In Japan, a black company (ブラック企業, burakku kigyou) is one that exploits its employees through illegal or legally-gray labour practices, including low pay, labour law violations, fear tactics, and making it as difficult as possible to quit.
International job-seekers can be especially vulnerable to these companies. There’s the language barrier and the constant low-level anxiety about your visa. International developers are no exception, due to the myth that “Japan is short on IT engineers.” What that phrase really means is that Japan is short on skilled IT engineers. If you’re a career changer with no professional experience, the companies with their doors wide open to you may be open for a reason.
The black company I accidentally joined was a “Software Engineering Service” (SES) company, which contracted IT workers to client sites. SES companies are similar to regular dispatch (派遣, haken) companies, but tend to come with their own set of issues. However, black companies exist in every industry—the tactics are universal.
My year at that company was the worst professional experience of my life. It was also, in the end, the foundation for something much better. You could join a suspicious company, only to find that it’s an abusive one, but ideally you’ll read these warning signs and never have to find out.
- The red flags of a black company
- How to avoid these companies
- What to do if you can’t leave
- The takeaway
The red flags of a black company
A hiring process that feels too easy
I was a textbook target. Even though I had previous work experience, I had never worked in the IT industry before. I had no computer science degree and no practical experience, only what I’d taught myself of web development. I’d also made the mistake of quitting my previous job in Tokyo without the next one lined up, so by the time I was months into a fruitless job search, my savings were nearly gone.
That’s when I went back to a company I had already turned down mid-application because something about them felt shady. Desperation won. I messaged them asking if they’d reconsider me, and they replied within a day.
The interview process was just a formality: two quick online interviews within a week of each other. I was never asked to come in to see the office. Instead of inquiring about what my skills were or asking questions about my career, these meetings were mainly just HR checking to see if I would make various pledges and promises to the company, including that I would:
- Remain at the company for at least three to four years
- Do whatever they needed of me
- Not go back to my home country
- Continue to get IT certifications after hiring (because that makes it easier to sell my services to companies)
All they needed for each of these was a simple “Yes.”
At the end of the final interview, the HR rep said that they would send me an offer letter (内定, naitei) by the following week. That was on a Friday evening, and by next Tuesday they had already sent the letter, only 13 days after I had started the interview process..
When I asked exactly what I was going to be doing, they said they would only explain it after I had already signed.
Shifting timelines and broken promises
The bait-and-switch tactics started immediately. They told me if I earned two IT certifications then I could join quickly. I got both within two weeks, messaged them eagerly, and was told the earliest I could join was April—five months away. This was never mentioned in the interviews.
By my first day, the warning signs were impossible to miss. Over 25 new hires were crammed into what was effectively a kitchen; our orientation took place in front of a sink. You had to physically climb over people just to go to the bathroom.
But I had already waited five months and had no money left. I couldn’t just walk away. As much as I wanted to leave right then and there, I had bills to pay and knew that having a nine-month gap on my resume, followed by a day one resignation, would absolutely destroy any future career I would have in Japan. I felt trapped.
Fear-based messaging
Black companies keep people compliant with threats that sound official but are legally meaningless, and by framing your basic rights as selfishness.
Our two-week orientation “curriculum” mixed genuinely decent advice (invest early, and so on) with outright scare tactics. Some direct examples:
- “It is unethical as a member of society to take more than three days of paid vacation in a row.”
- “If you take a day off, it should be mid-week, never a Friday or Monday.”
- “You must stay for a minimum of 3.5 years. If you don’t, we will pursue action against you, not limited to reporting you to immigration or filing a lawsuit for damages.”
None of this holds up legally, and the company knows it. But roughly 90% of my cohort were fresh graduates in their first real job. They didn’t know any better, and the threats worked.
The atmosphere in general was designed to generate fear. During orientation, the CEO would regularly hold meetings in the area behind the kitchen, and most days he would end up yelling at someone, calling them idiots and slamming his fist on the table. Everyone, including the person being yelled at, acted like it was normal. No one even reacted.
After a few weeks of that, you genuinely start to question your own sense of what normal even is. That erosion is the point.
Inappropriate work duties
My IT employer decided to build and operate a cafe on the first floor of its office building. Rather than hire actual part-time cafe staff, they used us engineers on stand-by as the cafe labour force.
We were forced to vacuum floors, wash dishes, cook, serve customers, and haul heavy beer coolers and furniture. If you did your cafe job poorly, the CEO would berate you in front of everyone. One person even got fired.
Disabled employees who physically could not do standing labour were pushed to do it anyway, with management saying disability was “No excuse for not contributing.” Some employees, including foreigners originally hired as engineers, were instead converted into full-time cafe staff.
The whole time the company continued to say, “This experience will help you when you get assigned to a project.”
Spoiler: it did not.
Nobody reported it because everyone was afraid of potentially getting deported, which is exactly what the company was counting on.
The good news about my particularly extreme example of inappropriate work duties is that the cafe ended up cannibalizing their actual SES business, and the whole thing eventually collapsed. The CEO was abruptly removed amid harassment allegations and the financial disaster of the cafe.
Pay issues
Black companies often try to bend the law in their favor, hoping their employees don’t understand their rights or won’t notice. Instead of referencing Japanese law, these companies instead point to their work rules (就業規則, shuugyou kisoku) and quote from it when they try to justify their clearly illegal policies.
It’s worth stressing that these pay structures aren’t inherently bad; the unlawful exploitation of them is.
Fixed overtime
My contract baked 40 hours of fixed overtime (みなし残業, minashi zangyou) into my base pay, whether I worked it or not. Fixed overtime is a normal feature in many IT contracts, but that doesn’t mean all companies use it all the time—in fact, TokyoDev’s 2025 survey found that 87% of respondents worked less than 45 hours a week.
At my company, though, I was always deliberately scheduled to work overtime to just under the 40-hour line, which was never enough to trigger a single yen of additional pay.
No night-shift premium
Japan has “late-night work allowance” (深夜手当, shinya teate), a premium meant to compensate night workers. I was never paid this; the company’s answer was that it’s “already included in your base salary” via that same fixed overtime clause.
In retrospect, though, that wasn’t true. The late-night work allowance is legally separate from overtime and it can’t just be absorbed into a fixed salary. Companies can only fold it into your fixed overtime if they clearly itemize the breakdown and still pay out the difference when actual hours exceed it.
In my case, my contract never separated those two amounts. It was just one flat base salary with no breakdown of what portion was meant to cover overtime or night hours, so it didn’t meet the legal requirement either way.
With my 35 hours of night shifts, that late-night premium likely meant I blew past the 40-hour fixed overtime cap. They just weren’t calculating and paying that difference.
The 140-hour floor
SES contracts typically guarantee the client a minimum of 140 monthly hours. Go under, and the client pays less, so the company takes the difference out of your paycheck.
When you’re only scheduled for about 143 hours, a single day off puts you under the floor. The math is designed so that taking your legally-entitled leave ends up costing you money.
The Supreme Court has held that whether a financial disadvantage for taking paid leave is unlawful depends in part on the size of the economic loss and whether it has a strong practical effect of discouraging workers from using their leave. In my case, because I was typically scheduled only a few hours above the client’s 140-hour billing floor, taking a single day of paid leave could trigger a substantial pay reduction. That appears similar to the kind of deterrent effect the Court said must be considered.
Reduced salary while on standby
When I joined the company, they had no client project for me, despite assuring me one would be ready. They classified me as being on “standby” (待機, taiki), reduced my salary by 40%, and had me report to work each day in their cafe instead of assigning me to engineering work.
Looking back, I’m not convinced that pay reduction was legal under Japanese labour law. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare explains that employers cannot simply reduce agreed wages without following the legal rules for changing working conditions, even when the employer’s own business circumstances have changed.
Unequal pay
After the first payday, my cohort compared paychecks, and I discovered I was earning at least 60,000 yen less per month than the fresh graduates around me. The company had quietly decided to pay new grads full salary during standby while career changers got only the bare minimum standby pay, with zero announcement.
When I asked HR, their entire explanation was, “That’s only for new graduates. You had a job before, so you don’t qualify.”
Labour law violations
The biggest assumption a black company makes is that you don’t know Japanese labour law. They lean on “internal company policy” as if it outranks statute, betting you’ll never check.
I got to test this directly on my way out. When I tried to use my remaining paid leave (有給, yuukyuu), the company claimed I hadn’t followed “proper internal procedure” and refused to approve it. They threatened to log the days as an unexcused absence (欠勤, kekkin) instead, which affects both pay and your internal record.
At one point they even tried to retroactively convert a shift I had already worked into an unexcused absence. Every justification they offered came back to their internal policies.
So I quoted the law back at them: specifically, Article 39 of the Labour Standards Act, which guarantees paid leave. No internal company rule can supersede it. A company can adjust timing in certain circumstances, but it cannot deny the leave itself, and it certainly cannot invent procedural hurdles that erase a statutory right.
Three days later, they folded and approved everything. They framed it as a generous “one-time exception” they were granting since I was leaving anyway.
How to avoid these companies
Now that you know a bit more about how a black company operates, here are my suggestions on how you can protect yourself during the interview process, or in the unfortunate event that you are hired by one of these companies.
Remember the red flags above
Vague or shifting start dates. Fear-based retention talk. Reluctance to discuss the specific project or work you’ll be doing. Any one of these is a reason to dig deeper; several together are a reason to engage a free labour consultation or walk.
Take your time
Start job hunting while you’re still employed. Having time on your side, and money in the bank, makes it a lot easier to stay level-headed when picking your next company.
Interview the company
What’s written online and what you’ll actually do can be entirely different. Interview the company as hard as they interview you, and meet in person if at all possible.
Know your basic rights
Also, internal rules do not override Japanese labour law. In particular, you should understand what fixed overtime legally requires, what the Labour Standards Act guarantees, and what a Statement of Employment Terms (就業条件明示書, shuugyou jouken meiji-sho) is supposed to spell out.
Know the actual statutes, cite them by name, and put them in writing. Companies that rely on employee ignorance fold remarkably fast when they realize you aren’t actually ignorant.
It’s okay to quit early
If you’re afraid to quit, resignation agency services (退職代行, taishoku daikou) exist and are increasingly normal among young workers in Japan. There have even been cases of people resigning before their first lunch break. Pushing through and hoping the company changes isn’t going to work.
Don’t fall for last-minute exit pressure
On my way out, I was pressured to stay at my client site “until August,” which then shrank to “just one more week in July.” The client themselves told me they fully understood my leaving and supported it.
The company found my replacement within two weeks of my resignation. The staffing crisis I was guilted over was fabricated to squeeze one more billable month out of me. When you’ve decided to leave, leave.
What to do if you can’t leave
If, like me, you can’t for various reasons immediately quit a black company, here’s how to survive until you’re ready to submit that resignation letter.
Keep growing
Honing your skills is the one exit they can’t block.
I spent a year asking to be moved to development work, showing the sales team websites I’d built, and getting promised roles that never materialized. The company never gave me a path. But the skills I built on my own through self-study, certifications, and freelance work ended up landing me a far better development job anyway.
Lean on your support system
Having a support system of friends and family is also really important during this time. Most of my work involved me being isolated in a small office with no windows and no one around me for the whole night shift; essentially, I experienced no human contact for 10 hours straight.
During this time, if I hadn’t had the support of friends and my spouse, who changed their schedule to match mine, I don’t think I could have lasted as long as I did.
Find the others
Chances are, you’re not alone in your beliefs. If you think “Oh, this company might be abusive,” there are likely many other employees thinking the same thing. They are just too scared to speak up.
I would recommend reaching out to other people at the company and making connections. You don’t have to straight up say “This company is abusive!” but instead mention some things that you think are shady and get their opinion. If they agree, you’ve just made a valuable ally.
Don’t let them shake you
Mental reframing is also extremely important. After being lied to for over a year, and subjected to dire but baseless warnings, I was able to develop thicker skin and no longer fell for any of their empty threats.
Once you understand your rights well enough to know that “This company legally cannot do these things to me,” you become nearly unstoppable.
If you can, set a deadline
When I was first assigned to my project, they told me it would only be for six months, and then they would move me to a different one. That never happened. Instead, what happened was multiple extensions, which ended up stretching into a full year.
I set a mental deadline of “I will leave this current situation by the one-year mark no matter what,” and stuck to it. Because I created that deadline for myself, I was motivated to do everything in my power to search for a new job, work on my skills, and network.
The takeaway
The goal here isn’t to scare anyone off Japan. It’s to make sure you can spot the tactics—the desperation hiring, the fear, the pay games, the “internal policy” bluffs—before they’re used on you, and to know that the law is more on your side than these companies want you to believe.