This chapter begins to look at the changing position of the w orkplace and of com panies in the lives of persons in Japan. The w orkplace has been, and still is, the prim ary 'nodal po in t of identity' (Kondo 1990) in Japan, and consequently both case studies are approached from the position of the w orkplace. So central is the w orkplace in defining selves, both individual and collective, in Japan, that we can speculate that any changes to w orkplace ethics and practice ad o p ted by Japan's m ost prestigious com panies are likely to redefine the m odel citizen, through a redefinition of the m odel employee.
In the various contributions to the debate on changing w orkplace ethics and practices in the afterm ath of the Bubble, the changes have been conceptualised prim arily in two ways: one, as the 'unravelling' or 'collapse' of the 'lifetime em ploym ent system '; the other as a shift from a 'company- centred' society to a 'people-centred' society. Before engaging w ith these debates and discussions, how ever, it is necessary to com e to som e consensus on w hat the 'lifetim e em ploym ent system ’ is. A nthropological representations of 'lifetim e em ploym ent' and 'the lifetim e em ploym ent system ' have never been clearly enunciated, and have focused far too heavily on length of tenure in both defining 'the lifetime em ploym ent system ', and in judging its ubiquity, so that we have arrived at a point w here the m ost recent descriptions have reduced it to w hat Kondo refers to as a 'conceptual slippage' (Kondo 1990) and w hat H am ada refers to as a 'm yth' (H am ada 1992).
To talk of the 'lifetim e em ploym ent system ' collapsing in Japan in the afterm ath of the Bubble is not to talk about changes to a particular w orking practice confined to a select num ber of m ale em ployees, as anthropological representations m ight have us believe. Talk of the 'lifetim e em ploym ent system ' collapsing, or m ore accurately, being dism antled, refers to a com prehensive redefining of w ork ethics and practices w hich will im pact on the w hole of society. Anthropological representations also suggest an 'in d u strial du alism ', w hereby the w ork ethics and practices in com panies which are perceived to operate a 'lifetime em ploym ent’ policy have come to be regarded
as generically different from those w hich don't. In this chapter, I w ill argue th at continuity and consistency of ethics and practice exists across com panies of all sizes, w ith 'large' com pany w ork ethics and practices defining w o rk ethics and practices across society as a w hole, and th at any changes to 'large' com pany w o rk ethics and practices will have im p o rtan t ram ifications for all workplaces, large or small.
T aking a lead from C lark's (1979) 'society of industry', 1 suggest th at such a 'society' also generates a m echanism w hich engenders im mobility in the u pper echelons. In other w ords, which generates a higher incidence of 'lifetime em ploym ent' in the u p p er echelons, regardless of w hether a com pany is perceived to operate a 'lifetime em ploym ent’ policy. U tilitarian m otives can be seen to be w orking to engender labour im m obility, or ’lifetime em ploym ent', at the u p p e r end of the scale, and labour m obility at the low er end, in both cases m ediated by the sam e social conventions and cultural ideals. Em ployees in sm all and m edium enterprises also stay w ith their em ployers for long perio d s of tim e, su g g estin g th a t 'lifetim e em plo y m en t' is not only a characteristic of 'large' com panies, but is a consequence of social convention and cultural ideals across society as a whole,
m ediated by personal job satisfaction, utilitarian motive, and labour m arket dynamics.
T his is follow ed by a co n sid e ra tio n of the vario u s voices w h o a rg u e th a t 'lifetim e em ploym ent' will continue to be a key feature of Japanese workplaces after the Bubble, although in a m ore restricted way. 'Lifetime em ploym ent' looks likely to survive in a m ore restricted form, w ith less, if any, particular cachet attached to it, and as part of a new m atrix of w ork ethics and practices, prom oting individual initiative and responsibility.
I end the chapter by looking at 'com pany centrism ’, w hich is not only a better m odel than ’the lifetime em ploym ent system ’ for conceptualising and understanding Japanese w orking practices since WWII, it is also better suited to conceptualising and understanding the changes in w ork ethics and practices w hich are occurring in Japan after the Bubble. One of the m ajor w ays in w hich these changes are being conceptualised and discussed am ong the Japanese them selves, is as a shift from a ’com pany-centred’ society to a ’people-centred’ society. This refers to both a trend and the desire to dim inish the role of the w orkplace in governing people's lives and in defining their sense of self. As will become ap p aren t over subsequent chapters, this is already happening, and is in no small part being driven by the emergence of a recognisably Japanese individualism .
2.1) A nthropological R epresentations of Lifetim e E m ploym ent
In this section/ I will argue th at the term ’lifetime em ploym ent' has/ over time, come to obscure a whole series of w orking practices and codes of conduct which are situated in and play an im portant p art in legitim ating values and attitudes w ithin society as a whole: w hat in Japan are referred to as
kyotsuu suru bubitn, 'those tilings we think and do w hich are common to all’. James C. Abegglen first
com m ented on the distinctiveness of 'lifetime com m itm ent' in large Japanese workplaces/ generating a lot of debate and criticism w ith his book The Japanese Factory, Aspects o f Its Social Organisation (1958). But his critics in the 1960S/ follow ing an obsession w ith com paring Japan an d the U.S. (H endry 1996), w ere m ore interested in the statistical evidence which suggested that the num ber of employees w ho stayed w ith the sam e com pany in Japan was statistically insignificant com pared to the U.S. (Taira 1962, M arsh an d M an n ari 1971, Levine 1983). T he c u rre n t an th ro p o lo g ical u nd erstan d in g of 'lifetime em ploym ent’ can be traced back directly to the conclusions d ra w n from these very re stric ted co m p arativ e statistical analyses, w hich had a very lim ited agenda: to em phasize similarities between Japanese and the U.S w orking practices.
A begglen was the first person to d ra w o ur attention to w hat has subsequently been called 'the lifetime em ploym ent system '. He discusses 'lifetime com m itm ent’ (Abegglen 1958: 11) as a rule, and clearly describes it as a relationship betw een em ployee and firm (Abegglen 1958: 11), which, he states, involves m uch m ore than the length of time a person is em ployed by a given com pany: "The area of m u tu al interchangeability of responsibility and obligation goes considerably beyond the regulations and practices governing em ploym ent and dism issal" (A begglen 1958: 17). A begglen him self chose to concentrate on the lim ited area of em ploym ent and dism issal, bu t only in this chapter. He states categorically th at other factors exist and are im portant, and goes on to consider them in detail. His w ork on rew ard and pay structures is rarely quoted by Iris critics, but still stands as an excellent piece of m eth o d ical scholarship. Later on, A begglen does give the practices engendered by 'the m utual interchangeability of responsibility and obligation', a name, referring to the com pany em ploym ent practices an d ideals he w rites about as 'this p erm a n en t em ploym ent system ' (Abegglen 1958: 24), but it has been through the w ork of those w ho responded directly to Abegglen, such as Taira (1962), T suda (1965), Karsh and Cole (1968), and M arsh and M annari (1971), that these practices and ideals became conflated into one system focusing on length of em ploym ent as the defining and indexical feature of a com plex m atrix of ideas, ethics and practices. Abegglen singled out 'lifetime com m itm ent' as a, not the distinctive feature of w orking practices in Japan. A distortion has occurred, an d this has been reproduced in recent years.
Abegglen had the follow ing to say in 1958, pre-em pting m any of his critics and m aking a very im portant point in the last sentence:
The description of job relations given here is held to describe large factories of Japan. In a few types of in d u stries, notably in co nstruction an d sh ip b u ild in g , w o rk er recruitm ent and in tra p la n t relations differ som ew hat from those described in this
i-eport. Also, in the sm aller and specialized shops of the large cities (e.g. in printing), m ovem ent of a w orker from one job to another is com m on or accepted. ..{Wjhere the proportion of female w orkers is high...the rate of em ployee exit is high, which does not,
however, niter the nature o f the commitment o f worker and company through the employment period. (Abegglen 7958: 73. My italics).
In this passage, Abegglen clearly states that length of tenure does not dictate the type of relationship which exists betw een employees, or betw een an em ployee and their com pany, and that the opposite is true: the length of the em ploym ent period has no bearing on ’the nature of com m itm ent' between employee and company.
W riting in the 1950's, Abbeglen brought a clearly D urkheim ian approach to the subject. He sees the ethics an d p ractices of th e larg e en terp rises he s tu d ie d as being a p ro d u c t of the com m itm ent to perm anent em ploym ent: ”[T]he perm anent relationship betw een em ployee and firm
imposes obligations and responsibilities on both the factory and the worker" (Abegglen 1958: 11. My
italics). The reality is m ore complex, and is m ore a case of all em ployees being bound by a range of obligations and responsibilities, w hich engender a com m itm ent to a perm anent relationship on both parties over the established em ploym ent period, through the ways of thinking (kangaekata) and ways of doing (shikntn) of individuals. T hrough the acts of individual selves, obligations and coercion are revealed. This is conveyed by Rohlen (1974) w hen he tells us:
O nly a rare person in [the com pany] has never considered quitting. M ost consider it seriously enough to speak to others about it. Few, however, actually quit. The problem then is to consider not only w hy they quit, bu t also, and m ore significantly w hy they do not quit (Rohlen 1974:82).
By looking again at w hat Abegglen wrote, it is possible to see that he did not regard length of tenure as the d efin in g ch aracteristic of w o rk in g re la tio n sh ip s w ith in com panies w h o do em phasize 'p erm an en t com m itm ent'. In fact he took care to rem ind us that the re latio n sh ip betw een an em ployee and their com pany cannot be judged to depend on the length of the em ploym ent period, and th a t the re la tio n sh ip b etw een an em ployee an d th e ir com pany is, in fact, likely to be fundam entally the sam e for the duration of the em ploym ent period, regardless of the length of the em ploym ent period, the size of the com pany, the n atu re of the profession, or the g en d er of the employees.
A nother 'm yth' w hich forms part of anthropological representations of Japanese working practices, is a dualism w hereby com panies w hich o perate a lifetim e em plo y m en t system ' are regarded as generically different from com panies w hich don't. T hat is to say, com panies w hich operate a 'lifetime em ploym ent system' are regarded as having identifiably different w ork ethics and practices from those which don't operate a 'lifetime em ploym ent system'. This dualism can be traced back at least as far as N akane (1970). N akane (1970) provides us w ith an early exam ple, if not the first example, of a description of 'the lifetime em ploym ent system ’, and one w hich has rem ained u pperm ost in the anthropological im agination. However, she does not integrate this description into her thesis on organisational stru ctu re in Japan, w hich she presents in her book, Japanese Society (1970). N akane’s reasons for w riting the book are sum m arized in the following quote:
This analysis calls for a reconsideration of the stereotyped view that m odernization and urbanization w eakens kinship ties, and creates a new type of social organization
on entirely d iffe ren t bases. C ertainly in d u strializ atio n p ro d u c es a new ty p e of organization, the formal stru ctu re of w hich m ay be closely akin to th a t found in m odern W estern societies. H ow ever, this does not necessarily accord w ith changes in the inform al structure, in w hich, as in the case of Japan, the trad itio n al structure persists in large m easure (Natone 1970:8).
H er thesis argues this assertion convincingly. H owever, her description of 'the lifetime em ploym ent system', w hich is from page fifteen to nineteen, reinforces the 'stereotyped view ’ of a break w ith the past, w hich she challenges. She begins her thesis by outlining her basic form ulation of bn, 'frame', and 'attribute', saying how in d iv id u als in Japan reference them selves prim arily by 'fram e (ba)', rather than by attribute or by reference to an individual 'self, arguing that such a consciousness and orientation "fosters the stren g th of an in stitu tio n and the in stitu tio n al u n it (such as school or com pany)...[and] is in fact the basis of Japanese social organisation" (N akane 1970: 3). H ere w e see how the em phasis on affiliation (shozoku) overrides individualism and reinforces seken m orality. N akane continues by saying th a t the p rim ary ’fram e {bn)' in m any Jap an ese's lives is kaishn, 'com pany', w hich is borne out by the fact that Japan is regarded as a 'com pany centred society’ by m any of its citizens and scholars (O kum ura 1985) (2.4). N akane's assertion is that this relationship an individual has w ith a p artic u la r fram e ^ prom otes a long-term relationship w here the em otional content is encouraged. By arguing th at a Japanese has a heightened em otional relationship w ith a given fram e, in w hich the self is im plicated in that fram e, w e can begin to see the coercive and consensual dynam ic th at w ould exist in such a relationship, and which is born ou t in practice. The self not only relies on the frame, b u t the fram e is also d ependent on the self, giving rise to a high level of com m itm ent an d dependence on eith er side. This is a very abstract extrapolation from Nakane's structuralist explanation, in w hich selves are presented as identical and rem ain silent, but the basic idea rem ains a pow erful fram ew ork for understanding Japanese collective selves (H am ada
1992) as they are constructed along the lines of 'the group m odel of Japanese society' (Befu 1980). Slowly N akane builds an argum ent th at the ie, "a corporate residential group" (N akane 1970: 4) has been replaced by kaishn and by other frames, w hich all retain structural, cultural, and linguistic references to ie. Rohlen (1974) and Kondo (1990) also argue this. N akane provides no historical or ethnographic data to su p p o rt this or m uch of her thesis, as she forew arns in h er introduction, but she argues convincingly th at institutions in Japan have both a tendency to organize them selves, through ethics and practice, to strengthen their fraternity and develop their ow n internal ethics and logics, legitim ated by the situational m orality of seken P-
N akane then begins to lay the foundation of her argum ent that ba, 'frames', in Japan have an inclusiveness and exclusivity w hich m itigates against m em bership based on attribute being able to exist between frames. In the section "Emotional participation and one-to-one relationships" (Nakane 1970: 8), she arg u es th a t the in teg ratio n of peo p le of different a ttrib u te is achieved in tw o heuristically separable ways:
Nakane more than once invokes the Japanese saying, ’a man cannot have two masters', conceding that a person may have more than one frame, but one of them will be significantly more important than the others. This accords with Abe’s (1995) description of seken (1.3).
One is to influence the m em bers w ith in the fram e in such a w ay th at they have a feeling of 'one-ness'; the second m ethod is to create an internal organisation which will tie the individuals in the group to each other and then to strengthen this organisation. In practice, both these m odes occur together, are bound together and progress together; they becom e, in fact, one com m on rule of action, but for convenience sake I shall discuss them separately (Nakane 1970: 9).
N akane argues that this unity is achieved by "fostering a feeling of rivalry against other sim ilar g ro u p s....facilitated by co n tin u al h u m an contact" (N akane 1970: 10). She th en gives a brief description of how this is achieved in a com pany setting. N akane then uses the term 'the lifetim e em ploym ent system ' for the first time. It relates directly to h er previous ex planation of how com pany u n ity is achieved structurally (N akane 1970: 10), w here she argues on the basis of her d eveloping thesis, th at a closed social g ro u p is organised hierarchically in one-to-one vertical relationships on the basis of 'fram e (ba)'r being im posed on attribute. She describes 'the lifetim e em ploym ent system ' as a business enterprise organised as a 'closed social group' (N akane 1970: 14). This description of 'the lifetime em ploym ent system ', does not m ention 'lifetim e em ploym ent' as a characteristic. This is a very im portant point, for the em phasis on length of ten u re is the feature w hich has come to dom inate and obscure o ur u n d erstan d in g of the practices and codes of conduct which constitute 'the lifetime em ploym ent system', and its im portance in defining and legitim ating relationships thro u g h o u t society as a w hole (Nakane 1970, Rohlen 1974, Befu 1980, M iyanaga 1991, H endry 1993).
Following her initial reference to 'the lifetime em ploym ent system ', q u oted above, N akane refutes critics of A begglen (1958) w ho have arg u ed "that this system d ev elo p s from Japan's economic situation and is closely related to the surplus of labour" (Nakane 1970:15):
The life-tim e em p lo y m en t system [is] characterized by the in teg ra l an d lastin g com m itm ent betw een em ployee and em ployer...It has been suggested that this system d evelops from Japan's econom ic situ atio n and is closely related to the su rp lu s of labour. H ow ever, as J.C. A begglen has suggested in his p en e tratin g analysis...the im m obility of labour is not m erely an economic problem . T hat it is also closely related to the nature of Japanese social structure will become evident from m y discussion. In fact Japanese labour relations in term s of surplus and shortage of lab o u r have least affected the lifetime em ploym ent system (Nakane 1970:15).
Nakane stresses the role of com m itm ent and the construction of im m obility through m em bership to