Amidst swathes of farmland and fishing ports, Sendai City in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, felt uniquely tranquil. For the visitor, it is easily overlooked that Sendai was among the areas hardest hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, leading to over a decade of difficulties.
Since 2010, the Tokyo-based labour NGO POSSE established a branch in Sendai to assist those neglected by social welfare. Over a decade, student-led activism has yielded significant results. In March, I visited their office, meeting their student members, and joining their volunteer work for an afternoon, which gave me a sense of their work.
Introducing POSSE
Founded in 2006, POSSE started as a student organisation focusing on “Black Companies”, companies notorious for exploitative practices. Nearly two decades later, POSSE has grown into an NGO with over 300 members, including scholars and union organisers, while continuing to recruit students. It still maintains a membership base of undergraduates and graduate students.
In addition to labour consultation services, POSSE organises trade unions for various sectors vulnerable to irregular employment. Their advocacy now encompasses a broader range of issues, all while maintaining a student-run magazine that publishes three times a year. The main base is located in Tokyo, and a branch in Sendai has been operating for more than 10 years.
From Running a Food Bank to Organising the Hungry
Students at POSSE Sendai collaborate with Foodbank Sendai, which is open three days a week, to provide food aid and free consultations.
Since 2020, the food bank annually delivers around 3,000 tailored food parcels directly to applicants. Supplies include rice, noodles, instant foods, and ‘alpha rice’—ready-to-eat rice designed for those without access to an electricity supply.
Consultations reveal alarming poverty levels. Almost every day, food bank volunteers would encounter a new individual who hasn’t eaten in a week. At-risk groups come from a variety of backgrounds, such as single-parent families, migrant workers facing wage arrears, and workplace harassment victims mentally unable to work again.
Lack of food security often relates to deprivations of other rights. POSSE Sendai members noted cases where injured platform workers faced immediate financial hardships, resulting in their inability to file disputes. The food bank thus creates avenues for outreach and organising. The General Support Union, founded by POSSE, founded for workers excluded from Japan’s conventional, company-based unions, acts as a vehicle for the irregularly employed to engage in collective bargaining with their employers.
In the same vein, people who fail to pay their monthly bills would have their basic supply cut off, falling into extreme situations where they cannot cook — another form of hunger. Approximately 25 percent of all food bank applicants struggle to pay their electricity, gas, and phone bills, and 20 per cent are behind on their water bills. Sendai City, unlike some major cities, still abruptly cuts off water services for unpaid bills. POSSE Sendai’s “Lifeline Free Project“ calls for immediate cost reduction and, ultimately, the permanent provision of free essential utilities.
Outreach and Unionisation Among Migrant Workers
Employment of migrant workers in Sendai surged after the 2011 disaster, initially in reconstruction and later in fisheries and seafood processing around the fishing ports in the prefecture. In Miyagi Prefecture as a whole, the number of foreign workers increased from less than 5,000 in 2013 to more than 16,000 in 2023, diversifying from a predominantly Chinese workforce to include Vietnamese, Nepalese, and other Southeast Asian workers.
When examining the migrant worker regime in Japan, the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) would be impossible to overlook. With job change restrictions, the program faced widespread criticism for abuses, including violence, harassment, and debt bondage. In 2024 alone, 10,000 of the TITP workers among 400,000 nationwide had “gone missing“ — often considered workers’ last resort to escape abusive workplaces. Although announced to be entirely replaced by another system by 2027, TITP is still prevalent.
Student visa holders, allowed 28 working hours per week, represent another significant migrant worker group. While international students working part-time in the service industry have been prevalent throughout Japan, in Sendai, international students also secure jobs in factories.
POSSE has been active in organising migrant workers and advocating for the abolition of the TITP system. In Tokyo and its surrounding areas, POSSE conducts online outreach and consultations in both plain Japanese and English. A report published by POSSE in 2022 revealed common problems faced by TITP workers and student visa workers alike, including wage theft, uncompensated work injuries, and arbitrary dismissals.
Their Sendai branch follows a similar model. In Ishinomaki, where migrant workers are extensively employed in fisheries and seafood processing plants, POSSE Sendai conducts monthly outreach to workers. Food pantry events are held, providing free food and consultation services. Free labour law seminars are delivered in simple Japanese, alongside an invitation to join trade unions. In recent years, POSSE Sendai members recounted an increased opportunity to get in touch with Burmese migrant workers, most of whom have been active in the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar/Burma but were forced to leave their countries.
Community Farm as Means of Raising Social Awareness
As the concept of “urban permaculture“ increasingly gained traction among the youth, running community farms became one of POSSE’s strategy attract university students into social movements.
In Sendai’s suburbs, POSSE Sendai cultivates a farm that is co-managed by its members. Members come to till the land every weekend, growing a variety of crops, including potatoes, tomatoes, and spring onions. Participants come from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from agricultural professionals and students in related fields to ordinary high school students and exchange students at Sendai’s universities. In 2024, their community farms had recorded 2.4 tonnes of produce, all of which was distributed among members and used by the food bank.
According to POSSE Sendai’s members, the farm is one of the more successful initiatives in reaching out to potential new members. This is perhaps because, as they suspect, that compared to right-based struggles, growing crops seemed more attractive to young people. However, members also stressed that the activities are viewed, in addition to the farming itself, as an entry point to introduce larger issues, such as the world’s food crisis.
To this end, POSSE Sendai is involved in more than just farming. In Akiu, approximately a 30-minute drive from downtown Sendai, small farmers often face situations where large procurers reject some produce because its shape or size is deemed “substandard”. Those produce that would otherwise become crop waste were collected by POSSE Sendai to supply the food bank. In combination with the community farms’ capacity and utilising the food bank as an outlet to distribute food, POSSE Sendai aims to create a food circulation sphere that is more or less independent of agribusiness control.
In the future, POSSE Sendai plans to collaborate with Fridays For Future Sendai in purchasing 20 hectares of land on a hill in Akiu for cultivation, creating an even larger base for crop production. The planned cultivation will also serve as a backstop against a proposed Solar Panel construction project, which is estimated to cause 600 hectares of deforestation.
The Future of Youth Organising
My visit to POSSE Sendai was timed for mid-March, coinciding with the busiest period of the year: the university’s freshmen welcoming month. Days after the visit, most members of POSSE would devote themselves to a whole month of leafleting, seminars, and social media work targeted at university freshmen. It was also the start of the spring’s farming season, and the community farms would soon be ploughed and seeds sowed. It was, indeed, in many senses, a start to another new cycle.
Long-term organisational work dedicated to labour rights has often been a challenge. Doing so while constantly absorbing new members among university students and maintaining an identity as a student group poses an even greater challenge. POSSE Sendai does not seem to be an exception in terms of retaining activist members — only a handful of freshmen each year would stay active long-term.
However, it was obvious that a mature basis of work had been built over the years — with outreach and advocacy works that complement each other, collaboration with other civil organisations, self-published magazines, and a functioning physical office where members could meet and work together. As Japan’s younger generation increasingly suffers in poverty, POSSE’s efforts in organising and agitating the youth only seem more vital than ever.
Extended Reading:
Organizing the Unorganized: A Non-Regular Workers’ Spring Offensive in Japan
