A row of newly arrived Indonesian workers sit shirtless in black trousers, their heads shaved, as several other Indonesians stand over them and tell them to finish servings of natto.

“Swallow it!” someone shouted in Indonesian. “Finish it!”

The video spread online in March 2026, after first appearing on the now-deleted TikTok account @opanbobolidos. Indonesian media reported that the men eating were junior workers who had recently arrived in Japan, while those directing them were their seniors.

The footage was quickly described online as ospek, the Indonesian shorthand commonly associated with initiation by seniors.

One of the seniors, who identified himself as the uploader, later apologised. He said he and the other senpai had wanted the newcomers to get used to foods they might encounter while working aboard Japanese vessels, including natto, sashimi and raw eggs. He denied intending to bully or hurt them.

Similar language around seniority can be found in public material from several Indonesian institutions preparing workers for Japan. For example, LPK SO Koufuku Daruma, a training and sending organisation in Deli Serdang, North Sumatra, describes mental preparation, discipline and internship ethics as part of its programme.

In one of its Instagram videos, the institution openly discusses a senior-junior system among trainees.

The culture is receiving scrutiny at a point when Japan is preparing to retire the programme that brought hundreds of thousands of technical interns into its labour market.

The Technical Intern Training Program will give way to the Employment for Skill Development system from April 1, 2027, with an explicit focus on developing and securing workers for industries facing labour shortages.

For the senior in the natto video, the purpose was simple. He said the new arrivals needed to become accustomed to what awaited them at sea. “Our goal is to help the newcomers get used to eating the food served on Japanese ships.”

Indonesian “perpeloncoan” vs. Japanese discipline?

The Japanese term senpai carries authority, although the relationship it describes is broader than the treatment seen in the natto video. Tomoki Sekiguchi of Kyoto University and Megumi Ikeda of the University of Tsukuba examined senpai, kohai and doki in a 2025 paper on Japanese organisations.

They describe an informal hierarchy based largely on when someone entered an organisation. Juniors are expected to respect and follow seniors, while seniors are expected to guide and support people with less experience.

The arrangement can help new employees learn workplace routines from colleagues who already understand them. Seniority can remain influential even when formal job titles change, giving the relationship a social authority separate from the company hierarchy.

Besides Indonesia, Japan-bound workers also encounter a strict kind of preparation in other sending countries.

In 2018, Nobuki Fujimoto of HURIGHTS Osaka visited a residential training centre outside Hanoi operated by a company sending Vietnamese technical interns to Japan. His field report described a day beginning at 5:45 a.m. with exercise and physical training, followed by cleaning, morning assembly, Japanese lessons and evening study until lights out at 11 p.m.

The centre also drilled candidates in greetings, bowing, clear responses and apologising. Its manager told Fujimoto that the training policy had developed from requests and complaints made by Japanese companies employing trainees.

The centre called another part of its programme gaman no kunren, or “training in endurance.” Candidates lived under restrictions on appearance and overnight leave while being prepared for difficulties the centre expected them to face in Japan.

Indonesia has its own way of organising seniority during training.

Koufuku Daruma publicly describes its mission as including Japanese-language education, mental preparation, discipline and internship ethics. Its website carries the slogan “Disiplin, Terlatih, Siap ke Jepang”, or disciplined, trained, ready for Japan.

In an Instagram video about seniority, a speaker from the institution says seniors are responsible for juniors. The relationship is presented as part of a family-based system, where a senior answers when someone below them makes a mistake.

The institution describes its own senior-junior arrangement in much warmer terms. Its public explanation still gives seniors responsibility for the conduct of newer trainees. “In our LPK, there are indeed seniors and juniors, but it's based on a family atmosphere. If a junior makes a mistake, I'm the one who punishes the senior.”

Today’s junior is tomorrow’s enforcer

Hiroko Yamaguchi of the University of Kitakyushu has studied what happens when Indonesian technical interns return from Japan and become involved in preparing the next group.

Her 2025 paper, Between Business and Intimacy: Mobilities and Challenges of Indonesian Migrant Workers to Japan, draws on long-term fieldwork in eastern Indonesia and focuses on LPKs operated by former trainees.

Yamaguchi found that returnees can become trainers and intermediaries for later migrants. Their institutions recruit through relationships built on family connections and trust, with some relatives and children of previous migrants becoming what she calls “second-generation trainees.”

The same institutions can reproduce training costs, debt and disciplinary practices, according to her research.

Former trainees have credibility with candidates because they have already done what those candidates hope to do. They have passed the selection process, lived in Japan and worked for Japanese employers.

“As instructors, they are currently teaching candidates of trainees the workplace ethics and codes of conduct required by Japanese companies, such as the 5S principles,” Yamaguchi told Migrant Times.

“These are skills they themselves acquired during their previous stays in Japan and through pre-training before coming to Japan. In that sense, it can be said that their teaching methods are directly shaped by their experiences in Japan, as well as by pre-training they received prior to arrival to Japan.”

That experience covers practical matters such as cleaning systems, workplace communication and expected conduct. It also influences how instructors believe those habits should be taught.

Yamaguchi said LPK preparation has a strong influence on candidates' understanding of Japanese workplace attitudes.

“The pre-training at LPK appears to play a crucial role in helping candidates of trainees understand and acquire Japanese workplace ethics and work attitudes, even if these sometimes seem overly military-style or outdated,” she said.

The distinction can be difficult for a first-time migrant to make. An instructor may be teaching a recognised workplace practice such as 5S in one lesson and passing on a training custom inherited from his own experience in another. Both can be presented as things a candidate needs in Japan.

A former trainee who endured a strict method and later completed several years in Japan may also see his own experience as evidence that the method worked. Once that person becomes an instructor, the practice has a route into another intake.

Yamaguchi said that process can continue even where a particular disciplinary method has not been formally requested by a Japanese employer or institution.

“Considering that many Japanese employers or institutions expect obedience, diligence, and discipline, not so much as formal requirements but rather as a matter of custom, I think they will basically reproduce the methods they’ve been taught.”

How recruitment costs prevent resistance

Hironori Onuki, a lecturer at the University of Wollongong who studies global labour migration, has examined the financial relationships surrounding Japan's Technical Intern Training Program and the organisations that send workers into it.

His research shifts attention from cultural explanations to the incentives facing migration intermediaries.

In Informalization and Temporary Labor Migration, Onuki describes candidates paying sending organisations for visas, recruitment services and mandatory pre-departure training. Citing research on 59 former or current Vietnamese trainees, he reports average charges of around ¥1 million, or roughly US$6,300, with applicants commonly relying on loans to finance the process.

The paper also documents sending organisations using “army-type” training to establish rigid domination-subordination relationships among candidates. Onuki cites a Vietnamese sending-organisation owner who considered militaristic discipline important for producing trainees who satisfied Japanese companies.

“Sending organizations tend to adopt ‘army-type’ training to beat rigid domination-subordination relationships into pre-departure trainee candidates,” Onuki told Migrant Times.

The Vietnam evidence does not establish how Indonesian LPKs operate. Onuki said a meaningful comparison would require evidence about who owns the Indonesian organisation, how candidates are trained, what they pay and whether the organisation tries to control their activities after they arrive in Japan.

His research does show how discipline can intersect with money.

Onuki found that some sending organisations required trainees to sign pledge forms carrying steep financial penalties for activities including abandoning training or joining a labour union. A worker who left a placement could still face debt accumulated while preparing to migrate.

“For trainees, therefore, a breach of their contracts in Japan would ruin their attempts to repay the significant debts and acquire financial security for their families,” he said.

The consequences extend into the workplace. Onuki’s paper describes economic and psychological pressures that push trainees to become what he calls “silent workers”, continuing to follow employer orders even when they have serious complaints.

Sending organisations have an interest in candidates completing their placements. Japanese employers want workers who follow rules and remain on the job. Candidates carrying debt have their own strong reasons to avoid returning home early.

Indonesia’s senior-junior culture operates in a different setting, among trainees whose authority over one another may be informal. Its relevance becomes more serious when deference, endurance and compliance are repeatedly treated as qualities required for success in Japan.

Japan’s new Employment for Skill Development system will change important parts of the formal programme from 2027. Indonesian institutions will still be responsible for deciding how candidates are prepared for the employers waiting at the other end.

Onuki’s assessment of the sending organisations he studied is direct. “For these organizations, the use of militaristic disciplines is crucial to produce the trainees who will obey the rules and orders of their employers, even when they have grave complaints.”