Workplaces and Gender Roles in Contemporary Japan
I. Ideals of School, Work, and Family
We’ve spent the past couple of weeks discussing the education system in Japan from preschool through college. As you recall, I spoke about the interrelatedness of schools and the workplace and about how lessons leaned in the schools translate to lessons practiced in the workplace. Just as we discussed the ways in which college entrance exams shape the expectations, goals, and high school curriculum for all students, regardless of whether or not the students actually wind up sitting for the exams or passing them, the ideal of working in a large white-collar corporation that promises lifetime employment shapes the expectations of all workers. The “Middle Class Ideals” of meritocratic mass education (based on the premise that if you work hard you will succeed), lifetime corporate employment and a nuclear family with a rice-winning salariman, professional housewife, and two samurai-like children characterize contemporary ideology in Japan. These images of school, work, and family have popularized a very narrow definition of what is acceptable in Japan since the 1960s. These three ideals have become models of culture and standards of achievement and designs for living. As I noted in the last lesson, there is a gap between aspirations and attainment, that is between what is expected to occur and what actually does. And it is this gap that is fascinating for anthropological investigation.
II. Japan-Style Management
A. Features of the model of the corporate workplace ideal
This term “Japan-style management” was coined in the 1950s by James Abegglen, who did surveys and interviews in Japan and wrote The Japanese factory. He came up with a model of the Japanese corporation that has three main features:
a. life-time commitment or full-career employment commitment
b. bottom-up recruitment from schools, as corporations do not hire employees laterally during mid-career
c. promotion and pay determined primarily by years of service
This depiction of the Japanese corporate ideal captured the attention of Japanese and Americans alike. Abegglen claimed that it provided distinct incentives and rewards to maximize efficiency.
Let’s compare:
Japan United States
1) Hiring: recruitment from schools open recruitment by skill
2) Job security: secure for whole career limited commitment open labor market
3) Pay: seniority job classification and performance
4) Promotion: years of service by merit
B. Rationality: anachronism or cutting edge?
These two systems are diametrically opposed, which prompted debate on the rationality of the Japanese model. Many Americans claimed that it seemed anachronistic and unlikely to work, but 12-15 years later (mid 1960s) the model was still unchanged and Japan was very successful. In fact, Japanese corporations seemed much more successful that people had ever imagined. Although the Japanese were embarrassed originally about Japan-style management, they now began promoting it. The United States was both fascinated and fearful.
C. Scope: IS THERE ONE JAPANESE COMPANY MODEL?
Since the 1950s, there has been a desire to reduce the relevance of this model, as it only describes major companies and bureaucracy.
In fact, the scope is much more restricted than everyone originally thought.
1. Only applies to large companies and government positions, and not to medium/small companies.
2. Only applies to men and not women.
3. Only applies to regular fulltime employees and not to part-time.
D. The social structure of the Japanese large-scale company seems very harmonious at first, but there are three overlaps.
1. Circle of teamwork
2. rectangle of seniority
3. triangle of competition
Japan-style management is not just a circle of harmonious teamwork. In fact, a successful company must finesse at being all three. They must balance harmonious teamwork with a hierarchical structure based on seniority and a competitive model in which some employees are gradually promoted to top positions and others are not.
Japanese companies must finesse the tension between cooperation and competition.
Cooperation: Efforts to downplay distinctions in the work groups (Remind you of anything?—preschool) There is a strong sense of collegiality—bonds form between those that enter at the same time, and there is an informal alliance between juniors and seniors (senpai/kohai).
Competition: There is also factionalism between work groups and the people know that they are part of this gradually winnowing triangle of competition for the one top CEO position.
E. Work Ethic
1. We must remember that workaholism isn’t in their blood! This workaholism that defines Japanese workplaces in the late twentieth and twenty-first century is a recent postwar development. The number of hours worked increased dramatically in the postwar period. Robert Cole wanted to analyze this workaholism and tried to get an sense of Japanese employees’ sense of commitment to their job. Robert Cole broke down the concept of a “commitment to work” into:
1. job satisfaction or commitment to a specific job
2. how involved an employee is with the group around them
3. loyalty to the company
He found that the Japanese are no more committed to their specific job than Americans, but that they are more involved with the group around them and express more company loyalty. Most employees of large Japanese corporations feel a commitment to their company through their commitment to the small work groups. In the U.S., there are tremendous differences between the desires of the workers and the desires of the management. In an American company, a group gathered around the water cooler can be up to no good for the company. There is an adversarial cleavage between the worker and the management in the United States that is not found in Japan. Japanese employees tend to identify their interests with the company’s interest through the medium of small work groups. Furthermore, Japanese employees have far fewer connections outside the company with consultants and headhunters.
2. Techniques for cultivating company commitment
a. Quality Control circles—Edwards Deming is the father of the Quality Control movement in the US, in which mandatory groupings of workers at all levels, to get together regularly to identify problems and suggest solutions, making the groups responsible for correcting mistakes in that section of the company. This idea of control circles was adapted by Japan but modified in an important way! There are no quality control engineers who oversee the groups, rather each and every worker is responsible for identification of problems and implementing change. These control circles are highly participatory.
b. Seishin kyoiku (spiritual training) Companies sponsor retreats for their employees to build self-confidence, and instill company attitudes. These spiritual retreats in which employees sing songs, run long races, endure physical hardship are thought to cultivate teamwork and character building among the employees.
F. Cushions around the core
1. The core: 30-35% of Japanese workers work in these core companies and government positions that have lifetime employment, pay and promotion based on tenure, and bottom-up recruitment. What about the other 70-75% of the working population? Where are they employed? There are five levels of employees that enable the core group to enjoy the conditions of Japan-style management. These five levels include: part-time employees, satellite companies and agencies, small-fry contractors, family businesses and independent artisans, and daylaborers and illegal foreign workers.
2. The five cushions around the core
a. Part-time employees or Office Ladies
Jeannie Lo’s book, Office Ladies and Factory Women depicts the work lives of some of the employees that are not included in the Japan-style management model. Part-time employees are almost exclusively female and are responsible for clerical work. As you read Lo’s book, think about similarities and contrasts between office ladies and factory women. Office ladies are meant to beautify the office place and to perform domestic jobs in the workplace. The part-time position emerged in the 1960s as a way to accommodate the uneven growth of the service sector. These types of jobs provide the slack and flexibility to accommodate the tremendous labor shortage in the “double your income” period of the 1960s and 1970s. When the Ministry of Trade issued a report that the U.S. and Europe had solved this labor shortage problem with guest workers in Europe or the ethnic underclass in the US, the government response was that Japan only had a small underclass and few ethnic minorities and asserted that neither solution was appropriate or desirable (more on xenophobia and racism in a minute). Instead the government proposed that solve this labor problem with robots and women as part time laborers (and women became the true underclass in Japan).
At the time, women could see themselves as contributing to national growth so they acquiesced. They also saw themselves as contributing to a uniquely Japanese solution. The government created incentives for women to work (tax-free incomes for wives if earned under a specific amount a year—1 million yen or 10,000 dollars. They would also offer a tax deduction for their husbands to declare their wives as dependents)
b. Satellite companies and agencies
Many people work in satellite companies that are affiliated with the large central company and Japanese government agencies. Superficially the satellite companies look as if they are structured the same as the large, white-collar companies, but they aren’t. Because many of the managers are imported from the big companies to head up the satellite companies, these smaller companies are not able to finesse the cooperation and competition of the circle, rectangle, triangle. There is a thick glass ceiling for local employees because the mid and upper management are brought in from the parent companies. Consequently, they are unable to create junior and senior alliances. These type of companies dot the economic landscape.
c. Corporate chains of small-fry subcontractors.
These subcontractors allow the parent companies to expand and contract according to economic needs. In Japan, there is the sub-, sub-, sub- contracting of parts. These subcontractors allow for the flexibility of labor, technology, and inventory. This flexibility puts the subcontractors in very vulnerable positions, as they are dependent upon large corporations whose business is often sacrificed to ensure the survival of the great companies. 45% of Japanese employees have jobs in companies of less than 50 people. This network of parts suppliers must sacrifice profit margins in less prosperous times, in order to survive.
d. Family businesses and independent artisans
There is tremendous protection of small businesses by a powerful interest group that has a tremendous say in retail zoning. In Japan, large companies have a problem of opening in new areas of metropolitan Japan,
e. Daylaborers and illegal foreign workers
These are the workers on the outer ends of the continuum. They constitute the stigmatized residuals. There are three categories of marginalized workers:
1. Day laborers who are concentrated in well-defined areas and offer skills in unskilled construction
2. Ethnic minorities: Koreans who are small business owners and the Burakumin (untouchable class—related to a class of people who were historically discriminated against because of their occupations of killing animals). Often have no capital, live day to day in small-scale retail business. The kobe earthquake hit them hard, because they had no insurance.
3. Foreign workers–both legal and illegal.
All five levels or cushions are necessary but peripheral to the core employees. Are these work place alternatives or dumping grounds? Consider that there are often good reasons to want to work in smaller businesses (more leisurely paced, more independence, can serve as the training ground for the entrepreneur). Some Japanese do come to prefer the cushion but a great number want to get into the key government jobs or companies but can’t and may come to appreciate the ideologically different workplace (more freedom)
Many women simultaneously resent and appreciate their part-time status that allows them to leave promptly at five, quit without remorse, more freedom in general but of course less money, status, responsibility, challenge, no benefits.
III. Family Life and Gender Roles
In Japan, gender inequalities have become more pronounced than class inequalities. Jeannie Lo’s book is a good one to consider both themes of Japanese workplaces and gender roles.
A. A Quick Word on Differences between Sex and Gender.
1. Sex: Biologically determined, physiologically based, doesn’t allow for change.
2. Gender: socially constructed. Gender constructions are often times culturally specific, not dependent on biology. Feminists sought to expose the ways in which gender is not necessarily natural or biologically determined. Sex does not have to equal gender (men are taught not to cry, women are taught to “be cute”).
C. We have talked about masculinity somewhat unconsciously when we discussed the ideology for the corporate workplace and meritocratic education (both aimed at males). Now we turn to a discussion of femininity in our discussion of the family. It is no coincidence that it maps out this neatly, with men associated with work and high powered education and women with the home and family.
1. In Japan, there is a rigorous separation of gender roles. Marriage in Japan has been described as a relationship between a man and a woman that is based on “complementary incompetence”. What do you think that this term means? It means that men and women are each incompetent or lacking in certain skills, on their own, but when married, their incompetence complements one another. In other words, they are better together than on their own. Lo, in her book, indicates that you must be married to be an adult. We have seen that for women, marriage and motherhood serve as alternatives to employment (at low level positions with little responsibility).
2. There is pressure for both men and women to marry after a certain age. This pressure is particularly intense for women, as illustrated by the saying which refers to a woman who is unmarried by twenty-five, as a “Christmas cake”. Christmas cakes are popular until the twenty-fifth, but then nobody wants the cake after that date. There are very distinct life stages in Japan. You do not have women getting married, having children and then going back to school. One must progress from one life stage to the next and not move out of order.
3. There is a more compartmentalized, rigid division of labor in Japan. Couples seldom connect in time or substantive engagement. Men and women really do have separate lives on many levels. There is not the same idea of a marriage partner as your best friend. In Japan, a mother’s primary role is being constantly on call. Waiting. A lot of what a woman does as a homemaker is to be in the house and ready to respond to the needs of the family. But look at men’s situation? Are women as disadvantaged as one would think? Women control the purse-strings and are truly in control of everything in the home, unlike in the 1950s in the U.S. where the father had authority over purchases, etc. For Japanese women, there is more freedom within constrained boundaries. Of course 40% of women in Tokyo are going into their 30s not yet married. But for the most part, most women will ultimately marry. There is tremendous national concern about the “never want to get marrieds.” One wonders who will care for the elderly as all New Middle Class arrangements may be coming to an end.
D. Paradoxes of women’s present condition
1. The social position of women in Japan is quite contradictory. On the one hand, there is domestic ideal that prescribes that women stay home and raise their children, but this ideal is coupled with the fact that there is high female labor participation. Over 40% of adult married women work. There is profound prejudice against women who put their children in fulltime daycare, even by the working daycare employees.
2. Interestingly, it is not the law that is sexist in Japan, in fact it is quite the opposite. There is an Equal Opportunity Law in Japan (but still not in the United States!) that prohibits discrimination against women, but the law unfortunately has no bite to it. Companies hand-pick women who are willing to put up with sexist pressures for women to step aside once they marry and have children (especially now with the recession, it is almost impossible for women to find good jobs).
3. Despite limited employment opportunities for women in Japan, there is evidence of reported satisfaction on surveys and no widespread women’s rights movements. Women may feel dissatisfied with the emphasis to stay at home and discrimination in the workplace, but they do not envy their male counterparts who must toil away in the office until 11:00 at night with mandatory after-hours socializing with the boss.
