Japan's Convenience Store Giants Defend Foreign Workers as Government Moves to Tighten Rules

110,000 Foreign Workers Help Keep Three Major Chains Running

Japan's three largest convenience store chains are warning that tighter rules on foreign residents could weaken the workforce behind the country's round the clock shopping services. Seven-Eleven Japan, Lawson and FamilyMart employed 110,000 foreign workers in 2025, compared with 80,000 in May 2024. That is an increase of 30,000 people, or 37.5 percent.

Executives from all three companies have publicly urged the government to protect people already working legally and to avoid policies that encourage exclusion. Their intervention comes as the administration of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi moves to tighten regulations on foreigners living in Japan.

Junro Ito, executive chair of Seven & i Holdings, the parent company of Seven-Eleven Japan, set out his position to reporters at a New Year reception hosted by the Japan Business Federation in Tokyo. He said foreign employees should be valued for more than their ability to fill vacancies at low cost.

"We certainly do not see them as cheap labor, but want them to learn in Japan through work, including their studies," Ito stated.

Many of these employees are international students, combining education with limited hours of paid work. Their presence has become central to an industry struggling to recruit enough Japanese workers, especially for overnight shifts. For students, store work provides income for tuition and living expenses, along with experience in Japanese language, business practices and customer service.

Convenience stores operate through a dense network of outlets, many open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers use them to buy prepared meals, pay utility bills and withdraw cash at almost any hour. The executives' warning connects immigration policy directly to whether those everyday services can continue at the level consumers expect.

The workforce figures also require care with dates. The increase from 80,000 to 110,000 was described as occurring over eight months, although the figures were dated May 2024 and 2025 without a specific month for the latter. The account of the government's tightening plans likewise gave no detailed measures or timetable.

Students Can Work, but Their Education Comes First

Japan's student residence status does not, in principle, authorize employment. Students who want to work must apply to the Immigration Services Agency for permission to undertake activities outside those allowed by their residence status. With that permission, they can work up to 28 hours a week.

The limit is intended to keep education as the main purpose of their stay. Convenience stores gain access to a pool of workers, while students earn money without being expected to replace study with unrestricted employment. Ito accepted that balance when discussing the rules.

Rather than letting work interfere with their studies, having the current limit on working hours is OK.

Ito's concern was about the broader direction of policy and its effect on foreign residents who follow the rules. He warned that a push for tighter controls could develop into hostility toward people whose work is already helping Japanese businesses.

"It would be scary for the situation to turn into a form of exclusionism. It's necessary to protect those who are working without any problems," Ito warned.

Students can also develop ambitions that extend beyond a temporary job. Ito recalled hearing a foreign worker express a wish to carry the business experience gained in Japan back home.

"If Seven-Eleven opens in my home country someday, I want to be the owner of the first one," Ito quoted one worker.

The arrangement nevertheless creates a difficult transition after graduation. Foreign students often cannot continue working in a store where they have acquired experience because their college major may be unrelated to retail work. Employers then have to recruit and train replacements, while workers face uncertainty about continuing their careers in Japan.

The central problem is therefore both recruitment and retention. Stores need enough people for today's shifts, but they also need a way to retain trained employees. A system built heavily around students creates repeated turnover as education ends and residence requirements change.

FamilyMart Wants a Clearer Route Into Retail Work

FamilyMart President Kensuke Hosomi identified a gap in Japan's Specified Skilled Worker system, commonly called SSW. The program accepts foreign workers with relevant knowledge or skills in industries facing serious shortages, but convenience store retail is outside its coverage.

Hosomi urged policymakers to separate broad arguments about immigration from the circumstances of individual workers and businesses. He cautioned against continually adding restrictions without considering how they affect people already contributing to the economy.

General theory should be separated from individual cases in discussions. It's not good to keep moving in the direction of continuing to impose restrictions excessively.

Introduced in 2019, the SSW program marked a change in Japan's traditionally restrictive approach to foreign labor. It covers 16 industrial fields, including nursing care, construction, agriculture and food service. Convenience stores are excluded even though their operations include selling food and serving customers.

The program has two categories. SSW (i) is for workers with considerable knowledge or experience in specified fields and allows stays of up to five years. SSW (ii) is for workers with proficient skills and permits longer stays and family accompaniment. In practical terms, these categories provide an employment route linked to skills in an approved industry rather than to being enrolled as a student.

Hosomi said adding convenience retail would help address the staffing shortage and give workers and employers a clearer framework.

It is extremely important to resolve the shortage of workers, including by adding the convenience store category of retailing to the system.

The development of the workforce and its policy framework spans several years:

• 2019: Japan introduced the Specified Skilled Worker program.
• May 2024: The three largest convenience store chains employed 80,000 foreign workers.
• 2024: Nepal became the largest country of origin for foreign workers at Seven-Eleven and Lawson, overtaking China and Vietnam.
• 2025: Foreign employment across Seven-Eleven Japan, Lawson and FamilyMart reached 110,000.
• January 20, 2026: The industry's warning came amid moves by the Takaichi administration to tighten regulations on foreign residents.

Lawson Sees a Worldwide Competition for Workers

Lawson President Sadanobu Takemasu described a sense of crisis about the industry's outlook. His concern went beyond whether Japanese stores could compete with other domestic employers. He said workers would increasingly compare countries when deciding where to live and earn a living.

"In the future, there will be a global labor shortage, and it will be an age when workers ponder, 'Which country shall I work in?' If they don't choose this country, it will become one where a convenient lifestyle is difficult (because the convenience store business won't be sustainable)," Takemasu warned.

Japan's aging population and declining birth rate have already made recruitment difficult. Overnight jobs are particularly hard to fill with domestic workers, putting pressure on a business model built around constant availability.

Convenience store companies are trying to reduce that pressure through technology. Self-checkout registers and artificial intelligence systems can take on tasks such as ordering stock. Human employees are still needed to handle products, respond to customers and make judgments when a transaction or service request becomes complicated.

Takemasu outlined a strategy that combines technology with better conditions for foreign workers, rather than relying on either approach alone.

We will make proper use of AI, digital technology and robotics to boost productivity. While preparing a work environment that foreigners will choose, we want to raise productivity.

Productivity means getting more useful work done with the same resources. For a store, reducing time spent on routine tasks can give employees more time for stocking shelves or helping customers. Retaining workers who already understand those tasks also reduces the time needed to train replacements.

South Korea, Australia and European countries are also recruiting foreign workers to address demographic pressures. Japan's ability to attract people in that market depends partly on clear and fair immigration rules and on whether foreign residents feel welcome in workplaces and communities.

At the Register, a Short Answer Can Be Difficult

At a Lawson store in Tokyo's Koto Ward, trainer Jiyu Chen helps foreign employees learn tasks that can appear simple until language and unfamiliar procedures become involved. Chen, a Chinese national who came to Japan as an international student 17 years ago, trains about 50 workers across four stores. Around 90 percent of them are foreign nationals.

Two trainees, a woman aged 20 from Nepal and a worker aged 19 from Vietnam, illustrate the demands of the job. They must communicate in Japanese while handling microwave ovens, store lottery systems and other services that require different procedures.

The Japanese response "iidesu" can mean either acceptance or refusal, depending on context and tone. The Nepalese worker recalled misunderstanding a customer's answer about a plastic bag, failing to provide one and being scolded. A brief exchange at the register became difficult because the same expression could point toward opposite actions.

The Vietnamese worker said cashier duties were particularly challenging because register screens were not multilingual. Employees had to memorize functions without being able to read instructions in their native languages. The task involved learning the language and remembering how the equipment worked at the same time.

Seven-Eleven has placed illustrated pointing sheets at registers so customers and employees can communicate without relying entirely on speech. Lawson has introduced badges identifying the languages staff members speak. FamilyMart uses a virtual reality training system available in 19 languages, allowing workers to learn procedures before serving customers.

The changing origins of the workforce make such support increasingly relevant. Chinese and Vietnamese nationals were the largest groups at Seven-Eleven and Lawson ten years earlier. Nepal had overtaken both by 2024. At FamilyMart, about 80 percent of foreign employees come from five countries: China, Vietnam, Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Training Also Covers Japan's Service Expectations

FamilyMart's training extends beyond vocabulary and register operations to the expectations surrounding Japanese customer service. Its online programs use Chinese and Vietnamese employees as instructors, helping explain practices that may be unfamiliar to workers from other cultural backgrounds.

Lessons include bowing when greeting customers, holding items with both hands when passing them over and how to smile appropriately for Japanese customers. These practices form part of "omotenashi," the Japanese approach to hospitality and attentive service.

The cultural principle that "the customer is God" creates demanding expectations about behavior. Employees who do not automatically follow those conventions can be perceived as disrespectful, even when a difference in habits is the cause. Such misunderstandings can create stress for staff and customers and may contribute to workers leaving their jobs.

Ayako Tsutsui, a manager in FamilyMart's sales promotion department, explained that the company wants to prevent cultural differences from turning into workplace conflict. She also described store employment as a chance for foreign residents to take part in Japanese society.

Convenience stores want to avoid conflicts between store staff and customers caused by cultural differences so that their employees will stay at their jobs as long as possible. Many foreign employees come to Japan with the dream of studying Japanese. I hope convenience stores can be a place for such people to actively participate in Japanese society.

Training and communication tools therefore serve two connected purposes. They help stores deliver the service customers expect, and they help employees feel capable of doing their jobs. A worker who can understand a customer's request and operate the register confidently is better placed to remain in the role.

Convenience stores can also become an everyday point of contact between foreign residents and the wider community. Their role in integration rests on practical support: explaining unfamiliar customs, making procedures understandable and allowing workers to develop language and service skills through regular interaction.

A Growing Foreign Workforce Meets a Shrinking Labor Supply

Japan has traditionally accepted relatively few foreign workers and avoided the term "immigration" because of its association with permanent residence. The basic policy approach has been to admit workers on the understanding that they will eventually return to their home countries.

Economic demand has moved in a different direction. Foreign employment has quadrupled since 2007 to more than two million people in a country of 125 million. Foreign workers account for approximately 3.4 percent of the workforce, a share that remains low by international standards despite the increase.

The demographic pressures are longstanding. Japan's birth rate fell below the replacement level of 2.1 in the mid-1970s and was described as approximately 1.4. Replacement level is the average number of children needed per woman for a population to replace itself across generations. Life expectancy was given as 85.5 years, the world's longest. Together, fewer births and longer lives leave a shrinking population of working age supporting a growing elderly population.

The International Monetary Fund estimates Japan's potential growth over the medium term at just 0.6 percent, partly because of reduced labor supply. Potential growth describes how quickly an economy can sustainably expand with the workers, equipment and productivity available to it.

Earlier international figures show the pressure on recruitment. In 2013, job vacancies amounted to 3.2 percent of Japan's labor force population, compared with 1.1 percent in Germany and 2.5 percent in the United States. In parts of the service sector, there have been periods with more than three openings for each waiter position and five for security guard roles.

Population projections put the share of non-citizens at 10.8 percent by 2070. Some experts believe that level could be reached sooner. In 2023, the increase in foreign residents was nearly twice the government's projection, suggesting that the foreign resident population could reach 10 million by the 2040s.

Foreign residents and foreign workers are different groups: residents include people who are not employed. Both sets of figures, however, describe a country in which foreign nationals are becoming a larger part of everyday economic and social life. The convenience store sector gives that change a visible form through the people staffing neighborhood counters.

Political Parties Take Different Positions

Foreign worker policy has become a prominent election issue, with parties offering sharply different responses to labor shortages. The political debate described during Shigeru Ishiba's premiership included a moderate position from the prime minister and support from the ruling coalition for accepting workers in service industries and other sectors with shortages.

Ishiba warned against a politics of exclusion as opposition parties pressed for tighter rules.

"Nothing will come from confrontation and division," Ishiba said.

The Democratic Party for the People and Sanseito have called for tougher regulation of foreign worker admissions, arguing that more attention should first go toward helping young Japanese people enter employment. Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People, criticized the order of the government's priorities.

What has to be done first is taking steps to help Japanese young people work more. [The government and the ruling parties] got the order wrong by accepting foreign workers simply because workforce is in short supply.

Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya advocated a "Japanese First" policy. He said that "appropriate acceptance is required" while opposing excessive acceptance of foreign nationals.

Yoshihiko Noda, leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, took the opposing position, supporting a multicultural society that respects minorities and warning that exclusion could encourage division and conflict.

"Foreign residents are critical to maintaining Japan's economy," Noda said.

Business opinion is strongly supportive of expansion: a Nikkei survey found that 98 percent of Japan's business leaders favored accepting more foreign workers. Public attitudes are more mixed. An NHK telephone survey in 2020 found that 70 percent supported increased immigration, but support fell to 57 percent when respondents were asked about immigrants living in their own neighborhood.

Respondents expressed concerns about differences in language and culture while also expecting benefits from new ideas and cultures. The 13 percentage point gap between support for immigration nationally and locally shows how the policy debate connects with people's expectations about daily life.

Taiwan Faces Similar Pressures With Different Rules

Taiwan has also been expanding fields open to migrant workers while tightening rules on problematic internship arrangements. Some of those programs had functioned as a way to employ people in manual jobs under the label of education.

New regulations require student work hours to be no more than 50 percent of study time and require interns to receive at least the minimum wage. Taiwan has also proposed opening critical care hospital positions and bus driver roles to migrant workers because of severe shortages.

More than 800,000 migrant workers in manual occupations work in Taiwan, primarily from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Proposals to admit workers from India prompted racist reactions online, showing the public resistance that can accompany attempts to recruit from new countries.

Taiwan's maximum stay of 12 years for migrant workers has also drawn criticism. Demonstrators have called for an end to that restriction, connecting labor recruitment with the question of how long people should be allowed to remain after years of work.

Japan and Taiwan both face the tension between employers' need for staff and public concerns about immigration. Their systems use different combinations of residence categories, work permissions and limits on stays. Japan's convenience stores rely heavily on students whose formal reason for residence is education, while more direct guest worker programs make employment the central basis for admission.

The Japanese arrangement allows stores to obtain labor while workers remain classified primarily as students. Hosomi's proposal to include convenience retail in SSW would create a more direct route based on the work itself. Takemasu's warning adds another consideration: potential employees can compare these arrangements with opportunities elsewhere.

Technology, Wages and Worker Protection Must Fit Together

The IMF has identified several responses to Japan's labor shortage: using more equipment and technology, raising wages to attract workers, increasing participation among groups less represented in employment and expanding foreign labor supply. Japan has already increased participation by women and older people, while foreign labor has received less attention in policy debates.

Measures such as relaxed requirements for highly skilled workers and permission for foreign domestic helpers in Special Economic Zones have widened access in some areas. Their effect is limited for industries such as convenience retail, where the need is for people to perform everyday store work.

The IMF has suggested guest worker programs, easier entry requirements in sectors with shortages and uniform frameworks for recognizing qualifications. A common framework would give workers and employers a consistent way to determine whether skills meet the requirements for a job or residence category.

Concerns about immigration often include whether public spending on services will exceed the economic benefits. Studies suggest that temporary immigration would probably bring Japan greater fiscal benefits than costs. OECD opinion polls also place Japanese attitudes toward immigration broadly in line with those in other OECD countries, suggesting that carefully designed programs and clear public communication could gain acceptance.

The convenience store executives' position brings these economic questions back to workers already doing the jobs. Ito accepts limits intended to protect students' education. Hosomi wants an employment route for a sector excluded from SSW. Takemasu wants technology and a workplace that foreign employees will choose.

Ito closed the argument by urging the government to consider how Japanese society and foreign residents can live together, rather than excluding people who are already contributing.

Excluding such people is no good. I would like them to consider how Japanese society can coexist with foreigners.

The industry's message is that sustainable staffing requires more than finding someone for the next shift. It also requires rules that allow useful skills to be retained, training that makes the work manageable and treatment that gives employees a reason to stay. Those choices will affect the convenience services that households across Japan use every day.

The Bottom Line

• Seven-Eleven Japan, Lawson and FamilyMart employed 110,000 foreign workers in 2025, up from 80,000 in May 2024.
• Executives from all three chains warned against excessive restrictions and exclusion of foreign residents.
• International students need special permission to work and are limited to 28 hours a week.
• Convenience retail is outside the Specified Skilled Worker program, which covers 16 fields; FamilyMart wants it included.
• Language tools, training in 19 languages and lessons in Japanese service customs help workers handle demanding store duties.
• Nepal became the largest country of origin for foreign workers at Seven-Eleven and Lawson in 2024.
• Japan has more than two million foreign workers, approximately 3.4 percent of its workforce.
• Political parties differ over recruitment, while a business survey found 98 percent support for accepting more foreign workers.
• Lawson argues that technology and attractive working conditions are both needed as countries compete for employees.
• Projections put non-citizens at 10.8 percent of Japan's population by 2070, with some expecting that share sooner.