Daito Kentaku, one of Japan's largest rental housing builders, will enter the Japanese-language education business in Indonesia, aiming to hire graduates for construction and nursing care work in Japan, where labor shortages are severe. The school is due to open next spring, with more to follow.
The company acquired a building on the outskirts of Jakarta at the end of October and will renovate it into classrooms. A Japanese company already running language schools in Indonesia will operate the school on Daito Kentaku's behalf. The company plans to secure two more buildings during the next fiscal year and expand from there, and it is considering running schools itself in the future.
Students will spend a year learning Japanese. Graduates will then be hired, depending on their preferences, as carpenters on Daito Kentaku construction sites or as care workers at nursing homes run by a subsidiary. The company expects them to build skills while working in Japan and to be employed by its local subsidiaries if they return to Indonesia.
Building a pipeline rather than waiting on policy
The move puts a private company in the business of recruiting and training foreign workers directly, rather than relying on the visa system to supply them. Japan's construction and care sectors have struggled to fill positions as the population ages.