TOKYO — As Japan’s declining population further exacerbates its labor crunch, some have looked to immigration from India as a potential solution.

But Japan remains an unpopular destination for the country’s workers and students, even as Indian officials seek to promote the flow of people between the two nations.

At a Monday event at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo, ambassador Sibi George said he was confident “we will be able to have more Indian workers support Japan’s economic growth” in coming months and years.

George has visited roughly 30 locations across Japan since taking the post last year, speaking with representatives from Japanese companies interested in Indian talent.

There were more than 40,000 Indian nationals residing in Japan as of December 2022, according to Japan’s Immigration Services Agency. Approximately 10,000 of them belonged to a visa category that includes engineers, foreign language teachers and finance and sales workers.

Only 434 people from India were in Japan as technical interns and just 120 as “specified skilled workers,” a visa category created specifically to combat the labor shortage.

Japan and India have a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on the technical internship program. Still, the number of Indian interns lagged far behind the over 170,000 from Vietnam, over 40,000 from Indonesia and just under 30,000 from the Philippines.

As for students, India had 1,851 in Japan while China had over 100,000 — a stark contrast given that the two countries have similar total populations.

Monday’s event included a discussion on how to expand the role Indian workers play in Japan.

“India is largely seen as a source for highly skilled workers” like engineers, said a representative from the Japan International Trainee & Skilled Worker Cooperation Organization, outlining how Japanese companies have struggled to tap the full range of Indian talent. The representative touched on the possibility of bringing in more Indian workers who have knowledge of Japan’s culture, business etiquette and language.

But learning Japanese before coming here can be a major challenge.

“We send Japanese teachers to India from Japan, but they tend to only stay in the country for about a year and a half at most,” said an event participant who runs a Japanese language school in India. “There are few Japanese teachers there, and training Indian people to teach Japanese is also a challenge.”

“Language, culture and lifestyle are the biggest hurdles,” said another attendee. “There are some young people who become interested in Japan through manga and anime, but they don’t keep studying Japanese for long.”

Indian workers and students generally possess a strong command of English, opening up many other attractive options, including the U.S. with the world’s largest economy, and the U.K., India’s former colonial ruler. Australia and New Zealand have large communities of foreign residents, while Middle Eastern countries are rich in oil money.

Hemanta Hazarika, an Indian professor at Kyushu University, has tried to encourage Indian students to study in Japan. But he said he is often asked what their career would look like even if they did.

Hazarika said Japanese companies prioritize communication skills over specialized knowledge in students. One of the reasons why Indian students shy away from Japan, he said, is that challenges with the Japanese language can make it difficult to get a job here.

Japanese companies are fundamentally at a disadvantage in the competition for skilled Indian talent, Hazarika told Nikkei after Monday’s event.

Google or Microsoft would pay five to 10 times as much as a Japanese company, he said.

As for low- to middle-income skilled workers, India’s strong economy means they have plenty of job options there, and it is hard to imagine many choosing to go all the way to Japan, Hazarika said.

While it is not impossible to attract more technical trainees or exchange students from India, current trends suggest there is no silver bullet that would dramatically increase their numbers.

Though somewhat circuitous, one realistic pathway toward this goal may be for Japanese companies to increase their business presence in India, before inviting employees to headquarters in Japan or using the technical intern program for worker development.