Beyond Lifetime Employment? Re-Fabricating Japan's Employment Culture

Japanese working cultures have for many decades been dominated by the so-called system of lifetime employment in large organizations. Although the proportion of the working population employed under this system is often in dispute,1 it dominates the employment horizon. Moreover, the system radiates out beyond the boundaries of the Japanese firm. For example, it is the system to which the secondary and higher education systems are geared and towards which Japan's most academically successful students are steered, and its structure has provided the regime around which are arranged many of the institutions of the post-war Japanese nuclear family. Its influence is such that, even in the dual labour market that continues to characterize employment conditions in Japan, small and medium-sized enterprises must take its normative power into account when they organize their own employment practices.