While Japan's unemployment rate is hovering at its worst level in the postwar era and manufacturers are shifting production abroad for cheaper labor, foreign workers seem to be enjoying their share of demand.

To meet a growing demand for labor in sectors that include information technology, the government plans to ease visa conditions to increase the number of skilled foreign workers.

The move came after an advisory panel to the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi urged the government in January 2000 to overhaul its rigid immigration policy to encourage more foreigners to work in Japan.

Some business and government experts argue that the nation should accept a greater number of foreign workers to cope with a possible labor shortage in the near future as the population continues to rapidly age.

However, other experts argue that Japan should first exploit all other options, including employing more women and healthy elderly people, before simply inviting more foreigners to come through the gates. The country also has millions of working-age people who have lost their jobs.

Hiroaki Miyoshi, a senior economist at the Economic & Social Research Center of Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co. Research Institute, said community and social infrastructure, including preparations to accept foreign children at schools, should be improved to deal with an increase in foreign residents.

"Since Japan has dealt with the issue only from the economic and labor points of view, debate of this kind tends to be short-sighted and haphazard," Miyoshi said, stressing that Japan should promote measures to support the dependents of foreign workers.

"Accepting foreign workers and their families as neighbors is like a marriage," Miyoshi said. "The policy mustn't be decided solely by the request of industry."

The labor ministry's latest statistics show the number of foreign workers in this country hit 221,807 as of June 1.

That number is up by 7.1 percent over the previous year and more than double the figure in 1993, when the ministry counted 96,528 foreign workers.

"Everybody talks about recession and unemployment now," Miyoshi said, "But demand for skilled foreign workers is as high as ever in the field of IT, as well as in the '3K' kinds of work in the field of manufacturing."

The term 3K stands for "kitsui" (difficult), "kitanai" (dirty) and "kiken" (dangerous). The term came into vogue around 1990, when foreign workers from the Third World found themselves in great demand at construction sites and factories during the go-go days of the bubble economy while Japanese workers showed an increasing preference for white-collar jobs.

Foreign workers are popular because they work harder, and do jobs that require a lot of hard work -- work their young Japanese counterparts are unwilling to perform, Miyoshi explained.

A majority of foreign workers were from other parts of Asia or Central and South America, according to the labor ministry's report.

Many of these workers have proven to be assets at workplaces like foundries and metal-pressing factories, while skilled workers such as IT experts are believed capable of doing a good job at any time for Japanese companies that cannot necessarily afford to train technicians of their own, he said.

Although the acute need for foreign manual laborers and debate on how to increase their ranks ceased after the bubble burst in the early 1990s, the recent demand for foreign laborers has rekindled debate on what sort of society Japan should create for itself.

"The issue was forgotten through much of the 1990s because the public did not care much about it, and politicians haven't given it enough thought," Miyoshi said.

"Now we should stop to thoroughly think about what kind of society we intend to build in the long run before turning to foreign workers for help at random," he said.

Miyoshi referred to pending issues, including whether to grant foreign residents the right to vote and how to help school teachers facing difficulties in dealing with foreign students who have little command of Japanese.

"Utilizing the potential Japanese workforce, such as healthy elderly people and women, should be the policy priority," Miyoshi said. "Once the open-door policy is adopted, the change will be irreversible."