WORKING hours in Japan are punishing enough for Japanese to have its own word for death by overwork: karoushi.

But the main victims are fast becoming interns from China and other parts of Asia brought to Japan under a government training program, reports The Australian.

Japan accepts 180,000 low-wage temporary interns a year under a scheme that lets it address labour shortages by confronting the politically difficult question of increasing immigration from developing countries.

The interns, and their homelands, are supposed to benefit from learning advanced techniques in Japanese industry, but a disturbingly high proportion of them aren't making it home.

The unlucky ones end up in small, poorly regulated companies where they are worked like slaves for dismal wages.

Last week, it was announced that a placement organisation company run by a former top Tokyo immigration official had been banned from the scheme for three years after it turned a blind eye to the overwork of trainees.

Last year, 27 foreign interns died in Japan, while 34 died in 2008.

Of the 27 deaths last financial year, nine died of brain or heart diseases, four died while working, three died by suicide, three died in bicycle accidents and the remainder died from unknown causes, according to the Japan International Training Co-operation Organisation, which oversees the internships.

Sending organisations extract deeds over real estate as a deposit or use interns' families as guarantors so they can fine them punishment fees if the intern fails to complete the program.

The practice was banned from last month, but can't be enforced in China.

Advocacy groups have called the internship scheme a form of slavery or human trafficking.

Lawyer Lila Abiko, the secretary of the Lawyers Network for Foreign Trainees, said most of the dead were younger than 40 and so their deaths could be attributed in some cases to overwork.

Speaking at Tokyo's Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Ms Abiko detailed the case of Jiang Xiao Dong, 31, from Jiangsu province, who died after a heart attack in June 2008 after working more than 100 hours' overtime the month before at a metal processing firm northeast of Tokyo.

Ms Abiko, who represents Jiang's family, said one of his time cards showed he had worked 350 hours in November 2007.

"You could see that he was working from 7.30 to nine or 10 o'clock at night and the total amount of overtime was 180 hours a month. You can also see he had no holiday (day off) from November 5th to November 23rd," she said.

The Kashima Labour Standards Office recognised his death was caused by overwork and reported the violation to the public prosecutor's office.

"This case is only the tip of the iceberg because there were so many deaths in 2008 and 2009," Ms Abiko said.

She said the network's 118 lawyers had 25 lawsuits under way against employers or placement agencies on behalf of interns.

Li Qing Zhi, a Chinese chef, said he had applied to work in his field under the scheme but ended up collecting garbage and cleaning for unscrupulous employers.

"Every day we worked from 7am to 10pm and as our payment for overtime work we only got 400 yen ($5) per hour," he said.

After Mr Li, who has a wife and two children in China, complained, the company terminated his employment in March.

He said the company initially tried to withhold his overtime payment for the first year and paid nothing until June, before agreeing to pay half of it. He said the company was deducting medical and welfare money from his wages but workers didn't get any coverage.

Ms Abiko said the interns were supposed to learn new technology and production methods but instead were being used as cheap labour and sent home when they were no longer needed.

"Many companies are now using violence to send them back to China," she said. "They sometimes forcibly bring them back to airports.

"There is a huge difference between the purpose of this scheme and the reality."

Read more at The Australian.