SNA (Tokyo) — Seven-Eleven Japan quietly established an organization last March called Seven Global Linkage in order to provide support to non-Japanese residents of the country. Shingetsu News Agency spoke to Makoto Yasui, one of the founders of the new organization, to ask him about its purposes and activities.

“Seven Global Linkage facilitates cooperation among companies which support non-Japanese working in Japan,” Yasui began.

Seven Global Linkage, which under Japanese law is classified as a general incorporated association (ippan shadan hojin) is currently backed by eight member companies, including its two core members, Seven & i Holdings and Seven-Eleven Japan.

Other corporate members include Seven Bank, the services of which include overseas remittances; one visa, Inc. which provides online visa application services; Global Trust Networks, which offers guarantor services for non-Japanese to allow them to rent rooms; and Tsunagu Group Marketing, a human resources firm.

Yasui explains that it is “social responsibility” for the nation’s largest convenience store chain to provide its employees with support.

If Seven-Eleven Japan seems like an odd candidate to be at the forefront of foreigner services in the country, it becomes more understandable once one realizes that the firm is probably the largest single employer of non-Japanese in Japan, with nearly 10% of its workforce–some 37,000 workers–being foreign nationals.

Yasui provides a breakdown, noting that there are now about 21,000 Seven-Eleven outlets in Japan employing a total of almost 400,000 people. Of the roughly 37,000 foreign employees, about 80%, or 30,000, are international students.

Put another way, nearly 10% of all international students residing in Japan are Seven-Eleven employees.

Yasui notes, “many non-Japanese have become pillars of Seven-Eleven. Some store owners want to keep them as regular workers, and some of the non-Japanese employees want to continue working in Japan long term.”

He also pointed to the growing labor shortage throughout the Japanese economy.

“As the working population has been decreasing, Japanese society has no choice but to accept foreign resources. The Japanese government has been trying to include foreign people as a policy. In such a situation, we must have a decent concept of acceptance for foreign people,” he explains.

He concludes, “We want convenience stores to become a base for multicultural coexistence.”

Part of what he means by “multicultural coexistence” is that Japanese must come to see foreigners as integral parts of their local communities. This can be difficult if most foreign workers are tucked away in factories or out on rural farms.

In contrast, convenience stores are one venue where ordinary urban Japanese can expect to interact face-to-face with foreign nationals.

“For example,” he explains, “when there is a diplomatic problem with China, it is important that Japanese also associate China with the Chinese people in their own communities, who often deliver bentos for them.”

One of Seven Global Linkage’s immediate tasks is to lobby the Japanese government to loosen its labor restrictions. International students, in principle, are not allowed to work in Japan. Those with special permission are allowed to work up to 28 hours a week. But once they graduate, the government expects them to leave Japan.

Seven Global Linkage hopes to see the introduction of a special visa allowing foreigners to work at convenience stores.

One does not have to dig too deeply to see the problems and serious limitations of what Seven Global Linkage is proposing, but it is a very rare effort by a major Japanese organization to begin to grapple with the notion that foreign residents may be something other than just temporary visitors.

Yasui recognizes that there is still a “problem of mind” in Japanese society in this respect.

“Japanese do not understand multicultural coexistence,” he asserts. “Japanese have been unable to globalize their minds. If this continues, Japanese will make mistakes in Japan’s role in the international community and in its diplomacy. So a globalization of minds is important.”

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