Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture
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124 Ross Mouer
individualism, a different kind of social consciousness has emerged that is
injecting a new dynamic into the labour force
Terms like ‘furiitaa’ are seen as negative labels by many in the main-
stream. For them the furiitaa are not buckling down to the realities of hav-
ing a steady job with a steady income. They have not become respectable
adults able to contribute adequately to society. As Yamada
48
and Kosugi
49
note, they often circulate through a series of under-paid positions lacking
the job security, medical benefits and retirement prospects needed to sup-
port the ideal middle-class family. Many furiitaa, however, see it differently.
Some have been victims of the restructuring which has resulted in a short-
age of permanent full-time positions. Others have dreamed of a profession
in a creative field where long apprenticeships without any guarantees are
normal. Others see in casual work the flexibility to maintain friendships
or even to build new ones with other youth having similar outlooks. Still
others find in casual and volunteer work opportunities to learn critical
skills and to mature emotionally before settling down to the rigors of regu-
lar employment. While Kosugi
50
recognises the great variety of motivations
driving the furiitaa phenomenon, with some bordering on laziness and a
stubborn refusal to ‘grow up’, she also notes that many want full-time
regular employment but are more fussy than the traditional graduate who
unquestioningly accepted the authoritarian framework and monotony of
drawn-out in-house training rotations before being given challenging work.
Deviating from the normal transition into full-time regular employment
immediately following graduation, they symbolise not only an alienation
from the older work culture found in many firms, but also a new indepen-
dent creative force that challenges Japan’s corporate sector to respond.
In the current competitive environment, firms are realising that they can
no longer afford to discriminate against women or others with distinguish-
ing features conceptualised in old prejudices. As Chan-Tiberghien
51
has
argued, global standards are being adopted in Japan with regard to many
gender-related practices. Equal Opportunity legislation has served to alter
gender-related standards while also underlining the need for employers in
the ‘new globalised economy’ to proactively embrace women in the labour
force in order to have competitive staffing profiles. Although many foreign
workers have for some time been hired to work in areas characterised by
the three Ks, many Japanese companies have begun to open their doors to
skilled foreigners in order to keep their workforce competitive. Conversely,
once shunned by Japan’s more able graduates, foreign firms have begun to
attract a steady stream of young applicants wanting to be challenged in
Work culture 125
ways that would allow them to demonstrate a wide range of skills in IT,
communication and the English language.
Work values and the Japanese household
When thinking about work in Japan, the word ‘sh
¯
ushoku’ provides a clue.
The term is often rendered in English as ‘getting a job’, ‘getting one’s first
job’ or even ‘obtaining employment upon graduation’. However, the term
refers to obtaining regular or permanent full-time employment. Those who
have found a 40-hour-per-week job as a casual employee have not completed
sh
¯
ushoku. One’s first entry into full-time employment as a seiki shain (a
credentialled company employee) signifies their coming of age as an adult
member of society, qualifying them for a salaried income, membership in an
enterprise union if one exists at the place of work, and the wherewithal to get
married. It is also the first step to upward mobility in the corporate world.
Marking an important rite of passage, it is a gender-neutral term, expected
of women as of men (although until recently it was expected that women
would voluntarily surrender their tenure as a seiki shain once they married
and had children). Although the seiki shain was of central importance to an
employment system that rewarded continuous employment with the firm,
the system has also tended to more comprehensively reward better educated
graduates and provided a gateway for them to elite status in the labour force
as members of the ‘aristocracy of labour’.
To understand the nexus between paid employment and being an adult
member of society it is useful to consult Nakane’s
52
delineation of the ie or
household as an ongoing corporate economic entity. The continuity of the
ie through time was symbolised by ancestor worship. As custodian of the ie,
the household head would visit the family grave to report on the (financial)
wellbeing of the unit. Patrilineal rules for succession were in place in most
parts of Japan, but the rules also provided for adoption to bring in a more
suitable candidate when required in order to ensure that adequate ongoing
leadership was in place. As indicated above, wives were traditionally seen
as professional members of the household with overall responsibility for
its management, a system highlighting the husband’s responsibility for the
household’s income.
In the households of artisans and shopkeepers, the practice was for
the household head’s nominee to follow in the footsteps of the household
head. Other children established branch households when financially viable.
In that context, household members assumed outside employment for
126 Ross Mouer
instrumental reasons – either to support one’s household of origin or to
establish one’s own household. The dekasegi were members of poor rural
agricultural households who migrated to urban areas and remitted income
back to their rural household. That employment model was important
from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s. Although the acceptance
of a young person as a permanent full-time employee represented a loose
commitment by a firm to that person’s household, firms were careful to
limit that exposure. Having a fixed retirement age was one way to ensure
this outcome. As life expectancy rose, however, so too did the retirement
age. The extended use of subcontracting has been bolstered by the increased
use of casual employees who include not only furiitaa but also large ranks
of female part-timers.
As Japan’s cities and industrial areas grew and established themselves,
the ties to the rural household began to weaken, a process described in
Nishimura’s
53
prize-winning novel about a group who came from the
Aomori region to work in Tokyo in the 1970s. During the 1960sand
1970s, many took annual leave each summer to return to their home town
and visit the family grave. As they became more settled, however, such
visits became less frequent and the sense of ie gave way to references to
one’s kazoku (a term which might roughly be rendered as ‘nuclear fam-
ily’). Over time the feeling that a family had to survive through generations
as an economic unit faded. As many households came to enjoy unprece-
dented affluence, new burial sites were established nearer to home, the
opportunities for relationships outside the home increased, and fewer chil-
dren grew up with an urgent sense that the family finances need to be
supplemented.
Many young Japanese identify with a wider range of collectivities, and
continue to think about work in instrumental terms as did their parents. One
difference is that many tie their end goals – their consummatory values –
to a more diverse range of collectivities and are less tied to the needs of
the standard ie or kazoku. This is reflected in the more diverse range of
needs that employers have to consider when formulating a remuneration
package that will attract the best and brightest recruits to their employ.
The situation is complex; many young Japanese will continue to commit
to a trade or profession outside the corporate world, and there will still
be an army of graduates ready to fill administrative positions that lead to
senior management. At the same time, opportunities will continue to open
up to more individuated patterns of work for many Japanese in the labour
force.
Work culture 127
Conclusion: In the shadow of China
The world of work is one of the first places that the confluence of social
and cultural change becomes visible. To a considerable extent the history
of postwar Japan has been the history of economically driven social and
cultural change. Greater affluence has resulted in an increased number of
career pathways and lifestyle choices, more contact with the outside world,
and more aged citizens. As Japanese struggled with casualisation and rising
levels of unemployment and other aspects of the recession of the 1990s, such
changes were reflected in the way Japanese prioritised work. Assumptions
about automatic promotion and job security in the larger firms, the stalwarts
of life in postwar Japan, came to be questioned.
The realignment of the global economy was connected to the reces-
sion as China took over the role of being the manufacturing hub of the
world. Initially the cost of employing a seemingly endless supply of cheap,
albeit less skilled, labour from China’s rural areas and from bankrupt state
owned enterprises (SOEs) was far less than that of acquiring automated
equipment. Many Japanese firms found it hard to compete as China moved
ahead with its market-oriented reforms in line with the promotion of social-
ism with Chinese characteristics. One could see in China and other Asian
societies the frenetic energy that flowed from the sudden realisation that
hitherto undreamt of affluence was within reach. The bar is now being
lifted further as a new generation of more skilled and educated employees
emerges in China’s cities. Somehow the impulse that had fuelled Japan’s leap
forward in the 1960sand1970s was being found in Japan’s neighbouring
economies.
China’s challenge to Japan’s economic pre-eminence raises a further
question about the uniqueness of Japanese capitalism. For many years
Japan’s approach to work organisation raised questions about whether
Japanese social structure and culture would come to replicate patterns found
in the advanced nations of Europe and North America. Now, as China
evolves along its own trajectory, questions are raised about how closely it
will come to follow Japan’s. In the first decade of the 21st century, Chinese
workers are moving from rather regulated labour markets to freer markets,
paternalistic systems of compensation found in the old SOEs (state owned
enterprises) are giving way to productivity-linked payments, the rural-to-
urban flow of labour continues toward its peak, an ageing population is
increasingly pressuring an outdated pension system, management preroga-
tives are being devolved further down political hierarchies and censorship
128 Ross Mouer
regimes are being relaxed, neo-nationalist outlooks heightened by the pub-
licity surrounding the Beijing Olympics are colouring work choices, and
China’s interface with the global community is taking on new dimensions
with Englishification and the extension of exports into the cultural domain.
Over the past three decades, Japan has confronted the transitions men-
tioned above. While some work practices are coming into alignment with
global standards, Japan continues to experiment in many areas and its pol-
icy makers are well informed about successes and failures elsewhere. Many
techniques associated with Japanese-style management have been widely
accepted abroad, and Japanese firms are now having to respond to changes
in the social, economic and political environments outside Japan, moving
from a position of leading back into a learning role. In the past, Japan has
learnt from developments in the West. It is now at a point where it will be
informed by changes in many of the Asian nations as well. To respond to
those challenges, the Japanese government has recently announced a new
push to internationalise the production of science and technology in ways
that will include steps to better encourage the active participation of its
citizens in networks abroad. We can expect that the Japanese society and
culture will be further internationalised, and that many of the social and
cultural changes accompanying those moves will first become visible in
how work is organised in Japan.
Notes
1. Mouer and Kawanishi (2005).
2. Nurkse (1953).
3. Rostow (1959).
4. See Sugimoto (1975).
5.
¯
Ok
¯
ochi (1970) and Kazahaya (1973).
6. Nakayama (1975).
7. Chalmers Johnson (1982).
8. Actually the plan became four plans introduced in quick succession as the economy
continued to grow beyond expectations.
9. Kawanishi (1992).
10. Inui (2002).
11. Amanuma (2007).
12. Katsuhiko Hashimoto (2007).
13. Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (2007: 71).
14. Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer and Platt (1968 and 1969).
15. For more detail on the changes discussed in this section, see Mouer and Kawanishi
(2005, especially chapters 5–10); Mouer and Sugimoto (2003) and Mouer (2008).
16. Hei Konsarutingu Gur
¯
upu (2007).
Work culture 129
17. Toshiaki Sat
¯
o(2000).
18. Tachibanaki (1998).
19. Kariya (1995).
20. Takamitsu Sat
¯
o(2003).
21. Toshiaki Sat
¯
o(2000).
22. Miura (2007).
23. Tachibankai (2006).
24. Fukuchi (2006) and Toshiaki Sat
¯
o(2000).
25. Fujii (2005) and Matsumoto (2007).
26. Ochi (2007).
27. Iwata (2007); Iwata and Nishizawa (2008); Hideo Aoki (2006).
28. Mamiya Suzuki (2007).
29. Nikkeiren (1995).
30. Morris-Suzuki (2000).
31. Yabuno (1995).
32. Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (2001).
33. Komai (2001).
34. Mouer and Sugimoto (1995); Sugimoto and Mouer (1995).
35. Fukuoka (1993 and 2000).
36. Burgess (2003).
37.
See, for example, Y
¯
oichi
Funabashi (2000).
38. As described in
¯
Oishi (1997).
39. Economic Planning Agency (2000: 8).
40. Sugishita (2001: 5–8).
41. Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (2007: 56–57).
42. Mouer and Kawanishi (2005: 102).
43. Tamai (2001).
44. Hamada and
¯
Okuma (2002: 459–63).
45. See Kosugi (2007).
46. See Honda (2004)orKud
¯
o(2005).
47. See Masahiro Yamada (1999).
48. Masahiro Yamada (2000).
49. Kosugi (2007).
50. Kosugi (2007).
51. Chan-Tiberghien (2004).
52. Nakane (1967a).
53. Nishimura (1980).
Further reading
Rebick, Marcus (2005), The Japanese Employment System: Adapting to a New Economic
Environment, New York: Oxford University Press.
Kosugi, Reiko (2007), Escape from Work: Freelancing Youth and the Challenge to Corpo-
rate Japan, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
Mouer, Ross and Hirosuke Kawanishi (2005), A Sociology of Work in Japan, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
morris low
7
Technological culture
Introduction
There has long been a tension between tradition and modernity in Japan.
We can see this tension at work in the relationship between technology
and culture. Since the 19th century, this has been articulated in the slogan
‘wakon y
¯
osai’ (‘Japanese spirit, Western technology’). This chapter argues
that this dualism allows the Japanese to create a space for their own culture
and to develop a sense of identity based on the relationship between Western
technology and Japanese cultural traditions. The relationship between the
two has fluctuated at times, especially during the Meiji period (1868–1912).
In the late 1870s, the emphasis on Western technology gave way to a type
of cultural nationalism. In the wake of defeat in the Second World War,
wakon became discredited and was largely replaced from the late 1950s
by rampant consumerism. With rising confidence in Japanese technology,
people sought to account for Japanese success and interest in wakon could
be seen in advertising and accounts of the Japanese economic ‘miracle’ from
the 1960s.
Japanese technological culture is thus seen as an amalgam of Western
technology and Japanese culture which combines the strengths of both. In
a way, it can also be regarded as a compromise. This chapter examines the
nature of Japanese technological culture, and the waxing and waning of
wakon to provide a window to the Japanese embrace of modernity, and the
concomitant confidence of the Japanese people in themselves and at times
their traditions.
For example, some writers point to the importance of wakon and
Japanese aesthetics in terms of the success of Japanese products not only
in the Meiji period but also the post-Second World War period. Many
Technological culture 131
Japanese products are known for their compact and streamlined design.
People draw connections with bonsai and suggest that the Japanese have a
gift for miniaturisation. They link Japan’s technological past and karakuri
ningy
¯
o (automata or mechanised puppets) which date back to the 18th
century to the widespread use of industrial robots in present-day Japan.
1
Scholars have differed in terms of their view of the relationship between
technology and the larger culture in which it is immersed. This has often
been characterised not only in terms of how Japanese culture has con-
tributed to technological change and innovation but also in examining how
aspects of Japanese society and culture have been deficient or hampered
Japan’s embrace of technology.
2
For example, the Meiji era physician Erwin
von Baelz suggested in 1901 that there was something wrong with the intro-
duction of Western science in Japan: the Japanese treated it too much like a
machine to crank out products ‘instead of studying the spirit which made
the acquisitions possible’.
3
In this way, people have expressed the feeling that something is not quite
right with Japanese science and technology. We can point to the gendered
nature of technological culture as a constraining factor on female partici-
pation in innovation. It is also possible to show how other constraints in
Japanese culture and society have served to limit Japan’s ability to make the
most of the technology that is being developed.
The wakon y
¯
osai formulation has been used to argue that the Japanese
are not sufficiently Western and hence Japanese technological culture and
society are defective. We shall also see that the claims for the efficacy of
the wakon y
¯
osai dichotomy are time dependent. What is working against
the usefulness of this concept is the increasingly transnational character of
manufacturing, where it is difficult to trace the origin of a product to any
one particular country.
Debate and controversy: Wakon y
¯
osai
The idea of being able to separate Japanese culture from foreign influence
can be traced back to the old idea of wakon kansai (Japanese spirit, Chinese
skills). By 1854, however, when Sakuma Sh
¯
ozan coined the phrase T
¯
oy
¯
o
no d
¯
otoku, seiy
¯
o no geijutsu (Eastern morality, Western techniques), the
Japanese were more interested in borrowing from the West. Sakuma tried to
incorporate Western science and technology with a Confucian framework.
It was through this hybridism that Japan would create a new order.
4
Both
this slogan and the Meiji era slogan wakon y
¯
osai are examples of how the
132 Morris Low
Japanese dealt with the threat posed by modernity to cultural traditions.
They show a dilemma: while on the one hand these slogans indicate a
desire to embrace a Western-inspired modernity, they also indicate concern
regarding the effects of the introduction of foreign ideas and knowledge.
This concern continues to this very day. While such slogans do rely on
outmoded dichotomies between Japan and ‘the West’, they nevertheless
articulate the idea that there is a ‘Japanese’ technological culture that is
somehow different from elsewhere that enables the Japanese to Westernise
(adopt Western technology) without becoming Western.
Watsuji Tetsur
¯
o embraced this idea in his 1935 essay ‘Nihon seishin’
(‘The Japanese Spirit’), in which he attempted to separate the technologies
from those who originally used them.
5
Although this doctrine was discred-
ited after the war, Japan’s postwar economic success suggested that there
was something about Japan’s technological culture that made it special.
This idea was famously evident in Why Has Japan Succeeded: Western
Technology and the Japanese Ethos,
6
a book based on lectures given by the
economist Michio Morishima at Cambridge University. He asks the ques-
tion of how it was that the Japanese, who possess a ‘remarkably idiosyncratic
ethos’, were able to ‘gain such control over the industrial techniques pro-
duced by the West’.
7
He points to the importance of Confucianism in Japan
and how it differed from Confucianism in China. The latter was humanistic
whereas the former was nationalistic. Combined with Shintoism, Confu-
cianism provided a powerful doctrine that helped propel Japan on a path of
development that was very different from China’s at the time. The result,
he argues, was that the Japanese were able to
retain their culture, their way of life, the specific relationship between
superior and inferior, and their family structure, yet simultaneously to
build a modern nation endowed with power that is comparable to that
of Western countries.
8
We must ask, however, whether these social attitudes and norms now hold
Japan back. Are they necessarily conducive for technological innovation in
the 21st century?
Success of wakon: Changes over time
What has been the focus of stories of Japanese success? Much has been
written over the years about the role of government policies in Japan’s
rapid economic growth. The literature has been dominated by classics such
Technological culture 133
as Chalmers Johnson’s MITI and the Japanese Miracle,
9
Daniel I Oki-
moto’s Between MITI and the Market
10
and Scott Callon’s Divided Sun.
11
Takatoshi Ito,
12
in his well-known text The Japanese Economy, draws atten-
tion to how the Japanese were able to successfully adopt and adapt elements
of other cultures. In the pre-Meiji era, this propensity facilitated the trans-
fer of technology from China. Ito attributes Japan’s economic growth since
the Meiji period to a combination of heritage from the Tokugawa period
and wise policies implemented by the Meiji government. The Tokugawa
legacy included a high educational level, capital accumulation, a high level
of agricultural technology and advanced infrastructure (especially a major
road network thanks to the sankin k
¯
otai system of alternate residence of
feudal lords in Edo, or present-day Tokyo).
This type of argument is extended into the post-Second World War
period to describe Japan’s ‘economic miracle’. It enables the Japanese to
praise American technological superiority and at the same time carve out a
sense of their own identity based on a propensity to assimilate others. Japan
can be said to have shown a strong technological orientation, epitomised by
the spectacular growth of the car and electronic industries in the postwar
years. It is possible to argue that a tendency towards a technological culture
in Japan has meant that not only have the Japanese quickly embraced new
technologies but they have been more open to borrowing from other cul-
tures in general. Whether this is due to any ‘inherent cultural peculiarities’
is, as James Bartholomew
13
suggests, open to debate.
Sheridan Tatsuno has compared Japanese creativity with its Western
counterpart. Westerners, according to Tatsuno, tend to be more ‘linear,
rational, and individualistic’ in their thinking whereas the Japanese are more
‘adaptive, holistic, and cyclical’.
14
He argues that as the Japanese need to
make more technological breakthroughs of their own (rather than borrow
from the United States) they will draw on their cultural heritage, especially
aesthetic tendencies such as miniaturisation. The Japanese, according to
Tatsuno, like combining ideas to make hybrid technologies, fusing old ideas
with new to make new products. High Definition Television is cited as an
example of this phenomenon. More recently, the rise of keitai sh
¯
osetsu
(mobile phone novels) illustrates the Japanese liking for small things. In
the first half of 2007,halfofthetop10 best-selling novels in Japan were
written as keitai novels (that is, for downloading on to phones) before being
republished in book form.
15
The driving force behind technological innovation can change over time,
as can the definition of what constitutes Japanese ‘spirit’ and Japanese