In light of increasing competition in domestic and global markets, it is imperative for Japanese corporations to utilize highly-skilled foreign-born nationals,including those who have graduated from Japanese institutions of higher education,more frequently as part of their labor forces, not only to mitigate the effect of a decrease in supply of Japanese nationals in the labor market, but also to achieve more workforce diversity. This article first reviews the extant research on the working environments of highly-skilled foreign-born nationals in Japan. It then compares and analyzes the results of questionnaire surveys reported in a number of previous studies. The article argues that Japanese employers generally expect highly-skilled foreign-born workers to already possess high-level Japanese communication skills prior to hiring them, and that employers usually expect foreign workers to further improve these communication skills without providing any adequate corporate support in order for them to succeed in this task. Finally, the article recommends that since previous studies tend to focus on large-sized corporations, further studies of small-and medium-sized companies are needed, given the fact that statistics show that many Japan-educated foreign graduates tend to work for these smaller companies.
