Japan is planning a major shift in its stringent immigration policy that would accept foreign workers in substantially wider areas, including agriculture and nursing care services, it was learned Monday.

According to the Justice Ministry's draft of a new basic immigration policy, the government will allow foreigners to work in nursing care services and accept foreign trainees in such fields as agriculture and marine product processing.

The ministry plans to obtain approval from the Liberal Democratic Party as early as today, government sources said.

The move, if realized, would be a substantial departure from Japan's post-war immigration policy of strictly controlling the entry of foreigners.

It also reflects a coming reality in which Japan will have no choice but to depend on foreign workers as its society rapidly grays.

After obtaining approval from the two other ruling coalition members, the Liberal Party and New Komeito, the ministry will notify the public of its plan by the end of this month to begin concrete research to revise the Immigration-Control and Refugee-Recognition Act, the sources said.

The proposed plan, which will set the nation's basic stance for immigration policies and guidelines for the next five years, is to revise the previous regulations set eight years ago.

Factors such as globalization and the graying of Japanese society have been taken into consideration in drafting the new regulations, the sources said.

The new plan will cite as one of its goals harmonious "cohabitation" between Japanese and foreigners, they said.

It calls on Japan to "aggressively carry out smooth acceptance of foreigners into society, in accordance with its needs.

In the fields of nursing care services, the draft plan says that the possibility of accepting foreign workers should be studied while giving due consideration to their possible impact on society.

In addition, the current trainee system should be expanded to the fields of agriculture, marine products processing and hotel services, it says.

It points to the need to review standard and profession categories for accepting foreign engineers and specialists, introducing new resident status for foreigners to allow them to work in new fields.

The plan also calls for further promoting exchanges in academic and cultural fields by accepting more youngsters and foreign students in Japan.

An administration for foreigners should also be established to properly deal with the needs of permanent foreign residents, it says.

Japan has traditionally restricted the number of foreigners entering the country to work in manual labor and other simple jobs, effectively banning these workers from entering the country for a long period.

The first change to this historical precedent, albeit a minor one when compared to that being currently proposed, came at the height of the bubble economy in the late 1980s when Japan was experiencing a serious labor shortage.

In response to the business community's call for the doors to be opened to foreign workers, the Justice Ministry, from 1990, allowed foreign workers with professional skills into Japan. Then, in 1993, the government established the so-called trainee system in which foreigners are allowed to work at Japanese companies as a trainee for, in principle, up to two years. The number of those trainees currently stands at around 13,000, according to the ministry.

"We have a very distorted population structure in Japan and we need to allow the entry of foreign workers where we need them," a senior Justice Ministry official said.