Photo/Illutration Four Vietnamese couples working for the Shizuo group in Shibetsu, Hokkaido, reside next door to the home of Yutaka Imai, second from right, the company chairman. (Takuya Asakura)

SHIBETSU, Hokkaido—A corporation here is not only providing young Vietnamese with opportunities to earn a living, but it is also helping them to raise families.

The Shizuo group, which operates a farm and construction company, is desperate to hold on to the workers, while they are eager to switch to the Class II visa version so they can remain in Japan permanently.

This city in northern Hokkaido has a population of about 17,000, less than 40 percent of the combined population in 1960 of the municipalities that now make up Shibetsu.

Over the past year, four Vietnamese couples working at Shizuo have become parents.

Chu Thi Suong, 27, one of the first technical intern trainees employed by the Shizuo group in 2015, gave birth to a baby boy.

She initially came to work in Japan because she wanted to help her parents back in Vietnam.

A year after her arrival, she met a fellow Vietnamese, Nguyen Duc Thang, 34, through Facebook. Thang at that time was working in a factory in Gifu Prefecture in central Japan.

After working for three years as a technical intern trainee, Suong returned to Vietnam, where she married Thang.

When Japan introduced the specified skills visa in 2019, Suong applied and was able to return to work with the Shizuo group.

Unlike the technical intern trainee visa, the specified skills visa allows the holders to find work in other companies.

Thang applied, obtained the specified skills visa and also began working for the Shizuo group.

That allowed the couple to begin their life together in northern Hokkaido. Their baby was born in December 2021.

Three Vietnamese women who first came to Hokkaido with Suong as technical intern trainees also obtained the specified skills visa to remain with Shizuo group.

The three married Vietnamese men, and the four couples now reside in the same apartment complex.

All four couples are hoping to switch to the Class II visa so they can continue living here indefinitely.

“Japan is the best place to give birth and raise a child,” Suong said.

She added that the weaker yen has led to a decrease in the number of Vietnamese who want to work in Japan, but she said others love life in Japan and are not only interested in money.

“More people will come to Japan” if the Class II visa is expanded, Suong said.

The four couples were also lucky to be employed by the Shizuo group.

The chairman, Yutaka Imai, 72, has gone out of his way to help his foreign workers. He takes courses on the weekends so he can better teach Japanese to his workers who want to obtain a driver’s license.

Suong refers to Imai as “our father in Japan.”

“Before being workers, they are humans. If we are to take them in, we must think of them as our family,” Imai said.

He said he hopes the government will expand the Class II visa to cover all sectors now using the Class I visa.

“If they can live here with their families, their seriousness toward their work as well as their study of Japanese will be much different,” Imai said. “They will also be better off financially in comparison to migrant workers.”

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