Six-thirty a.m. Narita International Airport. JAL 722, a DC-10 from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, lands. This plane is full of Indonesians and Malaysians. One look at them and you can guess they are newly arrived workers heading for jobs the Japanese won't do at low, low wages.
There are more Indonesians than Malaysians, and the two do not mix. The Malaysians are mostly Malaysian Chinese. Indonesians travel in two or three groups, each a stranger to the others.
Each group has a team leader whose manners, dress and confidence clearly show he is not one of the workers. The team leader holds everybody's passport and other travel documents. He looks competent and seems to know his way around the airport.
As I watch, Japanese men converge on the Indonesians, taking away all the passports. They then fill in the necessary Japanese immigration documents. The Japanese men then present the bundle of passports to the immigration officer at the counter. The passports are stamped without question and handed over and the "tourists"' walk through the immigration barriers.
Outside the vans are waiting, with tough-looking Japanese at the wheels. The workers are taken to a "holding pen" in the Tokyo suburbs, where they will stay for anything from a day to a month while jobs are found for them. After that there are uncertain prospects. They may have to do any job, anywhere in Japan. Conditions vary but essentially it is a daily struggle for survival in a totally different environment.
Escaping the yakuza
Karman Karim, 24, is a typical case. He was born in Surabaya. Like thousands of other Indonesian youth, Karman migrated to Jakarta to work as a construction labourer. He soon lost his job and worked collecting aluminium waste from the rubbish dumps, earning an average of about 2000 rupiah (¥120) a day.
Karman then worked collecting kretek (popular Indonesian cigarettes) from the roadside and selling them to cigarette manufactures, who recycle them. One day he was approached by a well-dressed Indonesian and him for a drink. Over the drink the man, known to Karman only as Jan, told him there were many Indonesians working in Japan and earning "big" money. He asked Karman to join them.
Karman accepted. Without telling his family, he filled in documents to apply for a passport. He was then taken to a
squatter area and housed with about 20 other youths, all heading to Japan. When the passports were ready, the agent took them all to the airport in a hired bus. He also had return tickets for all of them.
They boarded JAL722 which took the Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur-Narita route. JAL was preferred because, according to the agent, Japanese immigration authorities were less strict if they used the Japanese carrier.
The agent did not accompany them, however. Another agent, who could speak Japanese, took over, and when they cleared Narita immigration, two Japanese men took charge of them. They had a van and drove to a construction site workers' long house in Chiba prefecture.
Only at the construction site were Karman and his colleagues told about working conditions and wages. They were told that the cost of bringing each worker to Japan was ¥400,000 including the air fare. They had to pay off this amount before they got any wages. This meant that for their first six months in Japan, they would only get food and lodging, and pocket money for cigarettes. Only after this was paid off would they actually get to see real money.
It was modern slavery. They were owned by a Japanese labour agent who had connections with other agents in Asia. Basically, he was a yakuza or linked closely with the yakuza, who have developed good links with the underworld in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila.
The agent sold each worker to a construction site owner for ¥26,000 a day. This was the rate in Tokyo's Machida area around March to December 1990. The owner paid the money directly to the agent, who paid the worker twice a month. The workers in the Machida area doing demolition work were paid ¥5000 a day. If it rained there was no work and no wages. Food and lodging were provided free.
A van picked them up at 6.30 a.m. and took them to the work site. They worked until 1 p.m. when bento/lunch was provided. At 6.30 p.m. they stopped work. Then they loaded the equipment into a truck and left for their lodging at 7 p.m. They had to bathe and wash their clothes by 8 p.m., when dinner was served. After that they were free. But in Machida, the shacho (boss) advised them not to go into town because the police might spot them. They were also asked to shave off their moustaches and were given Japanese names which they were to use while making telephone calls or writing letters within Japan.
Four workers slept in one room. Each room was equipped with a TV
and videotapes. The workers drank cheap whiskey all night. Besides Karman and his Indonesian colleagues there were also Filipinos and Ibans from Sarawak, Malaysia, working and living together.
Some old Japanese workers also worked with them but they did not sleep with the foreign workers.
Sometimes the Japanese workers helped Indonesian workers to escape to other work sites. They escaped to avoid paying the ¥400,000, which they thought was too much and very unfair. Also if they escaped the yakuza and worked as independent workers, they could get higher wages, some up to ¥9000 a day after one year of labour.
But the yakuza seemed to know where to look for them, as they have a network of employers in given areas. Most times employers were also afraid and refused to hire escaped workers. If the escaped workers were caught, there could be beatings.
Karman escaped from the Kanai work camp near Machida and went to Shinjuku. He slept under the bridges and in the subways for a few days until he ran out of money. Some foreign workers gave him my telephone number and he called me.
I met Karman in Shinjuku and he was wet, hungry and frightened of the yakuza, especially of one man he called Kazuo. He really believed Kazuo would kill him if he caught him. Investigations later showed that Kazuo was a small-time yakuza working for a big one. The big one had an office in Asakusa, where the passports and other documents of all the foreign workers under this yakuza group were kept. However, efforts to get the passport back failed.
Karman then went to the Indonesian embassy and reported that he had lost his passport and asked to be issued a new one. He was rudely told he had to pay ¥180,000 if he wanted a replacement passport. To get a one-time travel paper back to Indonesia would cost ¥5000 in official fees. He said he had no money and just wanted to get home to Indonesia, but was told either to find the money or the passport or get a document from the Japanese police saying he had lost the passport.
Karman then went to a Japanese police koban in Akasaka Mitsuke to lodge a report saying he had lost his passport. The police took down all his particulars, refused to accept his report and told him to go away! Finally, after staying with other Indonesians for several days, Karman got another demolition job in Noborito on the Odakyu Line. He was paid ¥7000 but had to pay for his own food. Lodging was free.
Then suddenly Karman cut off all communication. We do not know the real reasons. He must be in Japan now working somewhere, another one of the thousands of undocumented workers without passports or other travel documents. His problems will increase when he wants to go back to Indonesia. He will have to surrender to police or the immigration authorities, and will be deported.
There are thousands of Indonesians like Karman working in Japan. Their passports have been taken away. They have no names, no addresses and no access to services such as medical insurance.
Going home penniless
L.H. Lim, 42, is a Malaysian Chinese from Titi, a small mountain village in Negri Sembilan state, 110 km west of Kuala Lumpur. Lim was an odd-job man who used to hunt for wild boar in the Titi jungle.
A police officer in Seremban, the main town in Negri Sembilan, and his brother, not a policeman, were operating a worker trafficking syndicate supplying Chinese villagers to the yakuza in Tokyo. They had supplied hundreds of workers along this route, and were also supplying labour to Taiwan with the help of the daughter of a Taiwanese army general with whom they had links. The general's daughter was also supplying Malaysian Chinese labourers to Tokyo through yakuza connections in Singapore and Tokyo, according to Malaysian Chinese workers we interviewed.
Lim was approached by an agent for the two brothers in Titi. He was told he had to pay them $4000 and buy his own ticket and, in exchange the brothers guaranteed to get him a job paying at least ¥5000 a day. Lim agreed, bought the ticket and paid the brothers the $4000. He and eight others then flew JAL722 and arrived at Narita, where the yakuza were waiting for them. Unlike the Indonesians, the Malaysians had to clear immigration by themselves. Immigration was not as strict with Malaysians as it was with Filipinos, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis.
Lim's group was met after immigration by two Japanese men, and they were taken in a van to Shin Okubo and put in a crowded boarding house with other foreign workers. Unlike Karman, Lim and the other Malaysians were "independent" workers and they did not need to surrender their passports to the yakuza but still had to accept whatever employment they were given.
Lim stayed at the hostel only one day; the next day he was cleaning subways at night. He was paid ¥9000 a day, without food or lodging. He and several other Malaysian Chinese rented a "sleeping place" in an apartment rented by a Shanghai Chinese, who had a student visa and used it to persuade landlords to rent rooms to him, which he then sub-let to Malaysian Chinese
workers at ¥1000 per day, making a huge profit. Lim's "sleeping space" had no toilet and no cooking facilities, only a TV which was permanently on.
Lim worked between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. every day cleaning subways. The money was good, compared to wages in Titi. His friends joined him from his village. Other workers also brought their friends from their villages to work in Japan.
Although life was difficult, Lim was happy as he was earning about seven times the salary of a labourer in Malaysia, until two incidents happened.
First, he got a toothache and did not know what to do, where to go and how to get treatment. While walking around Shinjuku, he spotted the kanji sign for a dentist (Lim, as a Chinese, could read and understand the kanji signs, which originate from China). He walked in and told them his problem. He was rejected because he did not have any health insurance. He tried a few other dentists, and one agreed to fix his tooth for ¥8000. It was too expensive for Lim, and he realised what would happen if he became seriously sick. He started to worry.
Two months later, Lim's abdomen began to ache. He thought it was indigestion and went to work, but the pain refused to go away. The next day he became worse and he had to stop work and seek treatment. He walked into several clinics but was turned away, not because he was a foreigner but because he did not have any insurance. Finally the pain became unbearable. He collapsed on the street. He tried to hail a taxi to get him to a hospital, but the taxi drivers, who thought he was drunk, refused to stop.
The police found him collapsed on the roadside and called an ambulance. They went to two hospitals, but both said all the beds were occupied on learning that he was a foreigner. Finally the ambulance went to the police hospital, where Lim was immediately admitted and operated on. He had a ruptured appendix. He could have died if the police hospital had not accepted him.
He stayed at the hospital for 28 days, and his bill amounted ¥1.5million, but he only had ¥8000. The hospital asked for the ¥8000 as a "thank you payment." Lim paid it.
He was very unhappy that he had caused "so much" trouble to everyone in Japan, especially to the police hospital. He felt very ashamed and wanted to do something but could not. He tried to forget by running away. One day he just walked out of the hospital. The hospital reported it to the police, who caught him at his friend's room the very same day. He was deported back to Malaysia the next day. Lim had spent close to $5000 to get to Japan to make his fortune, but he went back without a single cent.
Like Lim, many thousands of Malaysian Chinese men and women are working all over Japan, cleaning the subways, working in chicken farms and at construction sites. They are working for the dream of making a fortune and heading back to Malaysia. A few will realise their dream but at a heavy cost to their bodies and minds. For the rest, life in Japan will be a daily fight for survival and, as with Lim, will end in rude deportation back to their villages.
These two incidents illustrate, contrary to popular belief and official claims, that the trafficking in Asian labour is open and widely condoned in Japan despite new tough legislation punishing employers and undocumented labourers. The trafficking is worldwide. It is conducted openly with unofficial blessing and feeds a growing industry for cheap labour.
[Abridged from AMPO Japan-Asia Quarterly Review.]