The Bureau of Immigration of the Ministry of Justice formulated the revised Guidelines on the Management of Entry and Residence of Trainees/Technical Interns on 25 December 2007. In order to remedy inappropriate treatment and other conditions of foreign trainees and technical interns, which has come to light in recent years, the revised guidelines make it clear that foreign trainees/technical interns should not be subject to control through “illicit measures”, such as withholding passports and/or certificates of alien registration and prohibiting them from going out of the dormitories, and that payment of training benefits or wages should be ensured for them.
　The new guidelines will be circulated among receiving bodies, including chambers of commerce and industry and associations of small- and medium-sized businesses, for the purpose of urging them to improve the situation. They will be prohibited from receiving foreign trainees/technical interns for three years if they are found to have taken illicit measures.
　The Bureau of Immigration states, “Some 93,000 trainees came to Japan in 2006 and 41,000 of them became technical interns after one year, which marked the record, reflecting the steady development of the trainees/technical interns programme in Japan”.
　The guidelines were revised in accordance with the situational analysis of the Bureau of Immigration that, while the Bureau has worked for appropriate implementation of the 1999 guidelines, “trainees/technical interns have increasingly victimized in recent years through inappropriate reception by certain receiving organizations, such as treating them as low-wage workers”

Source: “On the formulation of the Guidelines on the Management of Entry and Residence of Trainees/Technical Inters (revised in 2007)”, Ministry of Justice
http://www.moj.go.jp/PRESS/071226-1.html