko Ida allegedly supplied the workaround: a recruitment pipeline that begins with workers exiting tightly controlled intern placements and ends with cash-in-hand jobs that cannot survive contact with immigration enforcement.

What makes the case unusually concrete is the paper trail. Police said the factory paid about ¥90 million in referral fees to the staffing agency. Since November 2020, a total of 65 Vietnamese nationals were sent to the plant through the same firm, according to investigators. Those numbers suggest a standing business model rather than an opportunistic one: the intermediaries are paid to absorb legal risk, while the employer buys continuity of production.

The technical intern program was designed to supply labour while promising training, but in practice it often binds workers to a single employer and visa status. When wages disappoint or workplace conflicts escalate, leaving the placement can mean falling out of status. The Japan Times reports the four workers cited wage and interpersonal problems before quitting their intern facilities—an exit that turns a labour dispute into an immigration problem and pushes workers toward brokers who trade in new job introductions.

For employers, the attraction is obvious: a ready supply of labour in sectors where domestic hiring is difficult, with costs shifted onto workers and intermediaries. For workers, the informal market can look like the only way to remain in Japan after paying recruitment costs to come in the first place. For the state, enforcement arrives late, after the factory has already bought labour for months and the agency has already collected fees.

The case came to light after police arrested a 26-year-old Vietnamese man on suspicion of illegal stay last May. By then, the referral system had been operating long enough to send dozens of workers through the same channel and bill the factory accordingly.