Photo/Illutration Indonesian workers remove bones from fish at a factory for bonito flakes in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, on May 13. (Akihito Ogawa)

Were it not for migrant labor, a key ingredient in traditional Japanese cuisine could soon become scarce.

Supplies of dried bonito flakes that provide the rich umami of dashi broth are under threat from the country’s worsening labor shortage.

Foreign labor is essential to sustain production and processing of bonito flakes, also known as katsuobushi, say industry insiders.

In the western Pacific, about 3,000 kilometers south of Tokyo, a subsidiary of fisheries giant Nissui Corp. operates two purse seine fishing vessels. The ships spend roughly 25 days at sea catching hundreds of thousands of bonito.

Nearly half of the 30 crew members aboard one of the ships hail from Indonesia, Kiribati and Micronesia.

Kyowa Fishery Co. relies on a government-sanctioned program that permits foreign nationals to work on Japanese fishing vessels through partnerships with overseas businesses.

The program is designed to ease labor shortages in the fisheries industry as well as counter the aging domestic workforce.

Aboard the ships, crew members are supported with multilingual signs in eight languages and pork-free meals tailored for Muslim Indonesian workers.

“With Japan’s fishing workforce aging rapidly, young, physically capable foreign crew members are indispensable,” said Yoshinao Naito, head of Kyowa Fishery’s overseas purse seine operations.

The company is currently upgrading crew cabins and onboard facilities to make the working environment more comfortable so crew members feel encouraged to stay.

Back in Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture--a major production hub for katsuobushi--the reliance on migrant workers is also evident.

At family-run Yamakichi Kunisawa Hyakuma Shoten, five of the 18 factory workers are employed through the government’s foreign technical trainee program. One worker is from Vietnam and the others are from Indonesia.

A key task is to remove bones from boiled fish by hand with tweezers. Producing high-grade bonito flakes involves 15 labor-intensive steps, including repeated mold applications and drying.

Because the fish vary in size and shape, the work cannot be mechanized and requires skilled hands, according to company executive Tomohiro Kunisawa.

MORE THAN HALF THE WORKFORCE

Anticipating it would eventually face a labor shortage, the company first began accepting trainees from China from around 2010. But as wages rose in China and job opportunities in Tokyo became more attractive, applicants dwindled, prompting a shift to Vietnam and Indonesia.

“We still have a higher ratio of Japanese workers compared to other companies,” Kunisawa said. “Some manufacturers rely on foreign labor for more than half of their workforce. If the workers left, their production could drop by half.”

One trainee, a 24-year-old woman from Indonesia, is paid 165,000 yen ($1,100) monthly in her first year.

“It’s significantly more than the 20,000 to 30,000 yen I could earn back home,” she said.

Despite the hard work and winter cold that she is not used to, the woman said she finds the job rewarding as it allows her to send money home to her family.

Kunisawa personally handles recruitment by traveling overseas to ensure trainees understand the challenges they will face living in Japan.

“Treating them with the same respect as Japanese workers is essential,” he said.

The percentage of foreign workers in Japan has surged in recent years, according to data from the internal affairs and labor ministries.

In 2009, only one in 112 workers was non-Japanese. By 2024, the ratio had climbed to one in 29. In the fishing industry, the figure has gone from one in 391 to one in 19. In food manufacturing, it is now one in seven, up from one in 33.

With Japan’s population projected to decline from its 2008 peak of 128 million to 87 million by 2070, migrant labor is no longer just a stopgap measure.

The proportion of foreign residents is expected to exceed 10 percent of the total population by then, reshaping the workforce across nearly every industry and region in the country.

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