Japanese Working Class Lives: An Ethnographic Study of Factory Workers

Japanese Working Class Lives

Small companies have a much larger role in the Japanese economy and society than is often realized. Seventy percent of Japanese employees work in firms of 100 workers or less rather than in large companies. James E.Roberson has made an ethnographic study of the lives of Japanese workers in small firms and examines their experiences of working life, leisure and education. This unique case study of the Shintani Metals Company illustrates the ways in which employees lives extend beyond their work. Japanese Working Class Lives provides a valuable alternative view of working life, outside the large corporations. Roberson demonstrates that the Japanese working class is more diverse than Western stereotypes of be-suited salary men would suggest. James E.Roberson received his Ph.D. from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and currently teaches anthropology in Japan.

Japanese Working Class Lives An Ethnographic Study of Factory Workers

James E.Roberson

London and New York

First published 1998 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1998 James E.Roberson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Roberson, James E. Japanese working class lives: an ethnographic study of factory workers/James E.Roberson. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Metal-workers—Japan—Case studies. 2. Small business—Japan—Employees—Case studies. 3. Shintani Metals Company—Employees. I. Title. HD8039. M52J36 1988 97–27162 305. 9' 671' 095222–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-203-17369-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26504-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-17212-8 (Print Edition)

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Note on Japanese names

vii ix xi

1 Japanese working class lives: problems and perspectives Work and workers in Japan Interpretive perspective Methodology and organization

1 3 12 18

2 Getting there and getting in Getting there Getting in A look back

20 21 22 28

3 Shintani Metals: company history Shintani to 1983: experience and enterprise The late 1980s: the problems of prosperity The 1990s recession: bursting bubbles and beyond Conclusion

31 32 39 47 54

4 Shintani Metals: organization, experience and relationships Formal factory organization The work experience Informal social relationships Conclusion

56 56 74 77 82

5 Paths to Shintani: school boys, working men Introduction Junior high graduates High school graduates Vocational school and university—graduates and drop outs Conclusion

83 83 85 91 100 103

6 Paths to Shintani: factory girls, working women Introduction Factory girls and office ladies

105 105 109

v

vi

Contents Working mothers and wives Conclusion

113 118

7 Paths from Shintani Comings and goings Going, going, gone What next? Room to move

121 121 124 131 133

8 After-Hours: sponsored leisure events Introduction Kinds of sponsored events Interpretations Conclusion: company size and corporate focus

137 137 139 143 152

9 After-Hours: nakama leisure events The nature of nakama Partners, places and patterns of play Conclusion: of play and people in Japan

155 155 158 169

10 Private Time Introduction Family women and men Private self Conclusion

171 171 172 175 188

11 Conclusion: of contexts and connections

190

Notes Bibliography Name Index Subject index

194 203 219 222

Illustrations

FIGURES 4.1 Shintani Metals Company: factory layout 4.2 Shintani Metals wages by age (male) 4.3 Shintani Metals wages by length of employment (male)

59 66 66

TABLES 4.1 Shintani Metals Company and Kinsei Fine Metals Organization (October 1989 to December 1990) 58 4.2 Wages of Shintani Metals regular female employees 67 4.3 Firm size and wages 68 4.4 Shintani Metals Shinwakai schedule of donations 72 4.5 Monthly work hours: comparison of the Shintani Metals Company (1990) with other Japanese manufacturing firms (1987) 75 4.6 Yearly work hours: comparison of the Shintani Metals Company (1990) with Japanese and American national averages (1987) 75 5.1 Educational backgrounds of people employed at the Shintani Metals Company (1990) 85 6.1 Regular and part-time female employees at the Shintani Metals Company (1989–90) 108 7.1 Men and women leaving the Shintani Metals Company (October 1989 to August 1991) 133 8.1 Recreational facilities by firm size 145 5n3 The Japanese Ministry of Education’s Basic Survey of Schools, 1993 197 5n4 Breakdown of employment by industry among 1993 high school graduates 197 10n2 Comparison of leisure pastimes 201

vii

Acknowledgements

It is now spring of 1997. Much time has passed since I began the course of study, travel and life that has led to the publishing of this book. In the passage of these years, I have met many people in Japan, Hawaii, Florida and elsewhere who have been important in helping to bring me and this work to where we are now. I do not easily separate the professional and the personal. Anthropology and the study of Japanese culture and society are for me both, and as in all things, the human dimensions, interrelations and feelings are what I value most. My research in Japan was supported by a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellowship (6/89–6/90) and by a Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (6/90–12/90). Support for writing my Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii included a Sanwa Bank Foundation Research Fellowship (1/91–12/91), a Center for Japanese Studies Graduate Research Fellowship, University of Hawaii (received from the University of Hawaii Japan Studies Endowment—Funded by a Grant from the Japanese Government; 1/91–12/91), and a Social Science Research Council Dissertation Fellowship in Japanese Studies (1/92–12/92). I would like to thank each of these institutions and the people involved for their support and efforts. I would also like to acknowledge permissions received from the editors of Ethnology and of the American Asian Review to use materials previously included in articles published in their respective journals (Ethnology, Vol. 34, No. 4; American Asian Review, Vol. 13, No. 2). There are many individuals I would like to thank, whose kindness, concern, interest, intelligence, and sometimes whose criticism, I have received and benefited from. I will here mention only a few, to whom I am especially indebted and grateful. Takie Sugiyama Lebra of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii was teacher and mentor, and I am also thankful for the personal kindness that she has shown. Though much time and distance has been traveled, Robert Lawless remains influential in my notions of what anthropology should be and what anthropologists should do. I have enjoyed the scholarly insights, suggestions, criticisms, help and kindness of many others, but especially of Patricia Steinhoff, L.Keith Brown, Jack Bilmes, Yoneyama ix

x

Acknowledgements

Toshinao, Kitazawa Yasuo, Ishikawa Akihiro, Koyano Sho-go, Laura Miller, Glenda Roberts, Gordon Mathews and Jeff Hester. The study of Japan and the Japanese language has introduced me to many other fellow students and teachers, and I thank them all. I am greatly indebted to the Company President and Factory Manager of the Shintani Metals Company for allowing me to enter their factory, and I am thankful to the men and women working there for helping me with my work and my study. I would also like to thank my family, for everything, and my friends in Gainesville, Florida, in Honolulu, Hawaii, and in Tokyo, for their time and their understanding. Finally, most completely, thanks to Suzuki Nobue.

Note on Japanese names

Japanese names appear in their culturally appropriate order, family name before given name, unless that of an author who has published in English with his or her name designated in the Western manner. Throughout the text I refer to Japanese individuals in a manner which is intended to preserve a sense of the social relationships usually indicated in Japanese with the use of various suffixes, particularly san (used for male and female status or age super-ordinates) and kun (used for male status or age subordinates). I employ “Mr” to indicate a man either significantly older in age or higher in status than myself. I have used plain family names to indicate men of generally equal or lower age or status than myself. As a convention, I similarly apply “Mrs” to indicate older (not necessarily married) women, and I use “Ms” to indicate younger (not necessarily single) women—except in two cases where plain first names (Midori and Kyo-ko) have been used in order to replicate the manner of actual address of these two young, unmarried women. I refer to two men by their status titles. These are the Company President and the Factory Manager of the Shintani Metals Company. Both men have the family name Shintani, the Factory Manager being the son of the Company President. One other man (the Company President’s cousin’s son) and his wife, who both worked at the factory, also have the family name Shintani, and I refer to this couple as Mr Shintani and Mrs Mie Shintani.

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1

Japanese working class lives Problems and perspectives

The Shintani Metals Company factory sits squat and square on the corner lot where a narrow side road, alleying away from one of western Tokyo’s major traffic arteries, makes a sharp right-angle turn before winding further into the jumble of residential and commercial buildings of the surrounding neighborhood. The present factory building, constructed in 1979, is a small, white, three-story ferroconcrete structure with large smoked-glass windows. A small paved courtyard, enclosed by a short red brick fence, leads to the main door of the factory, where outside on rainy days umbrellas are left under the porch. Shintani Metals is primarily engaged in the manufacture and repair of watch cases and assorted jewelry items, and in 1989 employed around fifty-five people. Every morning from about seven-thirty until just before eight, five or six days each week (depending on the week), the men and women who work full-time in the production sections of the factory begin arriving. Just before nine o’clock, another group of people, mostly women employed in the main office or as part-time workers, make their entry. Some people pull up on bicycles, a few of the men are on motorbikes, some have walked from homes in nearby neighborhoods, and others have walked from the local train station, to which their commutes have taken between thirty minutes and an hour and a half. Passing through the main gate and then pausing just inside the factory door, each individual presses his or her time card, the red “out” side of the card turned over to the blue “in” face, punched, and then replaced in its numbered slot. Small lockers for each employee are located in the third-floor dressing rooms, where everyone changes from their street attire into work clothes. Work clothing for women consists of a navy blue company jacket worn with their own dresses or slacks. Men wear blue work shirts or jackets provided by the company and emblazoned above the left breast pocket with the company symbol. Most of the men also don dark blue work pants, which each man provides for himself, though a few of the younger men wear blue jeans that they keep in their lockers. After changing, the men and women disperse throughout the factory, 1

2

Japanese working class lives

recongregating in smaller groups in the various workrooms, some outside by the front door or by the vending machines to the east side of the building for a morning smoke, perhaps also buying a can of coffee dispensed hot or cold. Others gather in the third-floor dining hall to read the newspaper, look at the morning television news or chat with a friend over a cigarette and a cup of coffee from one of the machines placed there also. Morning greetings are exchanged as co-workers are met in the hallways, in the locker rooms or upon entering one’s workroom. Some of the workers will go directly to their work stations and wait silently, a few with their heads resting on their work-station table tops. In the main secondfloor shoproom, Mr Shintani1 begins to organize materials for the morning’s work. As eight o’clock nears, those men and women who are not already present in their own workrooms enter and wait for the factory buzzer to signal the start of the work day. At the sound of the buzzer, or a few hurried moments just after, the last of the workers enter their shop-rooms. Itai, one of two young men working in Special Products-A, is sometimes among these, bursting through the door smiling and calling out Ohayo- Gozaimasu (“Good Morning”) to everyone in the room as he rushes back to his position beside Mr Shintani. The Factory Manager arrives by car, generally between eight or eight-thirty, not needing to be present earlier to open the factory since that is a job shared by two of the older section foremen. At nine o’clock, the office staff—including the Personnel Manager, Mr Matsukawa—arrive and the part-time women workers enter their workshops, greeting each of the people who have begun work earlier with a bright, or at least a polite, “Good Morning” before beginning their own assignments. Finally, the Company President, now semi-retired, arrives at the factory between ten and eleven. Every one of the fifty-five or so employees and managers who will, has arrived. The day at the Shintani Metals Company factory has begun. Employees and employers, labor and management, workers and owners. One by one they have arrived for work at the factory. But who are these people? Why are they working at the Shintani Metals factory? Where are they from? What are their backgrounds like? What do they do outside of work and the company? With whom do they do what? Who are they in addition to being factory workers or company employees? What is the personal and social significance of their working at this small company? It is in hopes of answering such questions that this book is written, and it was in such hopes that I did ethnographic research at Shintani Metals. Fieldwork, from October 1989 to December 1990, meant working at the factory for most of that time, until October of 1990. Though I was not employed as such, I became a more or less integral member of the Special Products-A section. After an initial period of working out an appropriate schedule, I entered a phase in which I was working very nearly the same hours as the other men in that workgroup, which for most of those months was the busiest section in the company. Besides working a regular eight-to-five day, I often did overtime as

Japanese working class lives

3

well, usually continuing until six, sometimes until seven, and on one occasion until nine o’clock in the evening. In addition to working alongside the people employed at the factory, I was also able to engage in a range of non-work activities with them. Some of the activities were sponsored by the company or by particular groups within the company such as the Workers’ Friendship Association or the Baseball Club, while other activities involved informal groups of co-worker friends. In discussing certain lifecourse, work and leisure-related aspects of the lives of the men and women employed at Shintani Metals, I hope to show the interconnections that exist among self-identity, lifecourse-related experiences and relationships, and a series of economic and social contexts. Throughout the discussion I will be emphasizing the diversity of identity and experience constructed within and structured by various contexts of action characterizing the lives of these working class Japanese men and women. This diversity, I will argue, distinguishes the lives of the men and women at Shintani Metals from those of people employed in larger enterprises, especially white-collar salarymen and their families. More specifically, I will be focusing on the history and organization of the company, the personal narratives of how the people employed at Shintani Metals came to work there and why several of them chose to leave. I will also be looking at leisure activities and relationships outside of the work context in order to come to an understanding of the Shintani Metals workers more fully as individual members of the Japanese working class whose lives and identities involve more than just work. WORK AND WORKERS IN JAPAN Work, workplaces and workers in Japan have, of course, been the objects of continuing worldwide interest and have been the subjects of increasingly extensive and intensive investigation. These studies have taught us much but, whether written by academics or journalists, far too often this literature has not adequately portrayed the interrelated contexts and consequences of working for a living in smaller enterprises, in which most Japanese people in fact find employment. While much of the literature which deals with work in Japan has been written by researchers who are not anthropologists or sociologists, a broader, more anthropological perspective may profitably be utilized in the reading of their work. A more rewarding and representative “anthropology of work” must become more fully an “anthropology of workers,” contextualizing work within the lives, more holistically conceived, of the men and women making their livings by working at job or company X. What kind of research has been done on work, workplaces and workers in Japan? I want to turn to a brief survey and critique of some of this literature in order to help situate my own research at the Shintani Metals Company (see Kelly 1991 for a review of some of the anthropological literature).

4

Japanese working class lives

The dominant literature: large companies Beginning with Abegglen’s early study (1958), research which has attempted to characterize Japanese workers and workplaces, from a variety of perspectives, has been overwhelmingly focused on larger firms. This representational bias also characterizes anthologies which include articles dealing with people or employment outside of the large institutional context (see, for example, Plath 1983; Shirai 1983; Okimoto and Rohlen 1988; Yamamura and Yasuba 1987). Research on larger Japanese enterprises has primarily concentrated on four interrelated aspects of employment: the so-called life-time employment system, the seniority system of pay increases and promotion, worker commitment, and enterprise unionism. Dore (1973), writing about “corporate welfarism” instead of “worker commitment,” considers these to be the major components of “the Japanese employment system.” In conjunction with analyses of these aspects of employment in larger firms, of course, “the Japanese company” and “the Japanese employee” have also come to be portrayed. The “critical difference” between American and Japanese employment systems, according to Abegglen (1958:11) is the “rule of a lifetime commitment” mutually shared by workers and employers in Japan. Once a (male) worker has acquired the status of regular employee, it is assumed that he will remain with the firm until retirement and that dismissal will occur only if a grave offense has been committed (Hanami 1981:26; Rohlen 1974a; Sengoku 1985). However, that the permanency of employment even in larger firms is in actuality determined by the sex and the type of employee involved, regular or non-regular, is illustrated by Kamata’s (1982) description of temporary laborers at a Toyota assembly plant and in discussions by Cole (1971) and Roberts (1994) of how management manipulates “back-door” procedures to reduce employment and get rid of unwanted workers. According to the ideals of the seniority system, promotion, monetary remuneration and raises, and other types of benefits are primarily based on tenure and age, though personal attributes are also considered (Cole 1971; Dore 1973; Helvoort 1979; Rohlen 1974a; see also Hanami 1981); tenure and age are worker-perceived preconditions for promotion (Cole 1971:108). Noguchi (1983, 1990) has shown that actual promotional rates and patterns may vary within a large corporation partly as a reflection of individual worker strategizing. Recruitment by larger firms tends to pre-select workers who are likely to remain committed (Cole 1971:191; Dore 1973:305ff; Rohlen 1974a). In this regard, the “education system can be seen as a pre-selection mechanism for the labor market” (Clark 1979:146; see also Rohlen 1983; E.Vogel 1971). Attempts to create in-group company identification may involve the use of special training facilities (Rohlen 1974a, 1974b; see also Creighton 1995). A more mundane reproduction of corporate tradition may be found in the everyday interaction of company members (Tsuchiya 1979), while Osako’s (1977) study

Japanese working class lives

5

of auto workers indicates the importance of “dual membership” as workers (“assemblers”) and as members of the company community. The significance of workgroups as the primary context in which individual employees and the company are interrelated has similarly been a much noted aspect of employment in larger Japanese enterprises (Rohlen 1975; Cole 1979; Painter 1991). Worker commitment has often been assumed as concomitant with the supposedly family-like social organization of the Japanese firm (Abegglen 1958; Nakane 1970; see also Nishida 1984 and Tsuchiya 1979). Hanami, for example, says that “most Japanese enterprises still function like traditional social groups in which members share a strong sense of belonging and exclusiveness…this enterprise-family consciousness produces a total commitment by the employees toward the enterprise” (1981:28; see also Creighton 1995). Rohlen’s work (1974a, 1974b) suggests that commitment is at least in part an attitude into which new recruits are socialized, and Cole also suggests that personal ties of obligation often function to guarantee a stable career pattern, at least among blue-collar workers of large enterprises (1971:204ff). Linking wage increases and promotion prospects with length of service, furthermore, can act as a material inducement for workers to remain “committed” to the company (Cole 1971:81). While many regular male employees contemplate quitting, few, until recently, have actually taken the risks of leaving larger firms (Rohlen 1974a:82ff; Beck and Beck 1994). Enterprise unions are the dominant form of union in Japan, and are an important feature of the work experience in large companies in particular (Dore 1973; Hanami 1981; Shimada 1982; see Man 1991 for a discussion related to a medium-sized firm having two unions). Unions have been important in negotiating improvements in wages, working conditions, welfare benefits, and job security; however, they have done so primarily only for the core of regular (male) employees of the firm. In such discussions, the large Japanese firm has been portrayed even more completely as a Redfieldian “little community” than have American and British companies (cf. Holzberg and Giovannini 1981:327; see also Watson 1980). Ronald Dore, for example, has proposed that the Japanese employment system be seen as “organization-oriented,” and that companies be thought of as manifesting a Confucian “community model” of organization based on the central principle of fairness, “wherein benevolence, goodwill and sincerity are explicitly expected to temper the pursuit of self-interest” on the part of all members and associates (1987:183; see also Nishida 1984; Tsuchiya 1979). Rodney Clark has similarly written that: The Japanese company is a community of volunteers, a body of people who have willingly come together to share common aims, activities and values. When a man joins or leaves a company his action implies a moral choice of agreeing or disagreeing with those values. (1979:141; emphases added)

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Fruin (1980), however, cautions us about depictions of the “firm as family” (and one may add “company as community”) which do not discriminate between reality and rhetoric (see also Cole 1979). Company traditions and the company as traditional may thus be seen as consciously created aspects of the enterprise (Tsuchiya 1979; see also Han 1991; Lebra 1981)—as corporate versions of “traditionalism” (Bestor 1985, 1989). As with portrayals of Japanese companies, those of Japanese employees betray a bias toward large enterprise or institutional contexts. While not without exceptions such as those by Cole (1971), Kamata (1982) and Roberts (1994), most descriptions represent the employees of larger firms essentially as “organization men” members of their (Confucian) corporate communities. Rodney Clark, to give one example, writes that “Relations between employees of all types and their company are…a compound of relations with the company as corporation, and with the company as community” (1979:180; emphasis added). The discussions of E.Vogel (1971) and Nakane (1970) situated the (large) company even more firmly as the site of (male) affiliation and identity and represented Japanese male employees as white-collar salarymen (see also Allison 1994). The message is that men’s lives are those of employee members of large corporate communities and that the experiences of whitecollar salarymen employed in large enterprises are representative of working men in general in Japan. The salaryman image has wide currency in Japan itself, and may perhaps be seen to constitute a hegemonic cultural symbol of masculinity there (Hester 1988; see also Miller 1995). Such hegemonic domestic “discourses for” (to borrow and transform Geertz’s [1973] categories of cultural “models of” and “models for”) the Japanese are transformed into stereotyping “discourses of” the Japanese wherein the majority of Japanese men who are not white-collar employees of large corporations (to say nothing of Japanese women) are assimilated into the totalizing image of the white-collar salaryman.2 Even studies such as those in Plath (1983) which consider the interrelations between career development and lifecourse focus almost exclusively on employees of larger enterprises. Roth’s reflections upon the articles in that volume are appropriate for most of the research depicting, or representing, Japanese employees when he writes that: “None of the authors focused specifically on the long-term work lives of men whose entire careers… involve small firms…so we do not have a picture of how such persons attempt to structure their occupational patterns over the years” (1983:251). I would suggest that, in fact, much more than this has been left out of the picture. Discussions of larger enterprises constitute our major substantive views of work and working people in Japan. Even though the complexity of the employment “system” may be recognized in particular instances, by only fully describing larger enterprises and the people employed therein the dominant research presents a picture of work, workplaces and workers in

Japanese working class lives

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Japan which relegates to overly neglected background positions those people making their livings by working outside of regular employment in large companies. The dominant discourse on Japanese working men and women is class biased, in having been overwhelmingly focused on larger institutional settings, and is class biasing, representing Japanese workplaces and working people almost exclusively as those of or associated with larger corporations and institutions. Due to the chronological primacy and the impact on its readership of the dominant body of research, “the Japanese company” has come to be presumed to be (like) a large company. Likewise, “the Japanese employee” has often been presumed to be employed by a large company, if not indeed to be a white-collar salaryman—a gender bias only recently countered (see Lo 1990; Roberts 1994). This situation reminds one of the representational hegemony in Japanese literature discussed by Fowler, where despite the presence of other literature in translation, “the conception of Japanese literature became fixed for American readers” (1992:8) by early concentration on the works of Tanizaki, Kawabata and Mishima. However, unlike the situation Fowler describes, until very recently there has been little counter-balancing social science literature which (especially ethnographically) attempts to describe smaller Japanese companies and the people making their livings from them. Secondary research: medium-small enterprises The representational bias of the dominant, large-company focused research on work in Japan is revealed in a rather immediate fashion when one considers the importance of medium-small sized companies in Japan (see Miwa 1996; Sugimoto 1997; Whittaker 1997). In terms of numbers of employees, mediumsmall enterprises (chu-sho--kigyo-) are legislatively defined (by the Small and Medium Business Basic Law of 1963/1973) as those in the wholesale trades with less than 100 employees, in retail and service industries as firms with fewer than 50 employees, and in other sectors (including manufacturing) as those with fewer than 300 employees (cf. Anthony 1983:47–8; H. Nakamura 1986:89). Data from 1986 indicate that medium-small enterprises accounted for over 99 percent of all firms, and for approximately 80.6 percent of all employment (SMEA 1991). In each major sector of the economy, the employees of chu-sho--kigyo- accounted for no less than two-thirds of total employment in that sector (ibid.). Furthermore, approximately 70 percent of all Japanese employees are engaged by firms with fewer than 100 workers, 50 percent by firms with 30 or fewer employees (MITI 1986:130ff; JIL1986:20; Koike 1983a gives somewhat different figures). In manufacturing, the sector most directly relevant here, 99.5 percent of all enterprises are medium-small in size and 74.4 percent of all employees work therein (SMEA 1991). In 1989, 54.8 percent of all employees in the manufacturing industry worked for companies with fewer than 100 workers,

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31.2 percent in companies with between 20 and 99 employees (but note that the former figure excludes companies with fewer than four members, and that the total given for medium-small enterprises is 72.6 percent of all manufacturing employees; SMEA 1990b). Small companies, moreover, contribute significantly to total national manufacturing output and retail sales (Kosai and Ogino 1984:71). A number of authors have pointed to the dynamic nature of small firms (Anthony 1983; Kiyonari 1989; H.Nakamura 1985, 1986; Shinohara 1968). Some have argued for the centrality of these in Japan’s economic development and continued vitality (Eccleston 1989; Friedman 1988), while others have focused on socalled “venture” enterprises (Far Eastern Economic Review 1984; Hollerman 1972). As of 1981, some 65 percent of all medium-small enterprises were subcontractors and 90 percent of these had fewer than twenty employees (Uekusa 1987:503). Given the apparent significance of medium-small enterprises, it is somewhat difficult—especially as an anthropologist—to accept the representational dominance of larger companies and their employees. Research which has focused on medium-small enterprises, or on the people working in or owning them, has broadly speaking been either structural or ethnographic in nature, the former far outnumbering the latter. Since more specific information derived from structural studies will be introduced later (in Chapters 3 and 4), I will here only provide a situating overview of previous research on medium-small enterprises. Structural studies on chu-sho--kigyo- have analyzed the role of mediumsmall enterprises in the development and functioning of the Japanese economy or have had a more strictly industrial relations focus. Almost all the research available in Japanese has been structural in nature (see Fujita and Takeuchi 1987; Kiyonari 1980, 1985; Kiyonari et al., 1978, 1996; Kobayashi and Takizawa 1996; Morimoto 1996; H.Nakamura 1985; Tatsumi and Sato- 1988; Tsuchiya and Miwa 1989; Yoshida 1996; see also Miwa 1996). If the people working in medium-small enterprises are dealt with at all, it is usually from management or labor relations points of view—generally within chapters that discuss labor problems or the labor market. The work of Koike (see 1983a, 1983b, 1988, 1995) is more worker focused than most, but deals primarily with specific issues such as skill acquisition. Medium-small enterprises and their employees have only recently begun to receive some of the attention that they deserve from non-Japanese scholars. The most important structural contributions are those by Chalmers (1989), Friedman (1988) and Whittaker (1997). Chalmers describes the “peripheral” workforce as a whole (and so also including men and women engaged in a range of “non-regular” jobs—see also Steven 1983); Friedman concentrates on the dynamic role of chu- sho- -kigyo- in post-war Japanese economic development; while Whittaker provides a general introduction to the place of smaller firms in the Japanese economy.3 Patrick and Rohlen (1987) offer a

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structural overview of small family businesses. Eccleston (1989) accords medium-small enterprises a significant role in his discussions of “state and society in post-war Japan,” and information on the working class associated with chu-sho--kigyo- may also be found in Steven’s (1983, 1988) discussions of “classes in contemporary Japan.” While most of these structural analyses provide important contextualizing information, none provide the kind of ethnographic description which would allow the reader to attempt to understand the workers involved as men and women constructing self-identities and lives within lifecourse and class-related contexts. Until very recently, ethnographic studies of smaller companies have tended to focus more on descriptions of entrepreneurs and craftspeople, and less on people working in blue-collar jobs or on other kinds of company employees.4 One example of the failure of ethnography to include the Japanese working class fraction associated with smaller enterprises—other than craftspeople— in the portrayal of Japanese men and women may perhaps be seen reflected in a recent statement by Joseph Tobin, who writes that: “Most studies of work life in Japan tell us that Japanese locate their identities primarily in their productive, professional roles as lifetime employees of large companies…farmers…craftspeople…or housewives” (1992a: 8). There are no non-crafts employees of smaller companies listed here, not necessarily due to Tobin’s personal oversight, but to the failure of anthropological fieldwork to be located among these people, in these contexts. One exception to this worth noting is the research by Christena Turner (1991, 1995), who has described the experience, consciousness and corporate culture of rank and file union members in two medium-small companies as revealed at work and in the respective struggles of the two unions. Her research, though very interesting, remains largely institutionally focused and contexted. The attention paid by Western researchers to Japanese entrepreneurs and craftspeople began soon after the Second World War and continues to the present. The research by Pelzel (1954, 1979) and Olson (1963), for example, deals more with owner/entrepreneurs and the artisanal ethics of their subjects than with the “factory life” (Pelzel 1979) of “a small Japanese industry” (Olson 1963) conceived of from an employed working person’s perspective. DeVos and Wagatsuma (1973) similarly focused on “entrepreneurial mentality.” The more structurally oriented research of Koike (1983b), with his emphasis on the entrepreneurial motives of many workers in medium-small enterprises (see also Inoue 1989), replicates and reinforces the significance of an understanding of entrepreneurship. Barbara Ito’s (1983) dissertation on entrepreneurial women in Shikoku demonstrated that it is not only men who are possessed of such motives and skills—and the networks needed to actualize them.5 A focus on people involved in folkcrafts has complemented the ethnographic research on entrepreneurs in medium-small Japanese

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enterprises. Among folkcraft potters, for instance, Kleinberg (1983) has discussed the interweaving of domestic and economic lifecourses, while Singleton (1989) has looked at the educational aspects of apprenticeship. Moeran, in a number of publications (1984b, 1986, 1990), has also discussed Japanese folkcraft potters (and his encounters with them), both in and outside the work context. The presence of craftsmen’s identities among the men, many otherwise engaged in non-artisanal employment, involved in the work of recreating the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto each year, has recently been described by Hareven (1992). The Japanese term shokunin (craftsperson) can incorporate both those men and women involved in folkcrafts and people who consider themselves craftspeople but who work in factory settings. Koseki (1990), for example, provides a series of narratives set in small local factories (machi ko-ba) often dealing with the latter such industrial craftsmen. Dorinne Kondo’s (1990) important ethnography includes a consideration of craftsmen and the “aesthetics and politics of artisanal identities.” Since this is the most complete anthropological study published to date which deals with people working in a medium-small sized Japanese company, it will be useful to make a few further comments about Kondo’s work (see also C.Turner 1995). This theoretically complex and ethnographically detailed research attempts to contest prevalent stereotypical notions held by Westerners about Japanese companies which replay “a tired ostinato of harmony, homogeneity, lifetime employment, and flattened, unidimensional portrayals of automaton-like workers happily singing the company song, burning with enthusiasm for their quality control circles, and driven by the Confucian ethic” (1990:301). Kondo also attempts to counter images of Japanese people as “not only Organization Man and automaton, but submissive, subjugated Japanese Woman, domineering, sexist Japanese Man, Japanese despot, or perhaps most basically, ‘the (undifferentiated) Japanese’” (ibid.). I am very much in sympathy with Kondo here. Her arguments are based on participant observation research at a small confectionery company and focus on the situationally contexted discursive contestations of power, meaning and self. Kondo further contextualizes these everyday discursive events within broader interpretations of Japanese history, politics, economy and culture. While Kondo does provide a complex depiction of family, self and work dialectically/dialogically portrayed within company and broader cultural contexts, there are a few limitations to her work. Perhaps the primary problem I see with Kondo’s discussion is the methodological restriction of her own discursive fields. We rarely encounter the people employed at the Sato factory outside of the workplace, except in her discussions of company-sponsored events or when Kondo employs them in particular theoretical movements (for example, when dealing with the family). It is the methodological restriction of her focus on the company context which accounts, for example, for Kondo’s failure to suggest what “the most uchi [inside, in-group] of contexts” (ibid.:

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213) for employees might be informal groups of co-worker friends or exist outside of the workplace, or for her full treatment, among men, of only artisanal, work-oriented identities (ibid.: 229ff). One cannot do everything in one monograph, of course, and Kondo’s work, despite its complexity, is no exception. The restrictions we find in her work, further, are characteristic of most of the ethnographic research on work and workers in Japan, whether conducted within the context of large or small companies (and, of course, are not completely overcome here either). Shared shortcomings From the perspective to be developed here, then, there are a number of problems with or shortcomings in the literature on work, workplaces and workers in Japan. The dominant body of research has, first of all, dealt almost exclusively with larger Japanese organizations. As Kondo notes, “Though such studies are necessary and important in delineating a hegemony within Japan, to equate ‘Japan’ with this infinitesimal, though powerful, sector is a problematic conceptual slippage” (1990:50). While one might suggest that there are a number of actual and representational hegemonies involved here, or find “infinitesimal” rather extreme, it is true that there remains a serious bias in the chronological and statistical primacy given to research conducted in middle class and in large enterprise and institutional contexts (see also Cheng 1995:204). One is, indeed, tempted to talk of “representational hegemony.” Most prior research on Japanese companies and their employees has, secondly, been either too structurally or too organizationally focused. Ethnographic studies have primarily been of large or small companies or have remained descriptively restricted mainly to the company context. The consideration of the people working in them has all too often remained contained by company boundaries, even when firms have not been methodologically approached or monographically reconstructed as Redfieldian structural-functional “little communities.” Not enough research has attempted to understand (or even just present) company employees and factory workers as people, to understand work and employment in interrelationship with the other contexts and dimensions of people’s lives as wholes. The third shortcoming of the literature on work, workplaces and workers in Japan that I want to point out here is that interpretive notions of class have often either been absent or weak or have been too economistically conceived. By being restricted to corporate contexts and by using a restricting notion of class, most research to date has too often failed to describe ethnographically the dynamic interrelations which exist among self-identity, lifecourse and classrelated contexts, in regards both to work and to other experience and relationships.6 What sort of ethnographic research is needed, then, to complement that

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which has already been done about work, workplaces and workers in Japan? While recent scholarship has begun to portray working women (Hunter 1993; Lo 1990; Roberts 1994), more ethnographic work is still needed which focuses on smaller enterprises and, more particularly, on the people making their livings by working in those firms in order, as Kondo puts it, to “complicate and dismantle the ready stereotypes” (1990:302). And, more of such research must be done (and written) from a theoretical perspective which attempts to interrelate individual identity and experience not just with the company context but also with broader economic and cultural contexts. INTERPRETIVE PERSPECTIVE This is a book about people. I take a utilitarian view of theory as a set of interpretive tools with which to understand various dimensions of the experience of the people who answered questions I posed to them and whose actions more naturally informed me of certain aspects of their lives. The general interpretive problem or goal that I have set is that of being able to come to an understanding of the men and women working at the Shintani Metals Company in a way that allows a dynamic interrelation of the personal and the structural. In doing this I make use of a perspective which permits articulation of notions of self-identity, lifecourse and broader, material and cultural contexts influential in the on-going construction of personal experience. Although I will be focusing on a somewhat limited range of what constitutes the totality of any given person’s life, I hope also to rescue a more holistic sense of who the people working at the Shintani Metals factory are. As suggested by the above, the theoretical notions which inform my discussion are based on a “practice theory” approach. Although both Ortner (1984) and Karp (1986) refer also to the more historically oriented work of Marshall Sahlins (1981, 1985), the writings of Pierre Bourdieu (see especially 1977, 1984, 1990) and Anthony Giddens (see 1976, 1979, 1984) have been most influential in defining theories of practice (or what Giddens calls “structuration theory”) and it is their works that I draw upon here. Giddens notes that “In seeking to come to grips with problems of action and structure,” practice theories attempt to offer conceptual schemes that allow one to “understand both how actors are at the same tune the creators of social systems yet created by them” (1991a: 204). A practice theory orientation challenges us to offer interpretations which attempt to (recursively) articulate actors/agents and the structuring contexts within which they live. I hope to show that the identities and experiences among the people at the Shintani Metals Company are constructed in reflexive interrelations with, and are not unilaterally determined by, various “structuring” contexts. What I want to do next is to introduce a set of interrelated notions— class, culture, lifecourse and self-identity—that I view from a “practice theory” perspective.

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Class, culture, lifecourse and self-identity Let me start with the notion of class. I prefer to use “class” in a somewhat loose sense derived from Bourdieu’s notion of “objective class” (1984). Thus defined, a class (or “fraction” thereof) is composed of “agents” whose lives are characterized by similar sets of structuring economic and cultural conditions of existence. These shared conditions in turn produce “homogenous systems of dispositions capable of generating similar practices” (ibid.: 101). Class is simultaneously constituted by amounts and types of both economic and cultural “capital” (ibid.: 114), and it involves characteristic styles of cultural practice. Every class condition, Bourdieu contends, “is defined, simultaneously, by its intrinsic properties and by the relational properties which it derives from its position in the system of class conditions, which is also a system of differences, differential positions” (ibid.: 170–2). This is not a simple oppositional notion of class (see Bourdieu 1987), nor is it based solely on occupation. By including cultural capital and habitus, this conception of class also extends beyond Giddens’s notion that different classes arise from differential mobility chances based on the market capacities of “ownership of property in the means of production; possession of educational or technical qualifications; and possession of manual labor-power” (1973:107). Instead, Bourdieu makes more central to the constitution of classes Giddens’s remark that “if classes become social realities, this must be manifest in the formation of common patterns of behavior and attitude” (ibid.: 111). Inherent in a practice theory based perspective on class and culture are notions of the reflexivity of individual identity, action and experience with class/cultural contexts and so with class/ cultural reproduction. Class contexts, as both materially and culturally construed, may also be understood to be both enabling and constraining in nature. Certain kinds of actions and attitudes or ideas are encouraged, allowed or enabled by class context, while others are necessitated, prevented or constrained. Recognizing the enabling and constraining characteristics of class context is an important dimension of recognizing the “knowledgeability” and “agency” of individuals whose actions are neither totally determined by context or “structure” nor totally free from contextual or structural determinants. People make knowledgeable use of the material and cultural resources available to them according to the schemes of perception and apperception with which they act and in contexts which allow for or make difficult certain kinds of actions. The boundaries of the “envelope” of constraint and possibility which people face are on-goingly expanded, resisted, reinforced or reproduced. I take culture to consist of shared sets of symbolic resources (symbols, ideas, notions) and schemes or frameworks used in the construction of interpretations and of action. In making sense of the world and of the actions of others, and in making sensible to others one’s own actions, one draws on

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cultural resources and makes use of cultural frameworks of interpretation. Likewise, in the construction of action, people make use of culture. I take culture to include (but not necessarily be limited to) Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital (1984) and of habitus, defined as “schemes of perception, apperception, and action” (1977:97; see also 1990). Using such a notion of culture allows us to see it as something that individuals use in the construction of their everyday lives, in interpretation and interaction. For both Bourdieu (see 1990:6) and Giddens (1979, 1984), it is the individual’s ability to make practical, contingent, interested use of culture which accounts for both the reproduction of and changes in cultural structures and social systems. Although I do not use the same terms, the significance of Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) notion of “habitus” and of Giddens’s (1979, 1984) emphasis on the “knowledgeability” of actors is that these allow culture to be brought directly into the heart of considerations of practice, while at the same time allowing individual action to be seen as culturally structured. While culture is something that is on one level shared by all cultural members, it is also important to recognize that there can be class-based cultural variations within a society. Bourdieu notes that “Social class is not defined solely by a position in the relations of production, but by the class habitus which is ‘normally’ (i.e. with a high statistical probability) associated with that position” (1984:372). I would substitute “class culture” for “class habitus,” and suggest that there are important if yet largely unexplored “distinctions” (Bourdieu 1984) in class culture in Japanese society that are more broadly pervasive than the shitamachi-yamanote (low city—high city: see Seidensticker 1983) distinction discussed for Tokyoites by Bestor (1989), Dore (1958), Kondo (1990) and others. Although not fully responded to even in the volume in which he writes, Joseph Tobin has similarly called for “the same careful study of class, taste, and distinction in Japan that Pierre Bourdieu [1984] has done for France” (1992a: 17). While I have argued above that the dominant literature on Japanese companies and employees may be seen to reproduce the hegemonic place of the white-collar salaryman image and ideology, it may also be suggested that the salaryman image constitutes a sort of “folk model” among the Japanese (Miller 1995), some 90 percent of whom will label themselves as “middle class” according to surveys conducted by the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office (see Kosaka 1994b: 103). Indeed, there are on-going debates among Japanese scholars as to whether notions of class are really applicable to Japan, which some see as class-less or as a “middle-mass” society. However, if given the choice, many Japanese will not in fact identify themselves as “middle class” but as “working class,” differing surveys reporting rates of between 64 and 80 percent (Kosaka 1994b: 102–3; Hashimoto 1990:56). Other studies and research suggest that, in one form or another, notions of class, inequality and stratification are indeed relevant to the study of Japan (see Hashimoto 1990; Ishida et al. 1991; Ishida 1993; Kosaka 1994a;

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Lie 1996; Steven 1983, 1988; Sugimoto 1997). In fact, Lie says, “Contemporary Japanese society is, in terms of class inequality and social mobility, fundamentally like other advanced capitalist societies” (1996:37). While Hashimoto (1990) presents a four-class division (capitalist-new middle-working-old middle), Ishida (1993; see also Ishida et al. 1991) uses a six- (or five-) class system (employer-petty bourgeoisie-professional and managerial-non-manual-skilled-semi and skilled-non-skilled). However specifically defined, blue-collar workers are seen to constitute a significant component of what may be called the Japanese working class (see Sugimoto 1997). While not consistently so in all dimensions, Japanese blue-collar working class men and women generally have lower educations, incomes, home ownership, investment, luxury possessions and so forth (Hashimoto 1990; Ishida 1993; Sugimoto 1997). Also, while the working class grew significantly after the Second World War, drawing members from the “old middle class” and from farmers (on which see also Chapter 5 below), and so has not been fully self-reproducing, Hashimoto notes that some 50 percent of working class men are the sons of working class fathers (1990:59; see also Kosaka 1994a; Ishida 1993). Ishida (1993) has shown that a significant class boundary exists between blue-collar and white-collar class positions (see also Ishida et al. 1991). He notes that “Class differences in status attributes are found among employees in large firms and those in small and medium sized firms alike” (1993:226). At the same time, however, he notes that “Firm size appears to be a powerful factor differentiating employees within classes” (ibid.: 224). The class structure of Japan, he concludes, “is characterized by a combination of polarization and inconsistency of status characteristics with a further differentiation among employees by firm size” (ibid.: 259). This structuring of class distinction and class fraction differentiation in Japan extends beyond and includes more than just the material or economic dimensions of class. John Lie notes that “The gulf between white-collar employees in large corporations and blue-collar workers in small firms remains striking not just in terms of income but in terms of class culture” (1996:37–8). We must again recognize that there exist class-related distinctions of cultural practice and perception (see also Kondo 1990; Schooler and Naoi 1988; DeVos and Wagatsuma 1973). One of the goals of this book is to consider the experiences, actions and identities of the men and women at Shintani Metals in interrelation with various class-related contexts. While I will remain focused on interpreting their experiences and identities, I also hope to suggest that the blue-collar employees of smaller firms in Japan may be usefully considered to constitute a fraction of the Japanese working class as a whole, itself constituted as such in definitional interrelationships with other Japanese classes and class fractions. I will generally be using the phrase “working class” with the understanding that it particularly denotes blue-collar employees of smaller enterprises and that “working class

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culture” remains embedded within and is a variation of Japanese culture more broadly conceived.7 We will see that, while sharing many conditions and characteristics with blue-collar workers in enterprises of all sizes, the experiences and identities of the men and women working at the Shintani Metals Company are characterized by their employment in a small manufacturing enterprise as well as by distinctive variations of culture and cultural practice. From a practice theory perspective, it is essential to recognize the ongoing reflexivity of the “structure” of broader social, cultural and economic contexts and the “agency” of individual action. There are many different spins that one may take on this, but what I want to emphasize here is the reflexivity which exists between such “structuring” contexts and individual action as seen from a “lifecourse” perspective. Doing this is one way of taking seriously the injunctions of Bourdieu and of Giddens to inject time into considerations of the interrelationships between “structure” and “action.” However, recognizing the temporality of action or agency also necessitates a somewhat different view of what “lifecourse” and “a lifecourse perspective” mean. It is my contention that, although we may also recognize the importance of viewing lifecourse in terms of “the rhetorics of maturity” or in terms of cultural models of the maturation process (Plath 1980; Long 1987), we must take “lifecourse” to refer to more than that. Views of life-course—I am tempted to use “lifepath” instead—as individual experience in the construction of a path of life across the course of time, must recognize the on-going reflexivity/ies that exist between individual action and various contextualizing relationships, institutions and cultural structures. This kind of perspective is to some extent implicit in Plath’s (1980) discussion, in which he recognizes the importance of historical context. However, I believe that to make “lifecourse” an analytically more useful concept it must be more fully, actively, reflexively, interrelated with contexts and significant others beyond cohorts, kith and kin “convoys,” “consociates,” “stake-holders” (Hareven 1982; Hareven and Masaoka 1988; Plath 1980; Brinton 1992).8 “Lifecourse” must be seen, that is, as the ongoing manifestation of the reflexive intersection of individual action and broader contexts—mediated in significant ways by the people with whom and the specific institutions through which one lives one’s life. What I am suggesting here is not only that how we talk about “life-course” (or “lifepath”) needs modification, but also that some conception of lifecourse needs to be more directly incorporated into “practice theory” interpretations of the reflexivity of structure and action, Kilminster, for example, has criticized Giddens’s formulation of structuration theory since it “does not at any level contain a fully relational conception of constraint because of Giddens’s failure to incorporate the reality and concept of human interdependence” (1991:97; see also Cohen 1987). Giddens (1991b) has begun to address such issues in

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more recent work dealing with the creation of self-identity, but he still does not seem to have fully considered or incorporated lifecourse—and associated “convoys” and “stakeholders”—into his theory of structuration.9 At the same time that lifecourse should be seen as the on-goingly constructed manifestation or outcome of the intercourse between individual action and various embedding contexts and relationships, lifecourse must itself be seen as part of the contextualization of individual action. There is a reflexivity which exists between a given (inter-)action, previous experience and future goals and dreams. A lifecourse-related notion of the temporal dimension of action (and/as experience) is one reason that I find somewhat problematic recent discussions of “situated meanings” and the reflexivity of action (often as discourse) and context (as interactional situation) in which there is a tendency for actions and meanings to become too situationally enclosed and disconnected from the temporal flows of experience and identity (see Bachnik and Quinn 1994). The sort of conception of lifecourse and individual action I am suggesting also allows (or requires) us to take “self-identity” into consideration when talking about agency, the knowledgeability of agents, and the reflexivity of action and structure. Lifecourse is something which is on-goingly constructed in reflexive interrelationship with some notions of who the individual considers herself or himself to be, or to be trying to become. Self-identity, and I include here the identity of self, must, like lifecourse, thus be viewed from a “practice theory” or “structurational” perspective which recognizes the reflexivity of self(-identity) and lifecourse as well as the inherent temporal dimensions of both of these—Giddens (1991b) thus discusses the “trajectory of the self” (see Chapter 11, below). And self-identity and lifecourse-related individual action and experience, and the interrelations between them, must further be seen within a set of reflexivities involving broader material and cultural contexts. Gender and gender roles are examples of the multidimensional aspects of existence and experience that can be considered to be simultaneously “sociohistorical constructions, products of multiple, competing discourses conducted over the course of, on one level, a culture’s history, and on another level, an individual’s lifetime” (Robertson 1992:166). Gender roles, as “socio-cultural and historical conventions of deportment and costume attributed to females and males” (ibid.), may in many ways be considered to transcend distinctions of class. However, in addition to being related to self-identities, how people define and (are able to) actualize their gender roles and identities are also constrained and enabled by the material conditions and cultural frameworks within and with which they act. Though there has been a significant amount of scholarship on gender as related to women’s experiences and identities in Japan, the gendered nature of men’s experiences has yet to be fully discussed—and the diversity of intersections of gender and class, for both women and men, remain largely unmapped. I will be relying on the above conceptualizations of class, culture, lifecourse

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and self-identity in constructing an interpretation of the experiences of the men and women working at the Shintani Metals Company. From a practice theory informed point of view, there exist on-going reflexivities among class/ culture, lifecourse and self-identity. This kind of perspective, I believe, helps us to understand people as individuals, the courses of whose lives are dynamically interrelated with self-identity, which together are enabled and constrained by, and constructed in interrelation-ship with, various broader contexts. METHODOLOGY AND ORGANIZATION Primary research for this book involved doing participant observation fieldwork at both work and play with the people employed at the Shintani Metals Company over a fourteen-month period in 1989–90. I will write in more detail about this in Chapter 2. In addition, I was able to interview more formally fifty-three of the people at the factory. These included the Company President, the Factory Manager, the Personnel Manager and fortyfive of the employees. Five people from Kinsei Fine Metals, an affiliated firm owned by the same family, were also interviewed. Kinsei Fine Metals had a total of eleven employees and in December of 1989 moved operations into the Shintani Metals factory. Since company ownership, management, production orientation, job assignments and, for a few of the men, employment histories directly overlapped between the two “companies,” I have made no attempt to present the interview materials separately (in the early 1990s, Kinsei’s “separate” identity ended—see Chapter 3). Interviews were scheduled over the course of several months and were held in a variety of places inside and outside of the factory. Since the initial fieldwork in 1989–90,1 have had several opportunities to date (1997) to visit the factory to talk with the owner/managers, and to meet various of the (former) employees informally. While the book focuses primarily on the 1989–90 period, information from my later visits and conversations are also included. To meet these people, to conduct these interviews, to do participationobservation in the Shintani Metals factory, all of course depended upon my finding and “getting in” at the company and among the men and women working there. I will turn to a consideration of how this happened in the next chapter. First, however, let me present a brief outline of the rest of the book as a whole. In order to situate the subsequent discussions, which focus on the men and women working at the factory, the following two chapters describe various aspects of the history (Chapter 3) and organization (Chapter 4) of the Shintani Metals Company. The goal here is to outline the company context and, further, to interrelate it with the broader context of the medium-small enterprise sector of the Japanese economy. While I eventually wish to view the employees of

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Shintani Metals as more than just workers, it is important also to understand the various contexts of their employment. Chapters 5 through 10 constitute the ethnographic heart of the book. I begin by examining the diversity of experience, interrelationships and identity revealed in the narratives of the men (Chapter 5) and women (Chapter 6) working at the factory which describe personal backgrounds and histories leading to employment at the Shintani Metals Company. Individual selfidentities, lifecourse experiences, particular educational institutions and previous places of employment, as well as broader economic and cultural contexts, are important in understanding these personal narratives. Besides coming to work at the company, several people also left to work elsewhere. This is discussed in Chapter 7. The next three chapters (8, 9, 10) describe the “After-Hours and Private Time” leisure relationships and activities of the Shintani Metals people. Chapter 8 examines After-Hours events sponsored by various (semi-) formally organized groups within the company, while Chapter 9 looks at After-Hours events and relationships among informal groups of co-worker friends. In Chapter 10, I describe the significance of Private Time activities which do not involve others from the firm. In conclusion, in Chapter 11 on “contexts and connections,” I argue that we must recognize the lifecourse and class-related nature of self-identity and suggest that in doing this we may see that, while multiplex and open to change, self(-identity) also shows significant integrity in the on-going construction of lives, working class or other. I also argue that, while recognizing the importance of self-identity and agency in the individual construction of lifecourse, we must also situate both self-identity and life-course in interrelationships with class context and class reproduction.

2

Getting there and getting in

From August of 1988 until December of 1990, I lived in the TokyoYokohama area of Japan while first doing a final year of language study and then for the next year and a half doing the research on which my Ph.D. dissertation and now this book is based. I must now attempt to convey to others my understanding of what I was told, heard, saw and experienced in Japan. I am in part faced with, as Clifford Geertz puts it, the “oddity of constructing [a text] ostensibly scientific out of experiences broadly biographical” (1988:10). These biographical experiences are those of a person doing anthropological participant-observation fieldwork. Ethnographic research is an interpersonal as well as a professional—and perhaps also poetic and political (Clifford and Marcus 1986)—endeavor. The personal interests and experiences of ethnographers doing research in Japan have been given voice in several recent ethnographies.1 This is part of a general “experimental moment” in ethnographic writing which attempts to restore subjectivity to ethnography by, in part, dispersing it.2 Restoring the ethnographer as a person to the text should be both a humbling and a humanizing endeavor. But the “experiences broadly biographical” that Geertz refers to, in being interpersonally constructed, are thus also social in character, and involve an extended and intense set of dialogues between the anthropologist and the people later, in writing, described and discussed. The personal, subjectively significant experiences of the ethnographer are constructed or constituted out of the social interactions and relationships that the fieldworker becomes partner to. In this chapter I want to discuss certain of the personal dimensions of my fieldwork in Japan. Doing ethnographic research, I will argue, critically involves the social implications of the class-, gender- and lifecourse-related attributes of the anthropologist. Introduction to and “integration” into, or being accepted or tolerated by, the group of people one is interested in learning about, and from, can require that the anthropologist cease to be seen primarily as such. Who the ethnographer is perceived to be is negotiated—sometimes contested— during the course of fieldwork interactions and inter relationships. And, out of these interactions and interrelationships come the local experiences and 20

Getting there and getting in

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knowledge, the “experience broadly biographical,” which can later be written about in interpretation (see Rabinow 1977). So let me describe my own experience in doing ethnographic fieldwork in Japan, focusing on the process of my “getting there and getting in” at the small company which became my research field site. GETTING THERE When I arrived in Japan, I was still at the stage of proposing to do research, revising and rewriting my research proposal. I knew, or thought I knew, how I wanted to do the fieldwork. I would, simply enough it seemed to me at the time, find a small manufacturing company that would agree to let me do my research in exchange for a certain amount of unremunerated hours of work per week. I would be on a research grant, so I would not need the money. I was willing to do or learn to do almost anything, as long as it was understood that I would also be talking with the people working at the factory. As long as the company was small enough, was a manufacturing firm, and preferably a subcontracting company, I did not have any specifics in mind as to the type of products being made. I thought that a work assignment of almost any sort would grant me the kind of participative entry that, as an anthropologist, I deemed essential for the research. Finding “an appropriate field site” was not, however, as easy as it seemed. Still not there: on finding a field site During the summer of 1989 I began exploring avenues that I hoped would lead to a research field site in either the Osaka-Kyoto area, where I had originally proposed to do the research, or in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, where a different set of contacts seemed to promise success in locating a firm willing to accept my presence as worker-researcher. After several visits to western Japan, where my contacts were primarily those with or having to pass through university professors, I decided that the Tokyo-Yokohama area offered a greater number of possibilities for me. I had, for example, come to know the Director of the Yokohama City Medium-Small Enterprise Guidance Center. He invited me to make use of the reference materials available at the Center and to join in a variety of Guidance Center sponsored events. The latter included participation in a number of study field trips to the factories of a group of medium-small enterprises whose representatives met at the Guidance Center to exchange information and advice on a range of technical and managerial issues. However, I was not gaining direct access to the employees of these companies, where my real interests lay. I therefore approached the Director with the request that, if possible, he help me locate a company that might be willing to act as field site for my research. His response was rather interesting

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Getting there and getting in

and, for the research itself somewhat problematic. He suggested that if I were to offer to teach English once or twice a week to employees it would provide a way, eventually, of being able to make research-related queries of those employees. As a sideline this did not sound completely out of the question, but as a primary means of “gathering data” it certainly was. So I suggested that another way of being able to interact would be to work as a more or less regular employee. To this, the Director responded that it did seem possible and that he would investigate it for me. However, his assumption was that since I am a scholar (gakusha) I probably should not do physical work as a laborer (ro-do-sha) but instead perhaps I could help with things such as future planning, translating business correspondence, and so forth. It would be more appropriate for me, and certainly easier (and safer) for him also, if I were to engage in some sort of white-collar activity. I continued to explore other connections. First steps: entering Shintani In late August of 1989, I was introduced to the President of the Shintani Metals Company, at first hoping that he would be able to offer some advice in finding a firm other than his own which might be willing to take me in. After some discussion, the Company President suggested that I could do my research at the Shintani Metals factory. This company conformed to my goals of finding an independently owned manufacturing firm doing subcontracting work for larger enterprises and employing around fifty people. While until very recently primarily involved in making watch cases for some of Japan’s major watch manufacturers, the company is now increasingly shifting its production orientation towards jewelry, still on a subcontracting basis (on which more in Chapters 3 and 4). At the beginning of my fieldwork there were fifty-five persons working at the factory, plus the Personnel Manager, the Factory Manager and the Company President. Logistically as well, Shintani Metals seemed opportune, being commutable within a one-hour train ride, which is normal in the Tokyo area. GETTING IN From gakusha to ro-do-sha: working my way in Finally, after having searched for nearly three months, I had “gotten there” to a research site. On 2 October 1989 I began my fieldwork at the Shintani Metals Company. I met again with the Factory Manager and talked about my plans and desires for the research. He wanted to reconfirm what kind of work I hoped to do, for how many months, and to inquire about what I might require, making sure, for example, whether I would need a chair and desk at which to write. The Personnel

Getting there and getting in

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Manager joined us and expressed his concern that Shintani Metals might not really be an appropriate place for my research since the company’s employees (he used the phrase uchi no renchu- “our [company’s] guys”) were mostly junior high or high school graduates and so did not have much to do with “culture.” I replied that it was precisely because of the blue-collar nature of the workers that I thought Shintani Metals would be a good place for my research, not attempting to explain that my notion of “culture” was perhaps different from that implied by his statements. I began working as a member of Special Products-A, a recently created section which was making a particular brand of rings. The company provided me with a light-blue emblem emblazoned work shirt, a short-waisted navyblue work jacket, and a one-month rail pass. Ten days later I bought myself a pair of navy-blue work pants of the sort worn by most of the other men at the factory. I was ready. I wanted to become “integrated” as a member of the company “community” as soon as possible. During my first two weeks at the factory I arrived at just before eight each morning, wanting to begin the day along with the full-time blue-collar employees (the full-time white-collar staff and the part-time women employees start their days at nine). Though the Factory Manager had told me that I need not come in before nine, I felt it important to at least begin the day with others in the workshops in order to become accepted as a member of the workforce. However, during these first two weeks of fieldwork, after having worked until four in the afternoon, the foreman of my workgroup would come over to wherever I happened to be, tapping away at yet imperfectly rounded gold or platinum rings, or cutting out portions of designs using heavy, old, footoperated ketobashi presses, and he would say: “James, it’s already four, so please quit. You have to write your report right?!” I was, he had been told by the Company President, not there to learn the job as such but to study, to do research; and so he was suggesting that I go up to the dining room on the third floor to sit down and write. I was a scholar, and so I must surely need time to write my “report.” That is what scholars do, right? They write. After helping the part-time women workers, who also stopped work at four, sweep the shoproom floor, I would excuse myself, saying one version or other of the phrase Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu (more or less, “Excuse me for leaving before you”), the only man in the room to do so, and the only man at the company to stop working so early. I maintained this schedule of “going up” to the dining room at four to write for about two weeks, partly in order not to turn down the foreman’s, and by extension the Company President’s kindness, and partly in order to take advantage of the opportunity to sit down and write while still at the factory. If I spent the hour between four and five writing, I thought, I would be finishing at essentially the same time as the other full-time employees, whose official work day ends at five. I soon realized, however, that very few of the men were

24

Getting there and getting in

in fact leaving at five, most staying until six or later to do overtime. I had wanted to be able to go out and talk with the employees after work hours, and leaving “early” was not providing me the chance to do so. I decided that I needed to change my schedule in order to be able to finish writing at about the same time as the other men finished their work. So I arranged to begin coming in at nine and working until five, going then to the dining room to write. This was an improvement, in that I was sometimes able to talk with those men who came into the dining room between five and six for coffee and cigarette breaks. I was able to expand the range of people with whom I talked, learning bits and pieces about individuals and groups of men, gradually coming to know more about their work days and about their non-work interests and lives, and slowly also becoming known by them. I was also on occasion made privy to more private opinions and information, as when Kuwata, one of the young men from the same second-floor workroom where I was based, mentioned that he was saving money for a trip he planned to (and eventually did) take to Europe. I had myself been there some ten years earlier, and so talking of Europe became a recurring conversational theme between us. What is especially interesting about that initial conversation is that Kuwata later told me that I was one of the first people at the factory with whom he had talked of his plans. I was outside enough yet inside enough (or perhaps inside enough yet outside enough?) to talk to. But just as previously I had been the only man to stop working at four, so I was then the only man to come into the workshop at nine in the morning, along with the part-time women. Along with, just like one of, the part-timers, I would walk in and greet each of the already working men with OhayoGozaimasu! (“Good Morning!”) as I made my way to the back of the room where my workgroup’s stations were. I remember, during those days, getting looks from some of the men which I interpreted: Dare, kono hito?! (“who’s this guy?!”). I was still in a kind of double or triple limbo, being an American “scholar” whose hours at the company, for a man, were chu-tohanpa (“neither here nor there,” “half-baked”). It became apparent that if I were to become more fully integrated socially into the company, then it was imperative that I maintain similar hours, a working man’s hours. So I decided, once again, that I would have to work still harder—or at least longer. After nearly three weeks of going to the factory at nine, I resumed arriving at eight, as I had done earlier. Oddly enough, at a work-group meeting the day after I began this new schedule, the section foreman asked the two young Japanese men working under him to do overtime until eight or nine each night, instead of their usual six or seven, in order to meet the upcoming deadlines for two large lots of rings. While I generally did not stay quite as late as the others, I began to do overtime from that period. From that week, as well, I started to work Saturdays—which I had not done previously. I thus began going to the company five or six days per week, waking up at six in the morning, getting on the train around seven, working at the factory from eight a.m. until

Getting there and getting in

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five, six or seven p.m., and then arriving back home between seven and eight in the evening. Although I had explained that I was receiving an adequate stipend from my fellowships, the foreman of the Special Products-A section arranged for me to begin receiving some money from about the end of my first month at the factory. He felt that there should be some payment for my labor since I was working in his section, even though I was not there for a job as such. The company provided me with transportation and lunch allowances, and late in November of 1989 began to give me a small hourly overtime allowance. I considered these to primarily be gifts of thanks and appreciation for my effort in working as a member of the group into which I had been placed. I worked alongside the other people in the second-floor workshop or in other areas of the factory where I was assigned to complete certain tasks, learning to do a range of low-skilled preparatory jobs, as well as the somewhat more difficult task of polishing the inside of the rings. Most of these tasks were also done by the other people in the section. Unless necessary, however, the men would avoid doing the simple but time-consuming preparatory work. Eventually, I became relatively “skilled” at polishing the inside of the rings, and although I could never match the pace of most of the other men, I did equal or surpass one or two fellows. This is one of the more disliked tasks at the factory because it is dirty and tiring (and was one job never done by women). After doing this for an extended period, one’s arms and shoulders ache, and the dust produced covers one’s clothes, arms and often face as well. While my working hours were basically the same as those of the other men, the types of jobs that I was assigned to do varied on a day-to-day and task-bytask basis. In a sense, then, I was like a full-time male part-timer—the other part-timers, all women, for the most part likewise following the instructions of male superiors in doing generally less skilled, but not necessarily less labor intensive, kinds of jobs. Going into the workroom in the mornings, I would either be told to continue what I had been doing upon leaving the previous day, or the foreman of the Special Products-A section, Mr Shintani, would ask me to do one of a number of other tasks. Throughout the day I would notify Mr Shintani upon finishing one assign-ment and would then be given instructions about what work to do next. If this required setting up or adjusting machinery, he would often take the time to do this himself or would have one of the two young men who comprised, the remainder of the regular male workers of the section do it for me. I was sometimes concerned that the time spent actually working at these time-consuming and sometimes certainly tedious tasks might be unproductive or at least under-productive ethnographically. There were moments, while tapping rings more completely round, or polishing the inner surface of rings, or whatever, when I would ask myself: is this doing Anthropology? Are you really going to write about this?! It is impossible

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Getting there and getting in

always to be talking, asking questions, seeking definition and clarification while other people are busy or while you are working at something— especially if it is important to someone else that the work be finished in a more or less timely manner. I would take advantage of whatever opportunities I had to ask questions, to talk, to jot down notes, and while working I was always paying as much attention as possible to what others were doing and saying. Returning home in the evenings I would write my fieldnotes, some days with more, other days with less to write about. I was doing factory-workshop anthropology. Although I sometimes worried about it, doing this sort of work was in fact very important for the success of the research in a number of ways. Perhaps most importantly, I became perceived to be a serious (majime) worker. I found myself being commended for doing “work everyone hates” (minna ga kirai na shigoto), like polishing the inner surfaces of rings, and for working overtime. By maintaining something more of a full-time schedule, I was also seen to be making a contribution to my workgroup, at the time the busiest section in the company. Actually working at the factory also allowed me to engage in work- and company-based conversations with the other men and women. This was of ongoing significance in being able to do participant-observation, but was also important in being able to ask appropriate questions and understand responses when I interviewed the employees more formally. And, as part of this, maintaining the work schedule that I did, doing the kinds of tasks that I did, increased the mutual respect and trust between myself and the men and women working at Shintani Metals. This was a respect and trust constructed through the sharing of experience, working here at the factory, over an extended period of time—something that can be achieved only through participant-observation. From gaijin to nakama: playing my way in Besides the construction of an appropriate work schedule and status at the company, there were other initial obstacles with which I was confronted while “getting in.” I was also faced with the problem of becoming not just more like a working man but of becoming a known person. It became apparent during the first month or so of the fieldwork that I was still socially “outside” (soto), that some of the younger men, in particular, felt my presence peculiar. I was not becoming fully enough an “inside” (uchi) member of the group, one of the nakama.3 There were, for instance, a number of occasions during this time when I saw some of the young men pointing at each other and heard them, laughing, saying Nippon-jin, Nipponjin (“Japanese, Japanese”). This kind of play is academically extremely interesting, since it suggests a reflexive awareness of themselves as objects of study and may perhaps be understood as a form of resistance to their objectification. For me, though, it was extremely disconcerting to encounter such resistance: “If this

Getting there and getting in

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kind of attitude continues to prevail,” I thought, “how will I ever get to know any of these people, how will I ever make any progress on my research?” I became a more accepted in-group member by working, and by playing. I have already talked at some length about working, so will here make a few remarks about the importance of “after-five” socializing for the research and as a fieldwork experience. Participating in non-work contexts of interaction was one of the goals of my research, and so to a certain extent there remained an imperative for me to join in as many such events as possible. What kinds of things do people do outside of work? Where do they go? What do they talk about? These were some of the things I hoped to learn from such after-five events. In a very real sense, what my participation in such events also did was to humanize me in the eyes of the men and women at the factory, especially in the initial liminal phase of the research. That I was willing to go out with people from the company; that I ate and drank with them; that I enjoy Japanese saké and Japanese food (except for natto-);4 that I came to pay attention to the pouring of drinks for others around me; that I would sing karaoke and eventually learned to sing one or two Japanese songs; that I would clap along with the others in support of someone else’s singing; that I would talk about sports and enjoy watching sumo; that by drinking a bit too much on one or two occasions I revealed some human weakness—these and other such things, while also teaching me much about being with Japanese people, served to make me a known and interconnected person. Even though drinking is a typical part of most after-five socializing (often in the form of nijikai “second parties”), the leisure activities and events in which I participated with people from the company included more than just going out for drinks. Among other things, I also played baseball and badminton; went skiing and hiking; joined the “company trip;” went bowling; watched Kabuki; watched sumo twice; saw a play in which a (by then former) employee had a role; saw a Japanese dance performance by an employee’s sister; and on one Sunday went to a (Baptist) church service (after which there was no nijikai). The “drinking events” (nomi-kai), further, included such occasions as Year’s End Parties (Bo-nenkai), New Year’s Parties (Shinnenkai), Welcome Parties (Kangeikai) for new employees, Farewell Parties (So-betsukai) for those leaving the firm, and parties given for the workers of a (set of) particular section(s) or for the company as a whole. After having begun to establish myself as not just a foreign researcher but also as a man doing work at the factory, I in turn began to be invited to join in more after-five activities. These then provided me with the chance to do more things and to talk more personally with a wider range of people. Being present at such events, where people become pleasantly inebriated, put me in a social position where those people could more easily talk to me. Through such participation, I became not simply an American scholar who was at the factory to do research, to study them, but I was also, and increasingly so, a person with

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Getting there and getting in

whom they worked and played, a person with whom they could talk more or less openly and in some confidence. In terms of the research, and in terms of the friendships that were in part born of such events, this kind of participation in contexts of play was of great importance to me professionally and personally. Becoming friends with people, through whatever combination of circumstances, is certainly one of the most rewarding aspects of doing anthropological participantobservation fieldwork. It is in the acts of friendship, the interactions of friendship, that a truly grounded reflexivity exists for the person doing anthropological research and perhaps also for the people who have become more than just research “informants.” A LOOK BACK The processes of my “getting there” and “getting in” at an appropriate field site were most essentially social in nature and so involved the perception of my social self. I would like to make a few further remarks here about the significance of the (re-) definitions of my perceived social identity for the success of my fieldwork, focusing on the importance of class-, gender- and lifecourse-related social attributes. Constructing the “experiences broadly biographical” (Geertz 1988:10) from which an anthropologist must create an ethnographic text involves the interested intersecting of lives: those of the anthropologist and the people who become “informants.” As Dorinne Kondo puts it in reference to Japan, an ethnography is: the result of a complex, open-ended series of interactions between a specific ethnographer, with a particular face, age, gender, “personality,” and disciplinary training, and a particular agenda in mind, and specific Japanese people with their own particular faces, ages, genders, “personalities,” and agendas. (1990:25) As discussed in the foregoing, I encountered early on the social meaning and the practical fieldwork ramifications of being perceived as a white American male scholar in both “getting there” and “getting in.” Being perceived primarily (in both senses) in this way placed me in a particular social class category in Japan, in relation to or in distinction from other Japanese, which initially made actual realization of my scholarly research goals difficult. My institutional links in attempting to “get there,” to find a “field site,” were based on my class position as an American academic. Such class-based connections were themselves distant from, and the people involved seemed reluctant to have me enter into direct contact with, the kind of blue-collar work contexts and working class people I was in fact interested in coming to understand. In order to “get there,” I had to circumvent such class-based

Getting there and getting in

29

connections and instead draw on personal links with Japanese who are themselves more directly related to the working class context I hoped to enter.5 Upon “getting there,” however, I still found the class-based deference toward me and the difference between myself and the other people at the Shintani Metals Company to be an obstacle to the research. I was initially perceived primarily as a foreign scholar, who needed to be able to write and whose presence created an uneasy sense of objectification among many of the employees. I was “there” but not “in.” The necessary metamorphosis of perception of my primary distinguishing class-contexted “attributes” from scholar (gakusha) to worker (ro-do-sha) and from (White American) foreigner (gaijin) to co-worker friend (nakama), was achieved by my active, long-term, participation in everyday social interaction with other people both at work and at play.6 Had I not been able to achieve, had I not been granted this transformation of classification, my research would not have been possible. In both “getting there” and “getting in,” being perceived primarily as an anthropologist was an obstacle to doing anthropology: in order to do anthropological research I had to overcome being an anthropologist. In conjunction with this redefining of the class-based perception of my social identity, I was also simultaneously involved in negotiating a gender appropriate identity once I had entered the Shintani Metals Company. While Hamabata (1990) was able to make (rather excellent) ethnographic use of being seen as boyish, I found that being among Japanese working class men and women required and naturally accomplished class-cultural redefinitions of my perceived identity in more working class-contexted, gender appropriate terms as “a man.” Working and playing together with the other men and women from the factory—maintaining a working man’s hours, being seen as a serious worker, and engaging in a range of after-hours socializing activities, including drinking alcohol—were social requirements for being perceived not just as a foreign scholar but as a man similar to the others working at the factory. This is a class-contexted perception of gender identity. “Getting in” required and accomplished this transformation of perceived identity. Who I was perceived to be changed through both my own actions and through my interactions with others. Unlike Dorinne Kondo (1990), my private sense of self did not become fractured or confused; unlike Matthews Hamabata (1990), I did not consciously create a fieldwork “persona.” No doubt, being a white American male created social and personal boundaries of a less mutable nature in the Japanese social-cultural context. Even though I was told by two of the men with whom I became particularly close that on certain occasions they would forget about my being a (white) American, I was certainly never really thought of, nor came to think of myself, as having become Japanese. Other lifecourse-related aspects of my identity also influenced the fieldwork.

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Getting there and getting in

The two most salient of these were my age and being married. Being in my earlier thirties placed me in an age group at the company where I became more or less naturally categorized together with the younger men and women working there. Being only recently married and having no children added to this association. However, being thirty-four made me older than most of the young employees and so a senior (senpai) of sorts. The social historical context of my youth, growing up with rock ‘n roll music for example, also allowed an easier and more natural social association with the younger people. Even though the chronological difference between myself and a man fifty years old, and between myself and a twenty-year-old man, differed by only two years, the social gap was much wider, especially given the immediate post-war experiences of an older person in Japan. But I was also old enough to know of, or have at least childhood memories of certain events or persons significant to the older men and women as well: the Tokyo Olympics, Nat King Cole and Miles Davis (!) being three such examples. In the above discussion, I have attempted to relate at some length examples of those aspects of the fieldwork experience which I feel to have been significant for that experience as such and, consequently, for the research more broadly conceived. At one level I have, of course, as Geertz (1988:16) notes is characteristic of all ethnographies, attempted to convince the reader that I have “been there.” However, I also want to emphasize that “being there” requires both that the anthropologist “get there,” and that he or she take the time and make the necessary personal effort to be allowed to “get in.” These are processes and experiences which are socially contexted and negotiated, and involve not just the anthropologist’s will but always also the “informants’” willingness. And, “getting there and getting in” involve the class-, gender- and lifecourse-based attributes that the ethnographer holds, is perceived to (come to) embody, and may have to struggle to either acquire or overcome.

3

Shintani Metals Company history

The Shintani Metals Company is one of the primary contexts influencing the lives, the relationships and the activities of the people employed there. As such, it will be important to know a bit about the company’s history and organization. In the present chapter I will outline the history of Shintani Metals. This is in large part an oral history1 provided mainly by the Company President, which I have supplemented with the comments and recollections of the Factory Manager and of certain of the people employed at the factory at the time of my fieldwork. In Chapter 4 I discuss some of the organizational features of the firm. The company’s history is at once a set of personal histories and a corporate history which have taken place within broader socio-economic relationships and dynamics. As a small manufacturing firm, Shintani Metals is itself also a part of the medium-small enterprise sector of the Japanese economy and so has been affected by that context. Contemporary Japanese foreign investment and the labor shortage experienced by Japan in the late 1980s were especially important for Shintani Metals during the five to ten years prior to my fieldwork. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time now known as the “bubble” years, when investments in stocks and real estate led a period of great economic prosperity in Japan. I left Shintani Metals at the end of 1990. In 1991 the “bubble” burst and Japan has been in a protracted recession which in early 1997 it still struggles to move out of (see ERA 1995 for a general discussion). Shintani Metals has had to adjust as best as its resources allow to such contingencies and changes. The strategies of, and difficulties faced by the company, in turn, affect the work lives of the men and women at the factory. The historical contours of the Shintani Metals Company as revealed through personal narratives, as well as the broader contexts within which the company and so the people associated with it are situated, will be introduced in this chapter. I have divided the discussion into three parts. The first section presents a set of recollections dealing with the longer phase of corporate success and growth that lasted until the early 1980s. The second section examines the period from around 1983 to 1990, when conditions at the company changed in adjustment to altered relations between Shintani Metals and its “parent” 31

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Shintani Metals: Company history

contractor companies and (partly through these) in reaction to broader changes in the Japanese economy. The third section of the chapter will focus on the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s. SHINTANI TO 1983: EXPERIENCE AND ENTERPRISE The history of the Shintani Metals Company is one of the intertwining of personal experience and corporate enterprise, of personal enterprise—here reflected mostly in the entrepreneurship of the President—and corporate experience. During roughly the first four decades of its existence, the company appears to have enjoyed more or less continued success and growth. In reconstructing a picture of this period, I will first present an edited transcription of the Company President’s personal story and narrative, and will then supplement this with related remarks supplied by others, mostly the older men, at the factory. The Company President’s story At the time of my fieldwork, the Company President was in his early seventies, turning a healthy seventy-two in December of 1990. He is a sturdily built man, bald, with round features, and he is at once resolutely self-confident and judgmental and also aware of his personal obligations and relationships to the people around him. He is giri-gatai (in this case, having a strong sense of responsibility for others), and he is described by others at the factory as a man whose likes and dislikes are clear-cut (suki-kirai ga hageshii)—he treats those he likes well, but can exclude those he does not care for. By the time of my research, the Company President had come to play a more peripheral role in the daily running of the factory. However, a consideration of the company context means also knowing something of the personal history of the Company President, the founder and still, despite the assumption of most responsibilities by the Factory Manager (the President’s son and successor), the final authority at the firm. I interviewed the Company President one afternoon toward the end of April 1990, in the larger of the two, rarely used, conference rooms in the factory. I had been working up until that time, and so talked with the President while still in my dirty blue work clothes. The President talked for most of an hour and a half about himself, work, the company, the economy and other concerns such as the problem(s) with today’s young people. The passages that follow throughout this chapter are my translations from our taped interview.2 I was born…in Tochigi Prefecture. That’s where my father was also born. My father had his own family…away from the main house. My father was the third son…

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I was born in 1918. And then, this is really shameful but, when I was two years old my mother left us. I was “returned” to the main Tochigi house, and my father came to Tokyo. When I was five my father got another wife—from the main Tochigi house. That’s what happened, and so I was taken care of for three years, and came to Tokyo when I was six years old. I entered elementary school and then, I believe it was when I was a fifth grader, because we were so poor—really dirt poor (erai binbo- shiteta kara)—because of that I quit school. In the summer of my fifth grade year, I quit. Then, I was made to go as an apprentice (kozo-) to a place in Koenji that made okazu food side-dishes. I worked there for two years. Since I was an apprentice I even washed diapers, and I boiled beans. Because it was a tsukudaniya.3 I returned home, after two years. It was terrible, from early morning. I would wake at five and boil beans, working until ten at night. And all that without pay! It was because we were so poor and otherwise couldn’t eat that I was made to do that. And so I returned home. Next, this time there was a flower shop where my mother did piece work (naishoku) when the shop was busy. It was a nursery, right. My father pulled one of their flower carts. Father pulled a cart and sold flowers. And so, around 1926 or 1927, sixty-three years before now, that flower shop’s daughter went as a bride over to the Kanda area. I was sent as an apprentice to the place that she went to. That place was doing work for a shop in Ginza, making cuff-links from precious metals, for Tamaya and for the Meiji Watch Shop. My wages there were one yen—per month. That one yen, and days off were only on the first and third Sundays of each month. And even then, during the morning there was cleaning of the machines to do, and then from noon I could go out. Each time I received fifty sen. I got fifty sen each time making one yen [per month]. I made cuff-links, wristwatches, chain-watches (sage-dokei)—in the past rich men wore those— and that sort of thing. I was an apprentice there for seven years. And then, in 1939 I became 21 and took the military physical exam… January the tenth, 1940: before that time I had learned [to make] watch cases from precious metals—after all I did it for seven years, right? And then it was Manchuria, northern Manchuria… Apprenticeship in Japan has historically had various purposes and meanings (see Kondo 1990; Singleton 1989), which have not necessarily been limited to males (Lebra 1984). The experiences of the Company President in going to various businesses to work and live as an apprentice, beginning in his childhood, reflect the fact that one set of those purposes and meanings is economic. The personal, individual experiences of the President reflect both the immediate contexts of his natal family and the broader economic and cultural contexts which historically made childhood apprenticeship both necessity and option.

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Shintani Metals: Company history

By being sent out as an apprentice, the Company President lessened his family’s economic burden, gained his own livelihood and acquired the skills with which he would make his trade. The apprenticeship experiences that the Company President talks of are fairly typical—especially for men and women of his generation or older. Like the apprentices reported in Lebra (1984) and Singleton (1989), the Company President was responsible not only for doing his main work tasks but also for doing “housework” such as, in one case, washing diapers. As Kondo (1990:236) has noted for other men, holidays were infrequent and wages amounted to little more than pocket change, at best. According to a recent survey conducted among craftsmen in the Tokyo area, the most commonly reported length of time spent obtaining skills was from five to nine years among men who had entered their fields while young or who had lower levels of educational achievement (TTRK 1988:114–15). The Company President, who did not complete his (pre-war) elementary education, spent seven years at his final workplace before entering the army. Going out as an apprentice was by far the most common method of acquiring skills among Tokyo craftsmen who had graduated from pre-war elementary and junior high schools or from post-war junior high schools (ibid.: 112). This survey also shows that, among men who entered their crafts while young and worked there for extended periods, apprenticeship (totei, minarai o shite) and helping with the family business together constituted the main methods of skill acquisition (ibid.). Though particular family-related factors are most directly commented on by the Shintani Metals Company President, surveys such as the above suggest that his apprenticeship experience was not unique and that, though not necessarily any longer the case in all crafts (see Singleton 1989), apprenticeship has also been a class-contexted aspect of the construction of individual lifecourse experience. To return to the Company President’s story, he was in Manchuria for over six years: for three years and eight months in a communications unit in the military and then for a further two years as a civilian attached to the military. Following the end of the war, he was able to make it back to Japan only after considerable trouble, and returned to Tokyo from Kyushu by train. Before I went into the army there was a fellow named Uchida in what is now Oimachi. At Uchida’s place Matsukawa’s [Shintani Metals Company’s Personnel Manager] older brother worked as a jeweler (kasariya-san). In those days everyone was a subcontractor for the Meiji Watch Company, so we all knew each other. So, I worked there for two months when I returned. Everyone was getting work from Meiji then. I worked for two months and then was able to work for another guy named Higashino. After that, I started out on my own. I went independent. So this time, by myself alone, I started working. At that time the demobilized men from Shibuya—the men who had returned from the

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military were called demobilized men—those demobilized men received one thousand yen each, in new yen. Because of the defeat in the war, money had been restricted. There was no money, right? So, repatriates each received one thousand yen, as a loan for living. I got that thousand yen and bought equipment and with that I went independent. I received work from various places: from a place in Ginza and from Mr Higashino—who was a teacher at an industrial college and an extremely intelligent man, and for whom I’d worked before the war when I was an apprentice. From those sorts of places I did work for about three or so years in my house. I made watch accessories and that sort of thing…. And then in 1952, I bought 165 square meters of land near here and built a factory. At that time there was nothing in Japan, right? So, from America, soldiers brought in these small watches that looked sort of like house bugs (nankinmushi). Then, secretly, machines were increasingly coming in, from Switzerland. So, I made the outer cases for those sorts of watches and things. At that time, people who’d worked at a place called Kitakawa’s all heard that I’d started up and came over. Then, let’s see, around 1955, Shintanikun [Mr Shintani, the Company President’s cousin’s son and now foreman of the Special Products-A group at Shintani Metals] and others came. Around 1955 or 1956. And then Tozawa, Abe, Ikeda and others all came. They were all born around 1939, so when they finished junior high school…they all came here. And, with that, we worked with about ten people. So, they’ve been working here for over thirty years. Before the war, well, in 1938 war was approaching and so there was an order prohibiting luxury. You couldn’t use gold and even rice was restricted. There was no gold, not even rice—it was rationed, right? Because of that, you couldn’t really do work…. That was, I’m sure, lifted in 1954—so it was all right to use gold. From then it was open and okay to use. After that I built a sales shop in Aoyama. We started the factory in 1952 and already two years later built the sales shop. In 1957 we came to this area…. We advertised for people widely, and then from Tochigi Prefecture, Kawai, Hamabe, Imamichi [of Kinsei Fine Metals] and also Kurosawa who quit last year—those men are all around forty-eight now—those guys, at that time eleven men, responded to the advertisement. At that time we had about twenty people. We moved from across the way over to here in 1957 and requested [recruits] from schools. That was when Kawai, Imamichi, Hamabe and others came; two years before that was Abe, Shintani-kun, Honda [of Kinsei Fine Metals] and others. Then, in 1957 we formally established the Shintani Metals Company, Incorporated… So, generally on a one per every three years or five years tempo, I was building. The very first was in 1952, that was the factory across the way; then in 1957 we built here, right? During that period, two years after 1952 in 1954, we opened the sales shop in Aoyama. Then in 1957 we built here. After that, during that time we were building Kinsei Fine Metals, sometime

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Shintani Metals: Company history after 1955…in 1957 or 1958…. And then, again after five years we constructed the factory in Saitama Prefecture, right? Therefore, if not three years then every five years we were quickly building…

The story that the Company President relates here about the post-war years is one of continuing entrepreneurial success and corporate growth. The Shintani Metals factory was rebuilt in the late 1970s, and by the late 1970s or early 1980s over ninety people were employed at the Shintani Metals Company, between 130 and 140 at all of the President’s combined enterprises (the Tokyo and Saitama factories of Shintani Metals, Kinsei Fine Metals, and the Aoyama sales shop). This long phase of the company’s growth more or less fits the image of medium-small enterprises and their owner/managers as dynamic and entrepreneurially active that is portrayed in the writings of Kiyonari (1985, 1989), Koike (1983a, 1983b), H.Nakamura (1985, 1986), Friedman (1988), and Whittaker (1997). Kiyonari, for example, notes that: immediately following the Second World War, a large number of mediumsmall enterprises were established. The existing economic system was dismantled and medium-small enterprises’ “chance” expanded. From among the medium-small enterprises started at that time there appeared a great number of businesses that grew into large enterprises. (1989:29)4 The expansion of the entrepreneurial endeavors of the Shintani Metals Company President certainly, at least on the surface, appears to suggest that mediumsmall enterprises can “challenge” (cho-sen suru; H.Nakamura 1985) and expand economically; and that they can be agents of change and not just passive recipients of the effects of change (Kiyonari 1989:25). After the Company President’s return from the war he rather quickly began work as an independent craftsman. As in his apprenticeship experiences, he was not alone in going it alone. Pelzel noted that among iron-casting craftsmen who had gained their skills through years of apprenticeship, “The highest ideal goal is…that of independent entrepreneurial status, with one’s own factory, no matter how small…one’s own men working alongside and under one, one’s own apprentices coming up the ladder…” (1979:390). Koike has argued that eventual entrepreneurship constitutes a primary career pattern among men employed in smaller firms, and notes that the smaller the firm size, the higher is the proportion of such workers-turned-owners (1983a: 102; see also Friedman 1988). Kiyonari, in fact, has suggested that medium-small enterprises essentially act as “schools for future managers” (sho-rai no keieisha no tame no gakko-; 1989:30).5 Whittaker refers to the “craft or productionist entrepreneurship” of small firm owners and notes that these founders “want to be their own bosses and reap the benefits of their own work. They do not want to bow and scrape to others. They are not stereotypical ‘salary men’” (1997:126, 129).

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From the interpretive point of view which I have advocated, the entrepreneurial dynamism represented here by the post-war achievements of the Company President may be understood as one, certainly laudable, aspect of—as structured or contexted by and reflecting the nature of—the dynamic fluidity and diversity of the medium-small enterprise sector of the Japanese economy. This “structured diversity” of the medium-small enterprise sector allows and necessitates, enables and constrains, the diversity embodied in the Company President’s personal experiences as apprentice and entrepreneur. Other(s’) views The Company President, of course, is not the only person still at the company with memories of past conditions and changes. Beginning around 1955, a number of men were hired who were still with the company at the time of my fieldwork in 1989 and 1990. Although most of them talked of “entering the company” instead of “becoming apprentices,” several men recalled their early days at Shintani Metals in terms similar to those used by the Company President to describe some of his apprenticeship experiences. Mr Shintani, from rural Tochigi Prefecture, who is the President’s cousin’s son and the longest employed person at the firm, recalled: I came to Tokyo in 1955, exactly thirty-five years [ago], already thirty-five years have passed. For two years we were at a place about one kilometer away from here… At that time…in the past it wasn’t a company but individual so I came not to receive a wage but to learn the work, learn the skill. Therefore there weren’t wages. The Company President bought all our clothing and food. For example, we received wages—that is an allowance (okozukai)— twice each month, 500 yen on the first and 500 yen on the fifteen. And, he continued, revealing his country origins and youth upon entering the company: At that time, well this is an embarrassing story, but I came from the country, thirty-five years ago. So I had never ever received bonuses or wages like now. After all, my father farmed and so he didn’t come [home] with money every month. Then, I came to Tokyo in April. Now the standard summer bonus is usually received in July and the winter bonus in December. In July just when it’s hot I received two wage packets. I said to the Company President, “although usually there’s only one [this time] I got two—there’s one extra, so I’ll return it.” And the President said, “omae (you) it’s okay so take it.” I was really happy. I took the money, and said to my foreman (oyakata), “I told the President that I’ve gotten two wages, I got one extra wage so I’ll return it, and when I did he said it’s okay so take it.” Then the foreman said, “You’re so ignorant (omae baka da no), that’s what bonuses

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Shintani Metals: Company history are, you get those,” and when I looked at the contents there were two 500 yen [bills] inside.

Mr Abe, who entered the company one year after Mr Shintani, also remembered that the first and the fifteenth day of each month were their only holidays, but said that at the time this was taken for granted (and, one might note, had not changed since the Company President’s apprenticeship days just before the war). Several of the older men recalled the long hours of work and overtime done in times past. A typical response to my inquiry about overtime from the older men is that of Mr Kawai, who said: Recently it’s not much. Until now, at its lowest, it was about twenty hours. At times when there was a lot [I did] about fifty hours. [Now it’s] about four hours per week. At that time, after I entered in 1958 for about ten years, it was always work, work, until around nine, ten or twelve o’clock [at night]. Some men disliked the long working hours. Mr Tozawa, for example, cited them as a reason for his having at one time considered leaving the company. Others, not necessarily just the older men, viewed overtime more positively, or at least more ambiguously. Referring to a later period, Mr Ikeda said: Our company also, when we were making C-Company’s goods five or six years ago, did quite a number [of watch cases], something like 50,000 or 70,000. At that time, in the end, we couldn’t make it on time and since there was a deadline we did overtime every night, at terrible times we did overtime overnight (tetsuya de zangyo- shitemashita). At that time, certainly, there was plenty of pay. That was the peak and from that time the goods coming to our company from C-Company have become less, and since then wages also have been reduced. We no longer do overtime either. Work conditions in the early days of the company were recalled by Mr Tozawa, who mentioned that in those days the factory was a one-story wooden structure and that during the winter it would get so cold that his hands would stiffen. Mr Honda, who entered the company in 1956 and had worked at Shintani Metals before moving to the Kinsei Fine Metals factory, recalled of work in times past that: At first we were making watches by hand, but gradually the work became mechanized and so even for creating the form it was just “zap” with the machine…. At the time of the [1964] Olympics if you were working and making things, they sold. Anything at all, if you made it, would sell. There was a shortage of things, right? …Gradually, things became abundant and unless it was a good product it would no longer sell. About ten years after [the time when] “if you made it, it would sell,” it became “if it’s not a good

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product, it won’t sell.” During that “it won’t sell” time, we endured by making watches. In a statement reflecting a craftsman’s pride and perhaps also some interviewinspired nostalgia, Mr Ikeda, who also joined the company in 1956, commented: When I entered the company there weren’t machines that made goods one after the other. For example, there were lathes and simple foot-operated presses (ketobashi) and small furekushon machines, but there were only those sorts of things. In trying to make a form even, forms within a range possible by processes using limited machinery; in the case of round things or things of a different form and so forth, we did it by hand using files and made the cases. That sort of thing is unthinkable now…. For me, that time was the most interesting. Working by yourself (jibun de kufu- shite), using the files with your own hands (ude ippon de yasuri o tsukatte) and completing the work. Maybe it was tough…but now with machines you just go “wham” and it’s over. For me, thinking about it, that time [in the early days] was more interesting. This series of reflections reminds us that the history of the Shintani Metals Company, like that of any enterprise, is interconnected with the personal experiences and identities of the people making their livings by working there. The company is an important context enabling and constraining the construction of personal experience and identity but is itself also situated within broader contexts as is reflected in the changes in work and overtime concomitant with technological changes and shifts in business climate. THE LATE 1980s: THE PROBLEMS OF PROSPERITY Over the five to ten years prior to my fieldwork, Shintani Metals had undergone a series of changes to which it was still then adjusting. During this period the number of employees had been reduced as production shifted from a focus on watch cases to the manufacture and repair of various jewelry items. Revealed in these changes, as causes, are the dynamics of relationships and contexts within which many medium-small enterprises in Japan exist, to which they must attempt to adapt (and of which some take advantage). The Company President, in his narration of Shintani Metals’ history, touches, at times critically, upon several of these: Actually, already about five years before now [1990], from generally around 1983, well, extremely so, the business climate became bad. That is…the company at that time was making from 50 to 70,000 cases [per month]…. The only thing is that from about 1983 or so, well, factories began being rapidly built in Southeast Asia—in Taiwan, the Philippines, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and so on. Personnel

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Shintani Metals: Company history expenses are cheap down there. [All the big companies] went there, took their work and just left us [smaller companies] behind. Like I said before, as for our livelihoods (ikiru michi), after all, there was no capital, no capital stocks, there was no way for us to go overseas. If you go to Southeast Asia, it’s cheap there. That is, now for example if you go to China, it’s one-tenth of Japan: a month’s wages of 10,000 yen and you can employ one person. Whereas here, at the least it takes 120 or 130,000 yen…. Therefore in today’s China there is land, there are buildings, there are people and they’re saying bring the money and machines from Japan. The start of that was in 1983 with C-Company; no, not just C-Company, but all of Japan’s first-rank enterprises took up and went in that way. So with 1983 as boundary, things have gradually gotten worse. [What do I think about] that tendency? In the end, in the Japanese case, medium-small enterprises are, the form is that of “cooperating companies” or such. In good times, Japan’s first-class companies favor (or, flatter: odateru) us. And then after letting us work, when things become bad, well then, they close the cork, they stop the water—the flow of money. They go like this and “ugh” squeeze tight. We were doing our best, and at that time there were 130 or 140 people working for me…. Ninety or at the most about ninety-seven people were here. There were thirty-some people in Saitama, and then fifteen at Kinsei Fine Metals and five people at the sales shop. And with this as the boundary, things got bad. So, if you take 1983 as the boundary, the… [contracting companies] gradually started to squeeze us. And then telling us subcontractors to go ahead and diversify and to take work from wherever, we received this Certificate of Appreciation. [Just] saying “Thank you for your hard efforts over the years”… Therefore, they say that there are three essential conditions for living. There have to be three patrons, or it’s no good, they say. That is to say that if one place [patron] goes bad, it is out. If you have two places, as long as there’s one then you’re okay, right?… Because last year I realized that…that the company could survive by the precious metals work, in December of last year we turned down C-Company. We said that we wouldn’t do any more work for them. We said it. Our way of living is that of the heart (Wareware ga ikiru michi to iu no wa kokoro da yo). The heart. Because…we’ve been doing our business from the heart, our trustworthiness is well understood…. We can make rings or anything else, we had the skills. But we won’t do it…in other words, if you say you can do both rings and watches, it’s just not possible. So we turned down CCompany’s cheap things, turned down those between 500 and 1000 yen. And then we put in [the rings your section is making]…

From its peak employment of around ninety-five people, the Shintani Metals Company had dropped down to just about half its former size by the time I

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arrived, employing only fifty-five people when I entered the firm in October of 1989 and then shrinking further to just forty-three employees in December of 1990 (in addition, three other people are members of the company: the President, the Factory Manager and the Personnel Manager, Mr Matsukawa). As noted above, Kiyonari (1989) has emphasized that medium-small firms are not just passive recipients of outside influences but are instead active, “challenging” (H.Nakamura 1985) enterprises. Others have likewise argued that the “dual structure” view of smaller Japanese firms as backwards and dependent on and exploited by larger firms is substantially incorrect (see Friedman 1988; Miwa 1996; Whittaker 1997). Friedman, for example, contends that smaller companies must instead be seen as “flexible, technically advanced, and comparatively self-reliant enterprises” (1988:34). I do not, in general, disagree with such views since they both help inform and fit with my notions of the structured diversity of smaller firms (see also Sugimoto 1997:81ff; Whittaker 1997). However, the Shintani Metals case reminds us that the flexibility of smaller companies can be both option and necessity, that many medium-small enterprises are less able to direct and control their economic circumstances and contexts than are larger firms, that those smaller companies which are subcontractors must respond to changes in their relationships with their contracting partners, which in turn may reflect broader changes in the Japanese (and the world) economy.6 Next, I would like to discuss briefly two such changes which are important in understanding what the Shintani Metals Company was having to adjust to during the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of these was the Japanese investment in manufacturing facilities abroad and the correlated “hollowing out” of domestic manufacturing which were mentioned by the Company President in the above passages. The second important dynamic affecting the company was that of the labor shortage in Japan during the late 1980s. The effects of the bursting of the late 1980s “bubble economy” and the recession of the early 1990s will be discussed in the subsequent section. Hollowing out Concurrent with the rise in the value of the Japanese currency in the fall of 1985, overseas investment by Japanese companies, including medium-small companies, increased rapidly (SMEA 1991:124–5). Eccleston notes that Where Japan differed from other Western economies until the 1980s was that foreign investment complemented and enhanced overseas trade and was to a much smaller extent a substitute for domestic production. However the critical difference highlighted by the yen crisis was that “hollowing out” the domestic economy meant more and more direct investment abroad to replace production from Japan. (1989:243)

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Medium-small enterprises have participated in the overseas investment and hollowing out of the domestic manufacturing economy both as active agents and reacting subjects. In numbers of cases, medium-small enterprise investment overseas on the one hand constituted over 50 percent of all overseas investment by Japanese firms from around 1987 (SMEA 1991:124–5). On the other hand, however, in reaction to the crisis following the rise of the yen and of foreign investment, many smaller firms “were either replaced by in-house subsidiaries of larger firms or lost orders to Asian suppliers or at best were faced with sharp reductions in the prices they received for components” (Eccleston 1989:240). Susumu Tanaka has also noted that “In conjunction with the advance overseas of parent companies, the impact on domestic subcontractors is…coming to be seen in the forms of reduced orders and the intensification of demands to reduce costs to meet overseas production, and so forth” (1989:210). Other effects felt by subcontractors include reductions in order lots, shortening of deadlines, and demands to improve product quality and precision (ibid.). Reported countermeasures by medium-small enterprises to the overseas investment of large contractor enterprises primarily include diversification of enterprise activities and diversification of parent/contract companies (ibid.: 211–12). Other responses include changing contractor companies, going independent, changing enterprise activities, and going overseas with the parent company (ibid.). A significant number of companies also responded that they would not be doing anything in particular in response to their parent company’s overseas investment (ibid.; similar responses, differently tabulated, may be found in SMEA 1987:120). The decision of the Shintani Metals Company’s contractor “parent” CCompany to build overseas production facilities both resulted in a loss of orders from that company and necessitated, or created the opportunity for, a number of responses. As noted previously, Shintani Metals shrunk in size and shifted its production orientation from watch cases to jewelry. The Company President noted the comparative cost advantages of production in other Asian countries. Apparently the attractions of overseas production were great enough for Shintani Metals, as well, to at one time consider subcontracting orders to firms in Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, according to Mr Matsukawa it was decided that the skills available abroad did not match the company’s needs and that Shintani Metals was too small to risk investment if it could not be sure of the quality of the goods to be produced—perhaps a wise decision, since, though not uniformly so, it has been shown that “many small firms either pull out or ‘fade out’ (sell part of their investment) of their foreign investments, with serious consequences for the company” (Whittaker 1997:60). In December of 1989 the people from the Kinsei Fine Metals factory moved into the Shintani Metals factory. Subsequent to their departure, the old Kinsei factory was not leased out or remodeled for another manufac turing enterprise. Instead, the factory was torn down and a modern

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three-story rental office building was constructed, work on which was completed in early 1991. At the jo- to- shiki (ceremony celebrating the completion of the framework of a house or building; also called mune-age shiki: see Ashkenazi 1985), speeches emphasized that this new building was to be an “intelligent building” (the English words were used), designed for computer-ized office operations. The hollowing out of industrial Japan is here reflected in the hollowing out of manufacturing from the western Tokyo region (see also Whittaker 1997). Labor shortage The second change in the Japanese economy affecting the recent history of the Shintani Metals Company was that of the labor shortage in Japan during the late 1980s. The ratio of job applicants to job openings in Japan started to rise in conjunction with the economic expansion which began in 1985, breaking the 1.0 level for the first time in fourteen years in June 1988 and continuing to stay around the 1.30 level since mid-1989 (SMEA 1990a: 21–2). The rate of labor shortage among companies, further, rose with decreasing firm size (SMEA 1990b: 35). Medium-small sized companies felt particular demands for technical and skilled workers, for junior and high school graduates, and for graduates from junior colleges (who are almost all women) and vocational schools (ibid.: 36–7). After 1988, until the bursting of the economic bubble in 1991, the labor shortage became “the greatest management issue facing small and medium enterprises” (ibid.: 26). Among medium-small enterprises in the manufacturing industry, problems arising from the labor shortage included (in decreasing order): being unable to keep up with present orders; being unable to expand business; increasing labor costs; and increasing overtime-related employee health problems and other demands (SMEA 1990b: 39). Other effects of the labor shortage (not necessarily limited to chu- sho- -kigyo-) included: “(1) continuing movement or change in factory location to rural areas where it is easier to secure labor than it is in large urban areas; (2) increasing bankruptcies due to shortage of hands;7 and (3) increases in the [number of] enterprises hiring foreign laborers” (EPA 1990:26). Methods used among medium-small enterprises to increase personnel included (again in decreasing order): mid-career hiring; employment of parttimers; and employment of new school graduates (SMEA 1990b: 42). More general countermeasures to the labor shortage included: (attempting to) increase personnel; increasing overtime; promotion of labor saving techniques; and (increased) use of subcontractors (ibid.: 41). Some of the contradictions faced by medium-small enterprises are suggested by the observation that: With the already high level of overtime worked, it is difficult, especially for small and medium enterprises, to increase overtime any further, a problem

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Shintani Metals: Company history which has strengthened their desire to increase the number of people they employ. (SMEA 1990a:31)

The labor shortage was not simply a statistical abstraction. The need for extra hands and the difficulty of recruiting workers was also felt at Shintani Metals, though not necessarily evenly throughout all workgroups. The section in which I worked, Special Products-A, was one of, if not the busiest section in the company during my fieldwork. The effects of not having the people on hand to cope with the work assigned to this section are revealed by some of the strategies used to adapt to the situation by the Special Products-A group. One morning in late January of 1990 the section chief, Mr Shintani, called the group—Miyata, Itai, Mrs Sugimoto (a part-time employee), myself and Oda (temporarily “on loan” from another workgroup)—up to the third-floor dining room. Mr Shintani had done this before, for essentially the same purpose: to inform everyone of the need to continue doing overtime until the next deadline had been met. Going over the number of rings ordered, the number of days available for completing them—even granting a possible two- or threeday deadline extension—and the personnel available, he called on the young men working under him to try to continue until nine o’clock each night, or at least every other evening, with work ending at seven on the early nights. Mr Shintani noted that he, at least, would be working until nine or later in the evenings, as well as on Sundays, as long as necessary. He also noted that he had been canceling all personal events because of work—despite the fact that his wife was unhappy about this. Mr Shintani attempted to justify the amount of work being requested (and demanded), in part by reference to the notion that it is the social role of men to work, that they are responsible for working. Mrs Sugimoto was excused from the overtime, since, Mr Shintani answered in gender-typic manner, he understood that the part-timers (all women) had to go shopping and/or to prepare dinner for their families after work (generally until four or five). In explaining the circumstances, Mr Shintani also made reference to the fact that people in Japan are working and living in a world which demands the extra work. One reason for this, he noted, was that like other industries and companies Shintani Metals was suffering from a shortage of labor and was having a hard time recruiting new members. The company had apparently been advertising for workers since December, but had received only three or so calls, and those people had declined after seeing or hearing in more detail about the kind of work and work site involved. So, Mr Shintani explained, since this was a difficult time to try to find new employees, the Company President had said that Special Products-A needed to do the best it could until April when people graduate or change jobs more often. Only Miyata, who had previously worked at a larger firm and whose mother was not in good health, made any sort of critical comments or asked leading

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questions: for example, did the Factory Manager think that it was really possible to continue doing this much work? And was the number of people in the section to remain the same? As it turned out, no new production workers were hired by the company during my fieldwork. To cope with the large orders being received by the Special Products-A section, the company instead made use of a number of alternative strategies. Besides the increased overtime of the normal members of the section, people from other workgroups—and from Kinsei Fine Metals— were often recruited or assigned to help when the work in their own sections allowed them to set it aside for a few hours or a few days. Also, the company invested in the development and construction of a machine to reduce the amount of work required to polish the inner surface of rings—one of the more timeconsuming and labor intensive jobs involved in making rings. General factors creating the labor shortage and other of Shintani Metals’ responses to the situation were mentioned by Mr Matsukawa, the Personnel Manager, who noted that: Certainly there is a labor shortage. That is to say that even if we advertise there is no immediate response. After all, now shortened work-hours and a two-day weekend and various conditions are gaining appeal, right? In that case, well, what we are doing is a temporary phase [since Shintani Metals operates every other Saturday], so after all, we’re still half-way into the change. Therefore now we’re thinking of experimenting with changing starting from eight o’clock to eight-thirty or nine o’clock, so we’re one step behind. Other responses, contemplated or attempted, to the difficulties of recruiting sufficient or appropriate workers were mentioned by the Factory Manager. After noting the difficulties of recruitment experienced even by larger companies which had relaxed their starting times and increased wages in order to attract people, he continued: It’s difficult. Even here, if you look at the last two or three years, only about two people have entered. To a certain extent, if you have machinery ready, there is plenty of work that even part-timers can do. Therefore, aiming for part-timers and advertising is okay, but there just aren’t any [women who will come as] part-timers around here…. In Japan recently, people from Southeast Asia have increased. Doing all kinds of work. Therefore, [everyone is thinking], should we take our factories overseas from here, or should we call those people from over there? But those people only work for a short time, right? There’s no one who will work for their entire lives [in Japan]. It’s only temporary… From now, moving the factory to a place where there are a lot of people and you can advertise for part-timers—that sort of thing is also possible to consider. But, the price of land is high now and so that requires a lot of

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Shintani Metals: Company history money. At one time I’d thought of that also. Now, if you ask people from various companies, there aren’t people even if you go to rural areas…but, whether they’re doing fishing or whatever, young people who graduate from school all come to Tokyo. Even if you go to the country there are only children and old people. There aren’t any young people at all.

In the responses of Mr Matsukawa and the Factory Manager, we see reflected, if only as contemplated or desirable possibilities, measures which other medium-small factories had actually implemented to one extent or another— changes in working hours, the employment of part-timers, movement of factory sites to rural areas of Japan and the employment of foreign laborers. And we have seen above that Shintani Metals had at one time investigated the possibilities of overseas investment and subcontracting. The labor shortage problem was not, however, simply a matter of too few people, but was related also to changing social perceptions of manual labor in Japan. Recent social discourse on work in Japan has seen the emergence of a critical evaluation of the “3Ks” of manufacturing: kiken (dangerous), kitanai (dirty), and kitsui (physically demanding). To these, some add kyu-ryo- (wages— being low) and kekkon (marriage—being difficult) as further prob lems for men employed in (especially smaller) manufacturing enterprises.8 Small manufacturing companies are caught in a multiple squeeze by being unable to offer wages and benefits comparable to those of larger companies, and also by changes in educational achievement and in social attitudes towards work, manufacturing in particular (see also Whittaker 1997). Talking about the labor shortage problem among medium-small manufacturing companies, several of the men at the Shintani Metals factory mentioned the problems of long working hours in smaller firms and the attractions of easier work, better and more stable wages, two-day weekends and so forth in larger firms. Young people today, in the opinion of several of the older men, just want to take it easy and make money, and do not want to do dirty or difficult work. Young people do not want to learn the necessary skills, they say, but only want to put in their hours, get paid (well), and have the free time to spend their earnings. Mr Honda, in a passage that contains a number of messages, reflected thus on the labor shortage: It’s because the young people now think that they want to have it easy and make money. Besides which, it’s reached the point where anybody at all (neko mo shakushi mo) can enter college. So there’s the thinking to enter a company after graduating from university where they can, if even just a little, take it easy and make money. Therefore, I think, medium-small enterprises are short of labor. In medium-small enterprises you must master skills just like a craftsman, but among young people there are a lot who don’t want to get dirty working, who don’t want to learn a skill and want to get money just by numbers [of work hours]. You can make money anywhere,

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and craftsmen are not favorably thought of (megumaretenai)…[E]ven young people doing industrial work don’t have the desire to become craftsmen. It’s only money. Medium-small enterprises are also gripped by the larger companies and if you’re told to make a 1000 yen product for 900 yen, from that you have to pay wages and so wages are cheap and people won’t come [to medium-small enterprises]. They might come if you paid money like the large companies… Miyata, one of the younger men at the factory, however, talked of the fact that in manufacturing one works together with others to make something and that thus, unlike in sales, for example, there is not a direct relationship between one’s own individual work and the rewards and recognition that one receives. When I asked the Company President about the potential problems that Shintani Metals might face when the cohort of men then in their later forties and early fifties reach retirement age, his answer reflected some of these same themes, though more encompassingly expressed, and returns us to the context of the Company President’s personal history: This is/will be a terrible problem. But the problem is primarily that this work’s skills are extremely difficult [to acquire]. And, well, those people who are younger than forty have no heart (kokoro ga nai). They just don’t work hard (issho-kenmei yaranai)…. In particular, the ones that are suffering are medium-small enterprises. The thing is, to put it plainly, today’s young people just won’t learn the work if they can just receive their monthly wages…. They won’t come and ask you, “Sensei [teacher, but used in a broader sense], what about this,” or “what about that?”… So, whether it’s good or bad, it’s okay with them since another day has passed and they’ll get their money. THE 1990s RECESSION: BURSTING BUBBLES AND BEYOND As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the economic “bubble” of the late 1980s burst in 1991 and Japan has thereafter been in a prolonged recession. How has the recession of the 1990s affected medium-small enterprises? How have Shintani Metals and its employees been affected? While I will not be able to answer these questions in detail here, I do want to offer some further information to bring the discussion a bit more up to date. Before turning to a discussion of some of the post-bubble changes at the Shintani Metals Company, I would like to provide a brief overview of how the recession of the first half of the 1990s has been affecting Japanese mediumsmall enterprises in general. After having done this, we will focus a bit more on bankruptcies, employment trends, and the responses of medium-small companies, especially as these are related to employees.

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General characteristics A number of economic indicators clearly reveal the beginnings of the Japanese economic recession in 1991. Although there are variations depending on the sector of the economy and on the region of the country, indices of, for example, business confidence, production, sales and pre-tax profits all show rapid increases during the late 1980s, and then drastic declines from 1991 to late 1993, with some recovery since that time (SMEA 1993, 1995, 1996a, 1996b). The four consecutive years of declining corporate earnings (in year-on-year terms) from fiscal 1990 through 1993 was unprecedented in post-war Japanese economic history (SMEA 1996a:24–5). Among the difficulties or constraints reported being faced by medium-small manufacturing enterprises are, in decreasing order: (1) declining sales or reduced orders, (2) increased competition with other enterprises in the same industry, (3) the difficulty of increasing product sales prices, (4) strictness of deadlines and unit price dealings, and (5) increasing personnel costs (TCDC 1995:10). Reasons given for falling orders received by medium-small subcontractors include: (1) the weak sales of parent companies, (2) reduction in the parent company’s domestic production due to increased offshore production, (3) reduction in the numbers or types of parts the parent company uses, (4) the purchase of parts from overseas by the parent company, and (5) selective subcontracting by the parent company (SMEA 1995:83). Numbers 2 and 4 here are post-bubble products of the hollowing out of the Japanese economy which we discussed earlier. One of the other general aspects of the current recession that is relevant to our discussion is that compared to past economic recessions (associated with the oil shocks of the 1970s and the rise in the value of the yen in the mid1980s), the current recession is characterized by the earlier declines and delayed recoveries of medium-small enterprises relative to larger enterprises (SMEA 1996b:24ff). The differences between medium-small companies and larger enterprises are especially visible in the delayed recovery among the former in such areas as the production of durable consumer goods, construction materials and production goods, and in the exports of production goods (SMEA 1996a:16–19). Also unlike past recessionary phases, smaller companies have been slow in making new capital investments during the current recession. This new reluctance is in part due to uncertainties about the receipt of anticipated orders (SMEA 1996a:36–40). While the general trends are similar, it is also significant for our study of the Shintani Metals Company to note that the business slump has been deeper in the Kanto- region where Tokyo is located than it has been in other areas (SMEA 1993:86), although the two other major urban-industrial areas of the country (the Kinki area including Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe cities; and the Chu-bu area centered around Nagoya) have also witnessed greater declines in business confidence than have other regions of the country (SMEA 1992:16, 1996a:19– 23, 1996b:39ff).

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Bankruptcies We noted earlier that the labor shortage affecting Japan in the late 1980s was responsible for an increasing number of the business failures that occurred during that time. In fact, annual bankruptcies declined from over 18,000 in 1985 to around 6,500 in 1990 (CCKC 1996:20–1; SMEA 1996b: appended statistics, page 38). However, bankruptcies shot back up after 1990, reaching nearly 11,000 in 1991, then just over 14,000 in 1992 and, after a slight decline in 1992, surpassed the 15,000 mark for the first time in nine years in 1995, reaching 15,108 (ibid.). Even more stark than the number of cases was the rise in the value of debts resulting from business failures, which sky-rocketed nearly three-fold from 1991 to 1992; debts from bankruptcies in 1995 amounting to some ¥9.241 trillion (or about $84 billion @ ¥110/$1; ibid.). Medium-small enterprises accounted for 99.1 percent of the total number of business failures in 1995 (CCKC 1996:20). Tanaka points out that this is to a certain extent natural enough given the fact that medium-small firms account for over 99 percent of all firms (1996:201). Medium-small enterprises also accounted for some 50.4 percent of all debts associated with business failures in 1995 (CCKC 1996:20). Among the factors involved in the recent bankruptcies are, in declining order (percentages for 1995 are in parentheses): decrease in sales (47.4), mismanagement (17.4), chain-failures (7.5), previous business pressures (8.1), and other (19.6) (SMEA 1996b: appended statistics, page 38). Some Japanese scholars suggest that the current economic climate, despite its difficulties, may actually present many medium-small enterprises with a good “business chance” (Kiyonari 1996b:17). Others emphasize that the relatively high start-up and failure rates that characterize medium-small enterprises even in less trying times, and the associated movements of people, may be seen as indicators of the “social ferment” that “underlies the competitiveness of Japanese industrial society” (Koike 1995:6; see also SMEA 1995). And, of course, economists and others generally talk about cyclical periods of adjustment and restructuring as characteristic of, if not necessary, in modern economies. I am somewhat afraid, however, that while important in their own ways, such analyses and comments nevertheless tend to abstract what may in fact be very difficult experiences for the individual entrepreneurs and employees involved, as well as for their families. Employment trends While we noted above that the 1990s recession is marked by the decline of a number of economic indices, the index for the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Japan shows a reverse trend. After declining from a peak of 3 percent in 1987, the unemployment rate fell to just over 2 percent between 1989 and 1992, then rose again sharply to just under 3 percent in 1994 (EPA 1995:77).

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Rates of unemployment, however, vary depending on a number of factors including sex, age, employment status and education. The rate for men in 1994 was 2.8 percent, while for women it was somewhat higher at 3.2 percent (ibid.: 86). Though non-regular workers (part-timers, temporary employees, etc.) tend to remain jobless for shorter periods of time than do regular employees, the unemployment rate among non-regular employees is some two percentage points higher than for regular employees (MOL 1995:36). It is also interesting to note that while among men unemployment rates are higher for those men with lower levels of education than for those with higher levels of education, the reverse seems to be the case among women (ibid.: 42). During the labor shortage of the late 1980s the ratio of job applicants to job openings surpassed the 1.0 level in June 1988 for the first time in some fourteen years. After having reached a peak of 1.6 in March 1991 this ratio fell back below 1.0 in April 1991 and has continued to fall (TSSC 1996:32). What this basically means is that there are now more people looking for jobs than there are jobs available. Or, put from a company-based economic point of view, there is a relative oversupply of labor now. However, this surplus of labor is itself relative to a number of factors including enterprise size, industrial sector, job type, employee category (regular or part-time) and employee age. Medium-small enterprises are experiencing less of such a labor surplus than are larger enterprises, while among the former, manufacturing firms are experiencing more of a surplus than are other enterprises (SMEA 1996b:95–7). Among manufacturing companies, further, there is now much less demand for laborers than there is for people with specialized technical, research and other skills (ibid.: 108; SMEA 1996a:53– 4). Conversely, among medium-small enterprises there is a relative shortage of younger regular workers under the age of thirty-four compared to a relative oversupply of older workers (TCDC 1995:21–3). Responses Japanese enterprises have responded to the bursting of the economic bubble and the continuing recession in a variety of ways, many of which in one manner or another affect working people. Responses to the recession among mediumsmall enterprises have included the implementation of cost-cutting measures (among 84.4 percent of firms), the development of new customers (50.5 percent of firms), the securing and development of human resources (28.7 percent of companies), diversification into new fields (24.8 percent), capital investment (21.7 percent) and technological development (18.8 percent of companies) (SMEA 1995:149). Among medium-small companies in manufacturing, the four most common cost-cutting measures have been (1) the reduction of materials and stock purchasing costs (among nearly 65 percent of firms), (2) the reduction of advertisement, transportation and entertainment costs (among

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close to 50 percent of enterprises), (3) wage cuts and rationalization of the workforce (among just over 40 percent of firms), and (4) reduction of processing and machining costs (among just under 40 percent of firms) (ibid.:150). If we look more closely at adjustments being made in employment-related factors, we find that one general trend of the current recession has been for adjustments to have been first made in overtime and in the use of currently employed labor (EPA 1995:77). The smaller the company, further, the less the number of overtime hours of work done (ZCDC 1995:26). Although in part attributable to revisions made in the Labor Standards Law which call for shorter working weeks (ibid.), scheduled work hours have also decreased, especially at smaller companies (MOL 1995:24-5). Employment adjustments reported by significant numbers of companies with fewer than 300 employees have also included the reduction or abandonment of mid-term recruitment, the redeployment of workers elsewhere, and increasing the number of holidays (SMEA 1996b:51; EPA 1995:77-80). Reductions in employee numbers have been “slower to come and much milder than would be expected given the depth of the recession. Nevertheless, as the recession continues, the limit to adjustment of working hours is steadily approaching, and employee adjustments have gradually begun to emerge” (ibid.: 81). While in many other sectors there has been an increasing reliance on the employment of part-timers, in the manufacturing industry, reductions in the numbers of part-time employees began in the second half of 1992 (EPA 1995:83). Reductions in full-time employees in manufacturing were begun in 1993, becoming the major focus of cuts in early 1994. As noted in the Economic Survey of Japan for 1993-4, increased (relative) employment of part-timers and reductions in regular employees can be seen as attempts “to whittle down the burden of personnel expenses in response to continued poor corporate profits during the increasingly prolonged recession” (ibid.). In addition to reductions in the numbers of employees and hours worked, there have also been adjustments made in wages paid. While they have since recovered, the actual wages paid in manufacturing firms of between 30 and 99 employees (the category into which Shintani Metals fits) declined between 1992 and 1993 (SMEA 1996b:appended statistics, page 11). Overall, there has been a decrease in the yearly raise in wages paid in Japan from a peak 6.23 percent increase in 1991 to only a 2.92 percent increase paid in 1994 (TCDC 1995:33-5). The bonuses typically paid during the summer and at the end of the year have also declined, though not evenly so (MOL 1995:20-1). We can perhaps see one result of these trends of decreasing overtime pay, wage raises, bonuses and so forth, in the fact that the wage gap between larger enterprises (with more than 500 employees) and medium-small manufacturing enterprises (employing fewer than 300 people) increased slightly in both 1993 and 1994 (SMEA 1996b:appended statistics, page 11). Changes in amounts of production orders, sales, etc., then, have led to

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reductions in work time, overtime work, wages, bonuses and so forth, as companies struggle (and sometimes fail) to adjust to the bursting of the economic bubble and to the 1990s recession. All of these, here statistically portrayed, have implications for both particular enterprises and, most importantly, for the men and women working in those firms. Shintani Metals after the bubble I have visited Shintani Metals several times since concluding my primary fieldwork at the end of 1990. In the fall of 1996 I visited Tokyo on two separate occasions, talking with the Company President and Factory Manager, 9 and with a number of other present and former employees. Several people commented on these and on other occasions that the time that I was at the factory (1989 to 1990) was when the company was busiest, or that that was the time when things were best (implying the amount of work done and money made, and reflecting the general atmosphere of the factory as a place of work). Shintani Metals, like other smaller companies, has been affected by the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble and the recession of the 1990s. While a full discussion of what has happened at Shintani Metals is beyond the scope of this chapter, I would like to make some general observations and comments here, focusing on actions taken by the managers and reactions to these by the employees. Restructuring and resistance “Restructuring” and “downsizing” are two of the recent additions to the list of “foreign loan words” in common usage in Japan. As we have seen above, responses to the post-bubble recession in Japan have involved various programs of restructuring, including workforce reductions. Shintani Metals has made its own restructuring changes, which have affected the organization and nature of work and of the employees doing that work. Among the changes that have occurred at Shintani Metals since the bursting of the bubble, the most important have been those associated with the consolidation of businesses by the company owners. As mentioned earlier, the family owning the Shintani Metals Company, in addition to that enterprise, owned several other businesses. These other businesses included a small accessories sales shop and the Kinsei Fine Metals Company, which had previously had two factory locations, one in Tokyo (closed down in 1989 when operations were moved into the Shintani Metals factory) and one in Saitama Prefecture. Over the past several years Kinsei Fine Metals has been dissolved as a separate legal enterprise and the Saitama factory closed. The accessories sales shop has also been closed. The business ventures, the growth of which the Company President spoke with such pride in reflecting on his past, have

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thus in a very short time been consolidated into, or reduced to one: the Shintani Metals Company. The Company President, in talking of these changes, spoke of having “retreated cleanly,” and explained the decisions to close operations at the store and the Saitama factory in terms of the lack of willingness to make the necessary effort to keep operations going. While also avoiding admitting to financial necessity in consolidating their businesses, the comments by the Company President may also be heard as a critique of his sons (Factory Managers at the Tokyo and Saitama factories) and of a younger generation of employees. Shintani Metals continues to make jewelry and watch cases, but it has increased the amount of jewelry repair work that is done, so that this has become a more important component in the organization of work than was previously the case (see Chapter 4). The number and size of orders for the production of watches and jewelry has declined with the coming of the recession of the 1990s. The Factory Manager explained the decrease in orders in terms of the fact that people are not as willing or able to spend money on luxury items such as jewelry in times of recession. It appears that the employees involved in jewelry repair are now the busiest at the factory, though according to one of these men even they do not do much overtime these days. In addition to these changes, which themselves involved the firing of employees at the Saitama plant and the sales shop, the number of workers at the main Shintani Metals factory has also been reduced. Overall, there are currently approximately forty-five employees at Shintani Metals. This is a little bit more than half of the number of people working for the Company President at the time of my fieldwork in 1989 and 1990. One related change in the composition of the workforce is the presence of several young, full-time women workers directly involved in production and repair jobs—a change from the time when most full-time women did only paper work and only older part-time women did manufacturing-related work (various aspects of company organization at the time of my fieldwork are discussed more fully in Chapter 4). As part of the downsizing of its workforce around 1993, Shintani Metals appears to have fired a group of some five men at the same time. These men included a number in their forties, most of whom would have worked for the company for ten to twenty years at the time. This rather sudden and drastic move by the company has been met with resistance by some of the remaining workers. Christena Turner points out that many union disputes in Japan involve protests against the firing of employees due to rationalization efforts by companies (1995:22). At Shintani Metals, one group of workers have unionized themselves in response to the recent, recession-induced redundancies. Currently there is thus both the newer workers’ union and the older workers’ friendship association, the Shinwakai (described in Chapter 4).

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Though the future of the Shinwakai appears to be in some doubt with the formation of the union, not all of the Shintani Metals workers are in fact union members. Takayama, a younger man who has been at the company since graduating from junior high school and who is very proud of having worked hard to become a craftsman, criticized the union members as being people who do not have their own manual/manufacturing skills to rely on. Whatever the case may be, the formation of the union represents an important sign of resistance to management decisions, and it represents a significant change in relationships among the workers themselves. However, the contexts and circumstances—including the decision-making process involved—leading to this situation are in no fundamental way unusual for smaller companies and their employees. CONCLUSION In this chapter I have attempted to provide an outline of the history of the Shintani Metals Company. To do so requires that we view the company’s history as part of or contexted within the personal history of the Company President. The experiences and actions of the Company President as apprentice and entrepreneur must in turn be understood as constructed within broader economic, cultural and historical contexts. I have also argued that in order to understand the immediate context of the Shintani Metals Company requires an awareness of its interrelationship with a series of encompassing contexts and influences. The Company President as entrepreneur and the Shintani Metals/Kinsei Fine Metals Companies as institutions have been acting and reacting within the boundaries of constraint and possibility of the medium-small enterprise sector of the Japanese economy, itself constituted in interrelationship with the dynamics of the broader economy, and thus also by the global economy. I have delineated three changes over the past decade and a half or so which have been affecting the medium-small enterprise sector of the Japanese economy, and so the Shintani Metals Company, and that will no doubt continue to be of significance. In attempting to adapt to these changes the owner/managers of the Shintani Metals Company have made decisions based on their personal abilities to determine what adjustments would be made, involving which employees. Doing something has been a necessity brought about by conditions beyond their control, most directly in relationship with their “parent” companies, but the decisions made have been both financial and personal in character. While I would suggest that such personal decision-making power is especially characteristic of less formally structured smaller enterprises (see Chapter 4), in the Shintani Metals case we are reminded that part of the dynamics of social relationships and of societies involves the unintended consequences of action (Giddens 1979, 1984). The recent formation of a union

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among certain of the employees will continue to present the Shintani Metals owners with a perhaps unforeseen and unwelcome consequence of their downsizing and restructuring of the company. Like the company’s older history, the significance of these recent changes is not simply corporate but is again also personal, involving not just the company as such but the individual men and women making their livings by working at the factory. It is in relationship with the company context that the positions of these men and women within the Japanese working class are economically most directly constituted and constructed. In the next chapter we will look more closely at the internal organization of Shintani Metals and at the nature of working there.

4

Shintani Metals Organization, experience and relationships

I have previously mentioned that there were approximately fifty-five people working at the Shintani Metals Company at the time of my fieldwork, just over sixty-five at the factory if one includes the members of the Kinsei Fine Metals Company who moved into the factory in December of 1989. In this chapter I will examine various aspects of company organization (including work roles, remunerative rewards and the workers’ association) and work experience. I will also discuss informal social relations at the factory in order to provide another perspective on the company context. We will see the social nature of these relationships and the penetration of non-work activities and relationships into the work context. Like all companies, Shintani Metals is both a place of work and a setting in which other socially based and oriented interactions occur. As seen in the previous chapter, however, the company context is not set but is historically fluid; and as such the time frame of this chapter, 1989–90, must be kept in mind here. The circumstances of employment and experiences of work at particular firms are directly involved in the construction of individual lifecourse experiences, social relations and activities. Certainly, how much money one makes, how many days and hours one spends at work, and the nature of one’s relations with others while at the company will influence actions and relationships beyond the immediate work setting. As we will see in more detail in Chapters 8 through 10, leisure activities and relationships may, conversely, affect an employee’s engagement in work and in interactions with co-workers. At the same time, however, specific companies, and so the men and women working there, are themselves situated within more encompassing contexts: the Shintani Metals Company being located within the context of the mediumsmall enterprise sector. As such, the discussion, particularly in the first half of the chapter, will be connected at several points with relevant aspects of the broader economic context. FORMAL FACTORY ORGANIZATION Various features of the industrial relations at the factory and of the employees’ 56

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association, the Shinwakai, will be discussed below as two aspects of the formal organization of Shintani Metals. Although some comparative contextualization will be provided, a full comparison of the roles and rewards at Shintani Metals with those of other medium-small enterprises and larger corporations is beyond the scope of this chapter. Because of the importance of the Shinwakai in the construction of both formal and informal dimensions of the company context, and since not much has been written in English regarding non-union workers’ associations in Japan, I will describe it in some detail. Industrial relations Two formal aspects of the industrial relations at Shintani Metals will be briefly discussed below. I will first describe formal statuses and distinctions among workers and the organization of workgroups. Next, I examine monetary remuneration and other rewards received from the company. Roles—work sections and statuses At the time of my fieldwork, the people employed at Shintani Metals were divided into four major divisions allocated to different workshops (see Table 4.1) throughout the three-story factory (four stories if one includes the basement workshop: see Figure 4.1). The General Affairs Division, located in the main office on the second floor, had two full-time “Office Lady” secretaries and one full-time man (who primarily delivered finished goods to contractor companies) in addition to the Company President, the Factory Manager and the Personnel Manager, Mr Matsukawa.1 When I entered the company in October of 1989, the Watch Works Division contained twenty-four people (fifteen men and nine part-time women), further separated into a number of smaller workgroups—Design, Molds, Press, Lathes, Assembly, Polishing and Finished Products Inspection. The Watch Division workgroups were spread throughout shoprooms in the basement, first and second floors. The Special Products Division had fourteen members (twelve men and two part-time women) in three sections, all located in the main secondfloor workshop. The third major division of the company was the Accessories Division which also had fourteen members (seven men, five full-time women and two part-time women): ten people working in the third-floor Crafts (ko-gei) workshop, three working (in a “Planning” group but primarily doing inspection) in the finished goods inspection room and four in the main workshop on the second floor (as members of the “Delivery” workgroup). As we have seen in the previous chapter, membership of a certain workgroup (or even division of the company) does not preclude being asked or assigned to work for varying lengths of time in other workgroups, depending on the particular demands for labor at a given time. On a more everyday basis, membership in a particular section does not necessarily mean that one’s work

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Table 4.1 Shintani Metals Company and Kinsei Fine Metals Organization (October 1989 to December 1990)

Note:

P-T=Part-time women employees. Numbers to the left of a [/] indicate numbers in October 1989; numbers to the right of the mark indicate numbers as of December 1990

will be carried out only within the confines of that group’s primary workshop. There are more and less mobile workers. Some people basically stay in their own shoprooms during working hours, while others move from one area to another, following the flow of the task being performed. The jobs assigned to me, for example, while for the most part done in the main second-floor workshop, at times required that I spend time in the press, polishing and other areas on the first floor of the factory. Such mobility between workgroups and within the factory has implications for the conduct of personal social relations while at work, as will be discussed shortly. This mobility is also of significance in considering the roles of workgroups and workshops in the creation of worker and company identities in general. Workgroups in larger companies have been described as a major focus of the creation of company and of workers’ identities (e.g. in Nakane 1970). Rodney Clark writes that: The most obvious indication that people believed that the company ought to be a community was the constant emphasis on “good human relations” (ii ningen kankei)…. Good human relations began with the work group. In

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Figure 4.1 Shintani Metals Company: factory layout the ideal factory sub-section or office department all the members would be on good terms with each other. (1979:200) The significance of workgroups in interrelationships between individuals and the organization has also been noted by Rohlen (1975:209), Cole (1979:243), and Painter (1991). Dore notes that the “concern with the group, its integration and its collective performance, runs right down to the shopfloor work team” (1973:231). Rohlen elsewhere suggests that the “intense internal life of work groups, based on such factors as joint effort, common competitive position, and the elaboration of relationships” can also lead to the creation of hostile feelings between competing sections (1974a: 115). Workgroups, further, attempt to perform various after-five social functions—about which more in Chapter 8. At the Shintani Metals factory, although workgroups did of course have functional significance, and although different shoprooms were said to have rather different human relations and atmospheres (funiki), the smallness of the company, the fluidity of task performance throughout the factory, and the

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movement of personnel to meet the labor requirements of sections short of hands, all mitigated against the formation of strong in-group loyalties or identities. All of this suggests that workgroups at the factory are less formally structured and less informally significant than they have been portrayed to be in the large enterprise context. (This also makes it difficult to produce a set organizational chart for the company.) Dorinne Kondo, writing about a small confectioneries manufacturing firm, contends that “For workers, the most uchi [inside, in-group] of contexts at the workplace was the work group, where complaints could be voiced more fully, away from the dampening presence of the shacho- [company president]” (1990:213). At the Shintani Metals factory, workgroups and workshops were certainly more uchi when the Company President, the Factory Manager or Mr Matsukawa were not present than when they were. However, the most uchi of groups, whether at the workplace or outside, were those of nakama co-worker friends (which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 9). For example, the members of Special Products-A, including the foreman Mr Shintani, complained that the Company President’s or the Factory Manager’s presence added extra pressure or stress to their work. But it was not until they were outside of the workgroup context, talking with co-worker friends, or for his subordinates it was not until the foreman Mr Shintani was absent, that the other members of Special Products-A could most freely and fully express their own critical feelings. Kondo, perhaps due to her concern with the negotiation of hierarchical power relationships, and perhaps due to her failure to fully investigate the importance of leisure contexts, has not adequately considered other informal relationships between the people working at the factory in defining the most uchi of uchi groups and relationships. Each of the work sections at Shintani Metals is headed by someone commonly referred to as that group’s sekininsha (literally, “responsible person”). With the exceptions of the Planning and Delivery sections of the Accessories division, all of these were men. The sekininsha generally have formal titles of either “section head” (kacho-) or “sub-section chief” (kakaricho-). The position of sekininsha is organizationally more significant than the particular titles held, and there seems to be some arbitrariness in the particular status titles assigned. For example, Kawanabe said that he had the rank of section head (kacho-), although he really formed a section of one (following the company’s chart, he is included here as one of two members of the Design section, together with Mr Doi, over whom Kawanabe had no authority). Inoue, on the other hand, noted that he held only the position of sub-section chief (kakaricho-), even though he headed a workgroup of four (the Press section; for more, see the discussion of status terms below). Just as the distribution of status titles appears to be flexible, so also promotions and the assignment of individuals to particular roles reveal the personal basis of decision-making in this small company. Decisions regarding

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promotion from one rank to another, like those regarding employee transfers between sections, are made by the Company President, the Factory Manager and Mr Matsukawa. There are no detailed guidelines regarding promotion in the formal company rules. Management is thus able to exercise its judgment regarding promotions more freely and flexibly, based on evaluations of company needs, the individual employee’s attributes and more personalistic considerations. Whittaker similarly describes the personnel practices of other smaller Japanese enterprises as witnessing a “blend of familialism and pragmatic adaptation” (1997:143). As noted in the introductory chapter, promotions and wage increases in Japanese companies are typically reported to be based primarily on tenure and age (these being perceived as preconditions for promotion by workers according to Cole 1971:108), as well as on evaluations of personal abilities (see Rohlen 1974a). The selection of Mr Shintani and of Mr Abe as heads of the Special Products-A and the Crafts sections, respectively, appears to conform to such prioritization of age and tenure. Both men were in their early fifties and had been with the company for over thirty years. Even their promotions, however, are more complicated than they might at first seem and suggest that it is the length or strength of their relationships with the Company President which were more particularly involved in their promotions and transfers. Mr Abe was made foreman soon after his transfer into the Crafts section when the previous section head quit the company. Mr Kamimura, ostensibly working under Mr Abe, had been working in the Crafts section since its beginnings some fifteen years before. More specifically skilled and of longer tenure in that section, Mr Kamimura was passed over in preference for Mr Abe. According to his critics, Mr Shintani had been appointed to head what was at the time the busiest section of the company (thus receiving the largest bonus and production compensation benefits) largely based on his kinship relation to the Company President, and despite his lack of relevant skills and the fact that others with more closely related abilities could have been chosen. That not all of the section heads are chosen on the basis of seniority in employment tenure or age is also illustrated by the case of Mr Yamada. He was selected to become foreman despite the presence of another man in the Polishing section who had been with the company ten years longer and who was ten years older. Inoue, head of the Press section, had one year more employment tenure but was seventeen years younger than Mr Nishiyama, one of Inoue’s “subordinates.” Inoue was, in fact, younger than each of the three other people working in the Press section at the time. Promotions, like transfers within the factory, reveal the relative flexibility with which the company is able to make decisions. In the small company context, personal relationships and management needs and preferences find more open expression in decision-making. It should be noted, as well, that while certainly not considered unimportant by the workers at Shintani Metals,

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promotion opportunities are recognized to be restricted by the size of the company. Cole’s research suggests that a recognition of the “limited number of rungs on the success ladder open to blue-collar workers” is not necessarily confined to the small company context (1971:108), although the smaller the company the fewer the rungs there are likely to be. The assigning of formal status terms to the workers at Shintani Metals perhaps paradoxically introduces us again to informal aspects of relationships at the factory. As we have just seen, like most Japanese companies Shintani Metals assigns a set of titles to employees who hold various formal positions of rank and status—whatever their actual responsibilities might be. Clark notes that: It is best to think of the standard ranks as being like ranks in an army…in that they denote status relative to other ranks, but not necessarily function or scope of authority…. As with army ranks, also, standard ranks are used in addressing people and in reference to them…. This use of the standard rank names gives the ranks immense social significance. Neither a rank holder nor those he deals with can easily forget his status relative to theirs. (1979:106) At the Shintani Metals factory, however, I never heard any of the employees address or refer to anyone other than the Company President (Shacho) and the Factory Manager (Ko-jo-cho-) by anything other than their names—unless nicknames were being used or jokes being made. This extended to the Personnel Manager who, officially the “General Affairs Division Chief” (So-mu-Bucho-), was always referred to and addressed as Mr Matsukawa. That such verbal informality may not necessarily be restricted to the blue-collar workers of smaller firms is suggested in a statement by Robert Cole regarding language use—in general—at a larger firm, which rings true for the people at Shintani Metals as well: One is struck by the informality of the language at the factory in a society noted for the minute status distinctions imbedded in its language. The more polite verb forms were seldom used in worker-to-worker relations notwithstanding age and skill differences. The informal personal pronouns ore and omae predominated. Address to foremen and supervisors by workers, though more polite, was not excessively so. (1971:141) While Cole sees in such informal language usage “democratic” post-war tendencies (ibid.: 141–2), I prefer to emphasize the more directly personal, socially informal nature of the relationships that are thus revealed and allowed. Language use, like other aspects of the formal and informal organization of the company, displays a high degree of flexibility and informality (see also Whittaker 1997:2), and may appropriately be considered to be one aspect also of Japanese working class culture. This is, indeed, suggested by Cole’s remark

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that “The colorfulness of factory language is quite different from the Japanese one hears in more polite middle-class circles” (ibid.: 141). Although not fully replicated in language use at the factory, there are a number of important distinctions in status among the Shintani Metals workers. As pointed out above, each workgroup had a designated foreman (sekininsha). While not addressed or referred to by the formal titles of rank they may have held (such as kacho- or kakaricho-), there were instances when I heard the older of these men referred to as the oyabun or oyakata (both designating a work boss; see Bennett and Ishino 1963; Ishino 1953) of the younger men working under them. For example, Mr Shintani, the foreman of the Special Products-A section where I worked, was even on occasion referred to as my oyakata. This terminology was used much more frequently by the older than by the younger men, several of the older men referring to the Company President as their oyakata. Another of the important status differences among the employees at the factory is that between the full-time and part-time workers, the latter all being women. Part-timers were not entitled to the same benefits, including Shinwakai membership, accorded both regular male and female workers. On the other hand, however, part-timers were not expected to shoulder similar responsibilities or work schedules; or, they were not allowed to assume such responsibilities— something which not all women in Japan working as part-timers are happy about (see Kondo 1990). Part-timers at Shintani Metals fulfilled essentially subordinate, supportive roles, receiving daily if not task-by-task instructions from their male supervisors. I will have more to say about the part-timers, as well as the full-time female employees in Chapter 6. Rewards—wages and benefits Monetary rewards received by the employees at Shintani Metals are primarily composed of basic wages and other special allowances. Non-monetary benefits include unpaid days off, access to recreational facilities and so forth. In the next few pages I will review these, since they represent a significant economic aspect of the company context. However, I will not discuss recreational facilities here since I describe leisure in more detail later (see Chapter 8). I also present some broader contextualizing data here in order to situate Shintani Metals and the people working there within the context of the medium-small enterprise sector of the economy. Regular workers at the Shintani Metals Company, like most regular company employees in Japan, are not paid on the basis of an hourly wage but instead receive monthly salaries (see Hanami 1981 for a discussion of the comparative implications of this system). At Shintani Metals, as Mr Matsukawa explained it to me, this is not a simple monthly salary, but is instead a daily/monthly combination salary (nikkyu--gekkyu-; see TCDC 1995:19). Here, a month is considered to consist of twenty-five working days. To calculate various allowances and deductions, monthly salaries are divided by twenty-five to

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derive one day’s wages, and further by eight to arrive at an hour’s wages. For example, when a regular employee misses work of his or her own accord (in Mr Matsukawa’s words, jibun de yasunda baai, or jibun katte ni yasumeba) without using a day of paid vacation (yukyu--kyu-kei), one-twenty-fifth of his or her basic monthly salary is deducted from that month’s wages. The daily/monthly salary system is also used to compute a number of special allowances. The Attendance Allowance, given to those employees with perfect attendance records for that month, is based on two days’ wages. More importantly, Overtime Allowances are also calculated on the basis of the daily/ monthly salary system using the following formulas: Normal Overtime: hours worked×(basic salary/[25 days×8 hours])×1.25 Work on Holidays: hours worked×(basic salary/ [25 days×8 hours])×1.50 In April of 1990 the company proposed changing the number of days used as a base in salary calculations from twenty-five to thirty. The announcement for this was made together with that for the raise in salaries being awarded that year, in a statement which concluded: “Due to this, slight changes in Overtime and Attendance allowances will arise, so please take note.” A man making ¥200,000 per month (a median wage, the range of reported salaries varying from around ¥130,000 to ¥280,000) who worked twenty hours of regular overtime would under the proposed thirty calendarday daily/monthly system suffer a drop of over ¥4000 in overtime pay for that month compared with the twenty-five-day system. 2 This was immediately a very unpopular change. On top of this, Mr Hamabe complained, there was the then recently legislated 3 percent national consumption tax. The company, responding to the complaints of the employees, later rescinded this change in wage calculation (see Chapter 8). Overtime payments in Japan are low by international standards, according to Deutschmann (1991:190). He notes that: Even large firms pay, as a rule, an extra payment of no more than 30 percent of the basic wage for overtime on regular workdays as well as on holidays (except night work). The corresponding rates in the United States and Western Europe amount to 30–50 percent (normal workdays) and about 100 percent (holidays). (ibid.) Kato and Steven, meanwhile, provide the interesting observation that: Overtime is paid at only 1.25 times the monthly rate, which is calculated from the monthly salary, rather than the annual salary that includes bonuses.

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This means that overtime, which is in practice compulsory, is paid at a lower rate than regular time. (1995:79) Other benefits and allowances paid by Shintani Metals to its employees included Managerial Allowances given to section heads, Special Production Allowances paid to those possessing special skill certifications, and transportation and meal allowances. Meal allowances were about ¥380 per day, which could be used when eating at nearby restaurants or to order food to be eaten at the company— there being no cafeteria facilities at the factory itself. This ¥380 allowance was generally not enough to cover the cost of even the cheapest of meals. The Family Allowance provided ¥6000 for a person’s spouse and ¥3000, per child (up to two children), for a possible monthly maximum total of ¥12,000. Children over eighteen years of age and working wives, however, were excluded. Biannual bonuses, common throughout Japan, are the other major monetary component of an employee’s yearly earnings. These are received in July and December of each year, although there have apparently been rare years when only one bonus payment was received. I was told that during 1989 and 1990 bonus payments averaged between 1.25 and 1.50 months for both summer and winter bonuses for the full-time employees. A critical view sees bonus payments as a form of withheld wages that “can be easily cut and thereby bolster management against any drop in profitability” (Kato and Steven 1995:79). Paid vacation days (yukyu--kyu-kei) are also given to full-time employees. One twenty-fifth of a worker’s basic monthly salary is paid for each day (on the basis of the twenty-five-day daily/monthly salary system). Six days of paid vacation are provided each year to those regular workers who have been employed for at least one year and who were present on at least 80 percent of working days during that year. One day of paid vacation is added each year, with a maximum of twelve days accumulable per year. Other unpaid special days off require submission of advanced notice by employees. These include: five days for the employee’s marriage; five days for attendance at the funerals of close relatives; three days for attendance at the funerals of other relatives and in-laws; for women, six weeks before and after giving birth; and, “the necessary period” for women for whom work on menstrual days is especially difficult and who have requested menstrual leave. Such, in general, are the types of rewards received by the people working at the Shintani Metals Company. I want to turn now to a brief look at some of the specifics of the wages received, comparing these with the rewards received by employees in other medium-small and in larger enterprises, thus situating this aspect of employment at Shintani Metals Company within the broader context of the Japanese economy. One caution is in order: wages are those reported in interview and, although I believe them to be generally accurate, may involve some under- or over-reporting.

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The basic monthly salaries of the regular male employees interviewed at the Shintani Metals factory (including those of three men employed by Kinsei Fine Metals) are represented in the Figures 4.2 and 4.3 below. The numbers given are those for basic salaries (kihon-kyu-). When I asked how much each man actually received (tedori) after adding their various allowances (including overtime) and subtracting tax, workers’ association fees and so forth, responses varied from a maximum gain of an additional ¥70,000 to a maximum loss of ¥30,000, with most men reporting receiving an additional ¥10,000 or ¥20,000. In Figure 4.2, the two low wages for men over fifty are those of men employed for only two and five years, respectively. In Figure 4.3, the ¥280,000 reported by one of the men employed for fifteen years seems to be anomalous, although less so in Figure 4.2, where figures for this man (who was forty-eight years old at the time, and doing specialized repair work) come somewhat more into line. In both graphs, deviations from a tighter mean are the result of mid-career hirings which require compromises in attempts to interrelate age, length of employment and wages. As we will see in the following chapter, such midcareer job changes are more typical of smaller than of larger companies in Japan. Figure 4.2 Shintani Metals wages by age (male)

Figure 4.3 Shintani Metals wages by length of employment (male)

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Wages for the six full-time women employees interviewed, not represented on the graphs in Figures 4.2 and 4.3, are shown in Table 4.2. With the exception of the second woman, an art university graduate employed to do design work, reported wages vary basically by length of employment. Hourly wages for the eight part-time women workers interviewed ranged from ¥670 to ¥750, with reported monthly earnings amounting to between ¥70,000 and ¥120,000. None of the Shintani Metals/Kinsei Fine Metals employees with whom I talked claimed to feel that their wages were particularly good. A more common complaint was that wages were cheap.3 After telling me his takehome pay, Yamamura, a man in his early thirties with a wife (not working at the time) and a young three-year-old child, asked somewhat rhetorically (and perhaps exaggeratedly): “Do you think anyone can make it with this?” (kore deyatte ikeru to omoimasu?). How low were the wages at Shintani Metals? Although I cannot answer this with certainty, it is nevertheless important to attempt to locate the Shintani Metals wages (and bonus payments) in relationship to those at other mediumsmall enterprises and at larger enterprises. Norma Chalmers notes that: “a recognition that the vast majority of Japanese workers are employed in small and medium firms, and that wages and benefits decrease markedly with firm size, underlines the importance of examining ‘size’ as an indicator of differences between the core and peripheral sectors” (1989:50–1). In 1989, people working in manufacturing firms with between 10 and 99 employees earned only about 68 percent of the wages of people working in firms with 1000 or more employees (MOL 1990:372). The gap between larger and smaller companies has widened since 1975, when workers in the smaller sized firms earned 77.6 percent of the wages received by workers in the larger (1000 plus) sized enterprises (ibid.; see also Rebick 1993; Whittaker 1997). While showing little chronological change in the wage gap between people employed in larger and smaller enterprises, figures provided by the 1991 White Paper on Medium-Small Enterprises, based on yearly cash wages, suggest that this gap is even greater than do the previously given numbers. With large manufacturing companies employing more than 300 workers taken as a base (of 100 percent), and with firms employing fewer According to Table 4.3, a person working in a firm with between 20 and 99 than four people not included, Table 4.2 Wages of Shintani Metals female regular employees

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the following figures for 1989 are given (see Table 4.3 below) (SMEA 1991: appended statistics, page 10). Table 4.3 Firm size and wages

employees, the category into which the Shintani Metals Company falls, makes on average 37.9 percent less per year in cash wages than does someone in a manufacturing enterprise with 300 or more employees. Friedman (1988) suggests that wage differences between people employed in larger and in medium-small enterprises have been exaggerated and that the importance of this has been overemphasized. He also writes that: By 1965 wage disparities had narrowed by close to 20 points for all size classes. Even in the smallest firms wages were over 65 percent of what large companies were paying, and firms with 30–100 employees were paying close to 75 percent of salaries in large firms. (1988:137–8; emphases added) Statistics, of course, are sticky things, but I find Friedman’s enthusiasm (see also Koike 1983a) for a 25 percent differential in wages a bit extravagant (and recall that some 70 percent of all Japanese employees work for firms with 100 or fewer workers, some 50 percent in firms with 30 or fewer employees). Bonus payments appear to differ even more significantly by firm size than do monthly wages. Chalmers notes that in 1983 bonuses among medium-small enterprises averaged 33 percent less than those paid by large companies (1989:51), while Eccleston points out that: in the key areas of manufacturing where demand is more variable, the bonusearnings ratio experiences greater volatility…. But irrespective of these yearto-year changes the size of the bonus is very sensitive to firm size. Employees in large firms throughout the 1970s received a bonus payment equivalent to five or six months’ basic pay compared to less than three months in small firms. (1989:58) In 1989, combined summer and winter bonuses given by firms with 500 or more employees averaged 4.60 months’ pay (2.02 and 2.58 months respectively), while those in firms with 30–99 workers were 2.80 months’ pay (1.31 and 1.49 months’ wages respectively) (MOL 1990:375). At the Shintani Metals Company, as noted above, bonuses have reportedly

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been around 1.25 to 1.50 months’ pay for both the summer and winter bonuses. Like monthly wages, these are paid in cash. There is some ambivalence on the part of the people working at the company regarding their bonuses. On the one hand, many expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that they generally receive fewer than two months’ salary per bonus payment. On the other hand, everyone is happy to receive their bonuses. When bonuses were paid in December of 1989, most people in the second-floor Special Products workshop were excited, smiling, checking the accompanying receipt, counting the cash enclosed in the small brown envelopes. Itai walked through the workshop smiling broadly and waving his right hand—V for victory! Details of specific differences in remuneration rates, while important, do not necessarily capture the full significance of such disparities between larger and smaller enterprises. Lower wages in the smaller companies must also be seen within the context of these firms also providing less corporate sponsorship of dormitories and apartments, recreational and leisure facilities and activities, loans and so forth (see Steven 1983:166–7). While I agree that it may not be appropriate to talk in the simplistic terms of a “dual economy,” recognizing that variations exist among medium-small enterprises, I do think that there are significant similarities among the conditions of employment in smaller enterprises which distinguish them and their employees from (those of) larger companies (see Ishida 1993; Sugimoto 1997:80–1). The Shinwakai As was noted in Chapter 1, enterprise unions have often been presented as one of the major features of “the Japanese system” of employment. While most unions in Japan are indeed enterprise unions, not all companies have unions and, as is true elsewhere as well, not all employees are union members. The overall rate of unionization in Japan has fallen from just over 35 percent in 1970 to approximately 26 percent in 1989, and further to just under 24 percent in 1995 (MOL 1990:115, 407; TCKK 1996:1; Sugimoto 1997:96–7). Unionization rates, furthermore, vary directly with firm size: as of 1989, decreasing from some 62 percent of workers in companies with 1000 or more employees, to 25.7 percent in firms with between 100 and 999 workers, and to 2.1 percent in firms with 99 or fewer employees (Koike 1995:207; see also Eccleston 1989:76; Steven 1988:104–5; TCKK 1996:2). Even in the heydays of the 1970s, unionization rates amounted to “only a negligible amount in firms with fewer than 30 employees” (Koike 1983a:96). Recall that, as previously noted, nearly 70 percent of all workers are employed by companies with fewer than 100 employees, 50 percent by firms with 30 or fewer workers (MITI 1986:130ff; JIL 1986:20). The majority of Japanese employees work in smaller firms, and the vast majority of them are not union members.4

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Although very few employees of medium-small enterprises are union members, Koike presents data indicating that approximately 40 percent of firms with 200 or fewer employees have some sort of non-union workers’ association (1983a:103). He argues that: Although trade-union membership is far less in small firms than in large ones, there is an inverse and partially compensating relationship between size of firm and the number of employees belonging to some other type of employee organization…. Field research discloses that these organizations began as recreational or friendly associations (shinboku-kai) that included, as well, members of the managerial staff except company directors. Now, a substantial number of them, if not all, consult with management or even negotiate wages and working conditions…. Even though they may not have the power of trade unions, some of them do perform equivalent functions. If membership in these employee organizations is added to that of trade unions, the proportion of organized workers in small firms rises to more than 50 percent. (ibid.: 103–4). While there does seem to be agreement that such non-union workers’ associations in smaller firms do engage in consultations or negotiations with management (ssee Chalmers 1989:207–10; Eccleston 1989:84–5), the extent to which this is true is perhaps open to question. A recent survey of employees’ associations in firms in the Tokyo area, dividing such organizations into four types, found that 30 percent of responding firms claimed to have neither workers’ associations nor unions, 42 percent of the companies reported having only workers’ friendship associations not involved in labor negotiations, 13 percent had “union-like employees’ associations,” and 16 percent had unions (TTRK 1990:10). While this still leaves nearly 30 percent of all (surveyed) medium-small enterprises with labor unions or union-like employees’ associations, one should note that most companies surveyed reported using workers’ representatives more than workers’ associations as channels for wage and other negotiations (ibid.: 9). What the majority of non-union workers’ associations do is for the most part not directly involved in labor-management negotiations but is instead focused on mutual social and financial compensation and supplementation. The most common objectives of such associations at the times of their establishment are overwhelmingly those of promoting friendship among the employees and of improvement of the workers’ welfare (ibid.: 41). According to this survey, furthermore, especially in firms with fewer than 100 employees (corresponding to the size of the Shintani Metals Company), the main present activities of workers’ associations overwhelmingly focus on cultural and recreational activities, and on condolence and congratulatory payments and cooperative monetary loans and so forth (ibid.: 43).

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At Shintani Metals, a workers’ association called the Shinwakai was formally established in 1963, six years after the company’s legal incorporation in 1957. Mr Ikeda linked the beginnings of the Shinwakai with the formal establishment of the company upon its move to the present factory site: At that time there were about twenty-five or twenty-six employees. And then, there was a guy who proposed that we make a workers-only group for employees’ trips and ceremonial events (kankonso-sai).5 That guy proposed it and we all agreed. He made all of the group rules and plans, and we started it from there. And now, various people have kept it going until the present. Although the company stipulates in its own regulations that revisions, including those affecting salaries, will be made with an employee representative’s assistance, there has apparently been no formal use of the Shinwakai as a labor-management negotiating channel. The principal purpose of the Shinwakai, as stated in the association’s regulations, is to promote the mutual friendship of the members. As mentioned by Mr Ikeda above, this objective is primarily pursued through two types of activities, employees’ trips and monetary contributions made at ceremonial events. All regular employees of the company are considered to be members of the Shinwakai. As discussed below, there was a proposal at the 1990 general meeting to allow the part-time women workers to become Shinwakai members. According to the survey of employees’ organizations in the Tokyo area referred to previously, the number of associations permitting membership by temporary and part-time workers more than doubled between 1978 and 1988, though remaining no more than 20 to 25 percent or so among all medium-small sized companies surveyed (TTRK 1990:31, 47). In firms with between 50 and 99 employees, approximately 25 percent of workers’ associations allowed their membership, while in firms with between 30 and 49 workers, 33 percent of associations did so (ibid.: 47).6 At Shintani Metals, monthly Shinwakai fees of ¥1000 are automatically deducted from each member’s monthly wages and are kept by the company for Shinwakai use. As do about 35 percent of workers’ associations in firms with between 30 and 99 employees (ibid.: 52), the Shintani Metals Shinwakai receives some assistance from the company but primarily supports its activities with members’ fees. According to Mr Ikeda, ¥700 from each member’s monthly fees are designated for use for the employees’ trip, which is scheduled for the spring of each year. When I asked what kinds of trips the Shinwakai has usually gone on, Mr Ikeda replied: Well, day-trips like the strawberry-picking one recently and so forth: [going to] nearby tourist spots or on overnight stops. That’s no different than now. In terms of places, we’ve always gone to places nearby in the prefectures in the Kanto area, once per year or once every two years or that level.

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Neither the Shinwakai trips nor those sponsored by the company (which in the past were apparently taken in the fall) have had as typical destinations the popular resort areas of Hakone or Karuizawa. In 1990, the Shinwakai trip was a day-trip to Saitama Prefecture (see Chapter 8). The only other Shinwakaisponsored recreational event during 1990 was a bowling contest. Besides such leisure activities, the mutual friendship of Shinwakai members is pursued through the donation of monetary gifts to members at ceremonial events (kankonso-sai), and upon the member’s departure from the company— unless the person is fired for having broken company regulations. Individual members’ contributions for specific events as listed in the Shinwakai regulations (revised in 1980) are shown in Table 4.4. The donation and receipt of such monetary gifts, like the Shinwakai spring trip and other leisure activities, are intended to assist individual members of the association and to help create a more enjoyable and attractive employment environment for all. As we will see, this does not mean that no conflicts of interest or opinion surround the issues of membership, fees, the dispensation of monetary gifts, and so on. While perhaps generally not the case, controversy and hurt feelings can be created both within the Shinwakai itself and in its relationships with the company. On a Friday late in October of 1990,1 joined the Shinwakai as it held its annual general meeting in the third-floor dining room. The Company President, Table 4.4 Shintani Metals Shinwakai schedule of donations

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the Factory Manager and Mr Matsukawa (the Personnel Manager) were in attendance, seated as always at a table facing the employees. While the three management level men were present, I counted eight men who were absent, including several who had been with the firm for twenty or more years—though one man, Kawanabe, was no doubt busy with preparations for his wedding the following Sunday. Let me emphasize this: eight (or seven if you forgive Kawanabe) of the thirty-eight or so full-time male employees of the company, who are automatically also members of the workers’ association, decided for one reason or another not to participate in the Shinwakai’s annual meeting. Also present at the meeting were several, but not all, of the regular employees of Kinsei Fine Metals, who, at least until that time, had their own workers’ association. Several issues of interest were brought up for discussion during the meeting. Mr Doi, the only employee in the audience to ask questions or to make recommendations, suggested that there needed to be some more equitable manner of dispensing compensation from the Shinwakai to people for ceremonial events (kankonso-sai). The present system, he said, appeared to rely too heavily on word of mouth. Mr Doi noted, for example, that he had not received a consolatory gift even though his father had recently been hospitalized. These remarks were made within the context of two other men, including Mr Honda of Kinsei Fine Metals, having recently received consolatory payments upon the deaths of family members. The handling of the latter case in particular occasioned considerable controversy, as will be discussed later in this chapter. The Factory Manager then made several suggestions relating to Shinwakai leisure activities. Noting that the membership of the Shinwakai had fallen to about half of its high of ninety or so people, he recommended, as had one of the older workers, that employees from both Kinsei Fine Metals and the Aoyama store, along with the part-time women employees, be allowed to join the workers’ association. This suggestion recognized the presence of the Kinsei employees in the same factory and the increasing cooperation between the two “companies.” The recommendation that parttimers be included is suggestive in part of a corporate concern with being able to retain its remaining parttimers, seven of thirteen having left the company during the previous year (see Chapter 7), and with being able to attract new women as part-time employees— the latter having elsewhere been mentioned by the Factory Manager as a preferable way of recruiting inexpensive labor. After the election of officers for the next year, there followed a period of eating, drinking, singing karaoke and talking. At one point during this, the Company President took the microphone and proposed that there be a onenight trip to a hotel near Nikko which had a hot-springs bath that Mr Kawai had just recommended to him as nice and inexpensive—and which was managed by one of Mr Kawai’s brothers. The company, the President offered, would be willing to pay one-half of the expenses involved, and he suggested that they plan to go in March of the next year. When I returned to Japan the following August, I discovered that the Company

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President’s plans for the 1991 Shinwakai trip were not universally well received. Horiuchi, then the vice-president of the Shinwakai, used the way the Company President had determined the destination of the trip as an example of the President’s unilateral decision-making. The employees’ wishes were not entertained, and they did not feel able to challenge or change the President’s “offer.” The issue had been settled without any discussion of alternative destinations or lengths of stay. As was mentioned in Chapter 3, the role and future of the Shinwakai have more recently been placed in some doubt. This has resulted from the unionization of certain of the company employees, in reaction to the firing of several men in 1993 as part of the reduction in the company’s workforce carried out in response to the on-going recession. For more on union activism and activities at other small enterprises, see C.Turner (1995). THE WORK EXPERIENCE Having talked at some length about various dimensions of formal factory organization, I now want to examine the experience of work at Shintani Metals. In particular, I will briefly discuss work days and deadlines at the factory, and employee perceptions of working in small versus large companies. Of work days and deadlines In 1990 there were 273 work days at Shintani Metals for the full-time employees, nearly 23 days per month. Two Saturdays each month were holidays, so that work weeks were of five or six days in length, unless other holidays were observed. The work day for the regular employees in all sections other than the General Affairs office is considered to be eight actual working hours, beginning at eight a.m. and ending at five p.m.. Without adding in overtime, the Shintani Metals workers were thus officially expected to have worked an average of 182 hours per month, for a yearly total of approximately 2184 hours in 1990. Using 20 hours of overtime per month as a base (see Table 4.5), a monthly average of 202 hours and a yearly total number of 2424 hours would have been worked by a full-time employee who did not miss any days. Tables 4.5 and 4.6 compare the Shintani Metals work hours with figures for other Japanese and American workers (though it may be noted that some of the differences between Japanese and Americans or Europeans arise less from hours worked per week than from total days worked per year). Shintani Metals’ company regulations stipulate that all employees should actually enter before the start of working hours and do whatever preparation is necessary to begin working at eight o’clock. There is a fifty-minute lunch break and a ten-minute break at three in the afternoon (neither counted as “working time”). Employees are supposed to leave the factory after having

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Table 4.5 Monthly work hours: comparison of the Shintani Metals Company (1990) with other Japanese manufacturing firms (1987)

Source: MOL 1989: Appendix III, page 62

Table 4.6 Yearly work hours: comparison of the Shintani Metals Company (1990) with Japanese and American national averages (1987)

Source: MOL 1989:73

put away all documents, materials and so forth, and after having cleaned their own work areas. Such preparations for departure typically do not begin until after the five o’clock buzzer has sounded. The pace of work in a particular section and the amounts of overtime performed both depend on two interrelated factors: the size of the current order for goods and the scheduling of production deadlines. Orders are not evenly distributed among the various divisions or sections of the company and, thus, neither is the amount of overtime done. There was some criticism among the workers about this, since members of busier sections earn more overtime pay, are able to surpass their company-set production goals and so more often receive special production bonuses (ho-sho-kin), and receive larger biannual bonuses as well. Most workers commonly doing overtime reported that on average they performed about twenty hours per month (essentially one hour extra each day, Monday through Friday). There were, however, several months during which the three full-time men of the Special Products-A section did between two and three hours of overtime nightly, totaling between forty and sixty hours of overtime per month. In the discussion in the previous chapter on the effects of the labor shortage on workgroups within Shintani Metals, I mentioned one of several section meetings during which the members of Special Products-A were called upon to do additional overtime in order to meet the impending (set of) deadlines. In a similar meeting held one afternoon in the middle of February 1990, Mr Shintani asked us to try to do extra overtime, beginning the next week, in order to meet a deadline in early March. Saying that staying until nine p.m. (as had been done the previous month) was “A bit too much” (Chotto gomen!), Mr Shintani asked us to stay until eight each evening. Miyata replied that, indeed, nine was not possible. Later, in the locker room, Kuwata (of Special

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Products-B) asked if Itai and Miyata would begin staying until nine again. Itai replied simply “eight o’clock,” but Miyata indicated “five” with his hands and a silent “five o’clock.” Mr Shintani was on the other side of the lockers, so the young men were being careful not to speak too loudly, but they were none the less expressing quiet resistance to the work demands placed on them by their foreman and, in turn, by the company. A number of men at the factory commented that they were doing less overtime than they had done in the past, and that they thought that they were doing less overtime than was common at other companies. As seen in the previous chapter, certain of the older men recalled having done much more overtime work in times past, when orders for watch cases dominated production at the company. Attitudes towards overtime were somewhat ambiguous, though doing a certain amount of overtime was generally recognized as important for a worker’s total monthly earnings. The significance of deadlines for the Shintani Metals workers is reflected in young Takayama’s comment to me that when work in the Crafts section piled up before a deadline he would help others with their tasks, since “People like us are involved in ‘Deadline Trades’” (Wareware mitai no wa no-ki sho-bai desu kara). In the Special Products-A section where I was placed, we were always busiest during the days just prior to the deadline for the delivery of a lot of rings. At such times, Mr Shintani, the foreman, would rush about the shoproom, having the part-timer Mrs Sugimoto and I do various tasks, checking on our progress or on that of Itai or Miyata, keeping tabs of how many of what style of ring had been completed to what stage, and then returning to his own work station. As the final days before a deadline approached, I would primarily be asked to polish the inside surfaces of rings using a small, low-built machine. At the end of the day, my back and shoulders would ache and my arms and hands would be covered with blackish-gray dust—and one day apparently so was my face, since Kuwata told me that I should be sure to wash my face before leaving because it was “covered with dirt” (makkuro; which more literally means, “completely black”). Despite the fact that the Shintani Metals employees labor for longer hours and receive less in wages and benefits than do employees of larger Japanese enterprises, and although there is a constant discourse of tiredness at the factory,7 many of the men and women at Shintani Metals thought that in various respects working there, in a medium-small enterprise, was easier or more relaxed (raku), less difficult or draining (kitsui), less strict (kibishii), and involved less competition among employees than would working at a larger enterprise. This is in interesting centra-distinction to the “3K” discourse mentioned in Chapter 3. Others suggested that in larger enterprises their opinions and suggestions would not be listened to by the company or would get lost among the larger number of other workgroup members. At a smaller company, these men and

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women felt, they could talk directly with the Factory Manager and the Company President. Another of the positive dimensions of working in a smaller firm mentioned by several men and women was that one could learn and make use of a variety of skills, whereas it was thought that as blue-collar workers they would be stuck doing the same type of work in larger enterprises. Many of these themes find expression in the following response by Shinoyama to my question as to what he thought were the good points of working in a smaller firm like Shintani Metals: Well, basically, I think that, in a smaller company, there’s the point of choosing what you want to do—because they will let you do various kinds of work. In that sense [working in a small firm] is also a good learning experience. It may sound strange to say that you choose your work, but, after all, there’s the fact that you can make use of your own skills and so forth. If you have your own idea, that perhaps it would be better to do things this way, that idea can to some extent be brought to life. In a large scale organization one’s own opinions or suggestions just don’t get through. In large companies it’s also often the case that, even if you want to do a certain kind of work, you’ll be made to move to a different section. So, I think that being able to do the work you yourself desire to do is the merit of medium-small enterprises. Thus, while workers at Shintani Metals and other small enterprises recognize various monetary and material benefits (as in improved working conditions) in larger firms (see Mouer 1995), the comparison doesn’t always come out in favor of employment in larger firms for blue-collar workers (see also Whittaker 1997). INFORMAL SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS There are many different facets of and issues surrounding informal social relations at the Shintani Metals Company that potentially deserve discussion. Relationships of companionship, cooperation and competition among the men placed in positions of authority, or who feel that they deserve to be, and the paternalistic relations between section heads and the young men working and learning under them (see also below), have been mentioned above in connection with the nature of work at the factory. Now I want to focus on two other types of informal relationships at the factory which reveal divergent but important dimensions of the social nature of employment at Shintani Metals. Personal loyalties, private criticisms In the previous chapter I argued that to understand the Shintani Metals Company requires also knowing about its founder, the Company President.

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The changing and contradictory nature of the Company President’s relationships with the people, and particularly the men, who work for him at the factory is revealed in an episode which occurred at the factory one day late in July of 1990. On that day, a list was circulated throughout the factory which contained the names of contributors and their intended consolatory donations for Mr Honda of Kinsei Fine Metals on the occasion of his mother’s death. Recall that as an employee of Kinsei Fine Metals, Mr Honda was not a member of the Shintani Metals Shinwakai, through which such condolences are normally organized. Kinsei Fine Metals had its own workers’ association to handle such things. Before reaching the Special Products-A section, this contributors’ list had been signed by a dozen or more people—their names and the amounts of money they wished to donate written down in open view. However, when the list reached Miyata, he protested. Miyata had previously been employed elsewhere, joining Shintani Metals less than two years earlier, and at twentyfive he was one of the younger men at the factory. He and Itai were reluctant to write their names and the amounts of their contributions in such a public manner. Seeing this, Mr Shintani told Miyata to have the full Special Products-A section (then including also Mr Tozawa and Mr Hamabe) meet in the dining room. Walking up the stairs, Miyata asked if I did not also think that such a public list was kyo-seiteki (forced, compulsory). In the dining room, the mutual opinion was that circulation of the list was strange, unusual (okashii) and unfair (fuko-hei). Mr Hamabe and Mr Tozawa, two of the older, longer employed men at the factory, who had both already signed, noted as well that this sort of thing had never been done before. Those who had had long relationships with Mr Honda or who worked with him might want to contribute something, but those others who did not know him well should not be forced to feel that they must make a contribution, they said. A public list of the sort being passed around put pressure on people to at least match the contributions already marked in order to avoid embarrassment or censure. Mr Shintani said that he had said as much earlier that morning when the Company President had arrived and suggested that the list be circulated so that Mr Matsukawa and Kinsei Fine Metals’ Mr Omori could deliver it when they went as company representatives to Mr Honda’s mother’s funeral. Mr Hamabe and Mr Tozawa both concluded that circulating the list had just been the Company President’s arbitrary spur-of-the-moment idea (omoitsuki). As a form of compromise, Mr Shintani offered to make a Special Products-A section contribution using some of the special production bonus money (ho-sho-kin) that the section had been awarded during the year. While this seemed to be the final decision of the group, it certainly did not fully satisfy everyone, Miyata in particular feeling concerned about the list’s continued circulation through other sections and workgroups of the company.

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There are a number of important interpersonal dynamics at work in this episode. Let me first make an observation that perhaps the reader has already made: the compromise solution made by the Special Products-A section did not extend beyond that workgroup. They involved neither members of other sections nor the Shinwakai workers’ association, and they did not directly address their grievances to anyone in the office and certainly not to the Company President. The relationship between the Company President and Mr Honda (and his family) was long and multiplex, certainly making the President’s decision to have special consolatory donations solicited more understandable. Mr Honda is one of the men still working for the Company President who had started as a young teenager just out of junior high school in Tochigi Prefecture, the home prefecture of the Company President. And Mr Honda’s father, a school teacher, had acted as one of the company’s contacts in recruiting young workers during the 1950s. The reluctance of the other older and long-employed men at the factory (many themselves from Tochigi Prefecture) to face the Company President or to otherwise publicly protest the contribution circular must similarly be understood in the context of their relationships with both the Company President and Mr Honda. This is a matter of social hierarchy and of social sensitivity. The Company President, as mentioned above, was referred to by several of the older men at the factory as their oyakata boss. The relationships between these men and the President are multiplex and personalistic. Mr Shintani and Mr Kawai, who both came from Tochigi as junior high graduates (the former, of course, related by kinship to the President) spoke of the Company President as being in many ways like their real parent. Mr Kawai, for example, remarked: The Company President really taught me [this work] with parental care (shinmi ni). And isn’t that how I’ve been able to make it until now? That is to say that it’s been since I graduated from junior high school: longer by far than the fifteen years that I was raised by my father and mother in the country, the Company President has been thirty years, so he’s the longer. So, while the Company President is around I’ll work here—I haven’t thought of cheating (uwaki) and going to another company. Mr Kawai also described the President as familistic (kazokuteki), saying that he would talk with each of the men, exchanging greetings and teaching them the work. I indeed noticed that the Company President would stop to look over Mr Kawai’s and Mr Imamichi’s shoulders, perhaps picking up samples of what they were working on and talking briefly. Conversely, as seen above, the Company President was occasionally criticized for being too strong a “one-man” leader making decisions and demanding that others follow, and for no longer taking the time to visit workshops other than those on the second floor. Horiuchi, a younger man with

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the company for fifteen years, responded to my question about differences in the ways in which the Company President and the Factory Manager handle people by commenting: In that regard, I don’t know about the Company President, his way of handling people. That’s because the fellows of my generation are an age that the President doesn’t come into direct contact with much. He stood at the head of the generation above us saying this and that, but when we all entered he had already become “the Company President,” not the boss (oyakata) or the “old man” (oyajisan) image of the old days, but he had completely become like a “company president.” The personalistic nature of the relationships between the men working at the factory and the Company President reveals a complex of competing, at times conflicting, connections and concerns. For the older men, the Company President is ideally really their “boss” (oyakata) who pays particular attention to them and their work as individuals. On the other hand, failures to consider the feelings of his subordinates may be seen as at once manifesting the President’s “one-man” leadership style and his having become out of touch with (the feelings of) the people working for him. That the balance and contradictions of such personalism and authority are common issues in smaller firms is also seen in Kondo’s (1990) study of a small confectioneries factory (see also Steven 1983:173–4; Whittaker 1997). The Company President was seventy-two at the time of my fieldwork. It will increasingly be the Factory Manager’s responsibility to build the necessary personal relationships with the men who will form the core of the company in years to come (see Whittaker 1997:141). He has, to some extent, been doing this by playing volleyball and baseball with the younger people employed at the company. More profoundly perhaps, since it ties their lives together in a relationship that transcends that of the workplace, the Factory Manager acted as official go-between (nako-do) for a couple who met at the company, Kawanabe and Ms Hara. Some doubts and criticisms about the Factory Manager’s failure to cultivate such relationships were expressed to me, and as the future president of a small company, he will certainly be continuously required to treat his employees also as people working for him. Conversation, cavorting and courtship Besides the informal relationships that exist between “labor” and “management,” there are also, of course, on-goingly (re-)created informal social relationships among the people working at the factory. These social relationships are carried on in the interstitial moments between the performance of particular job assignments, during the daily lunch and three o’clock breaks and, at times, while engaged in work tasks.

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Many conversations and interactions at the factory relate to non-work relationships and activities. For example, when the members of a somewhat fluid group of the younger people working at the factory were planning a particular leisure event (for more detail, see Chapter 9), whether a ski trip or a visit to an all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant, invitations and organizational arrangements would be made and fees, if any, collected while at the factory, and occasionally even while working. If someone had taken photographs during an outing, they would generally bring the developed prints to the factory in small albums, from which others could then select photos they wanted copies of. And, after going to watch sumo with three of the younger men and women—which required that they each skip work that day—I was surprised by the openness of the two men, who had fun imitating the wrestlers while at work. Besides the penetration into the workplace of such non-work pastimes and relationships, other more quotidian conversations, jocular exchanges and playful cavorting also take place. During the lunch break, for example, while those older women who remained at the factory talked over an extra cup of tea or coffee and perhaps a sweet of some sort after eating their meals, many of the older men would stay in the dining room to play sho-gi, a chess-like game. In the courtyard outside, the Factory Manager and a group of the (mostly younger) employees would play volleyball, while on the factory roof various people would gather to watch, to talk, to take practice golf swings and so on. During the ten-minute break at three o’clock, it was common to find Mr Takaki, Yamamura and Kawanabe in the Press room or outside, engaged in games of petty gambling such as trying to toss a golf ball into a shallow empty pan placed several meters away. Finally, while perhaps not pursued with the public openness about which American lovers pride themselves, romances and courtships do occur among the men and women working at the Shintani Metals factory. At least nine of the men at the factory had married women whom they had met at work. Many company courtships, of course, are never consummated in matrimony. After the Kinsei Fine Metals Company moved operations into the Shintani Metals factory, Nagashima, a single, twenty-nine-year-old Shintani Metals worker became interested in Kyo-ko, a young woman working part-time for Kinsei Fine Metals. I learned of their friendship during a group outing arranged to allow Nagashima to associate more intimately, if still publicly, with Kyo-ko. After witnessing the care Kawanabe and Ms Kara (who eventually married) had taken to avoid being seen together in any sort of intimate or suggestive relationship in the factory environs, I was surprised to walk up to the factory roof during the three o’clock break one afternoon to find Nagashima and Kyo-ko there alone, talking and joking. The relationship between these two did not develop much further, however, and Kyo-ko quit later the next year.

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CONCLUSION Work roles, rewards and experiences; the social importance and the relative powerlessness of the workers’ association; and the informality of social relationships both among the workers and with the Company President: all of these are important factors in the constitution and construction of experience at the company and beyond. Shintani Metals shares characteristics and encounters situations similar to those of other smaller enterprises, and I have referred to the broader contexts within which Shintani Metals is located. All of these suggest both economic and social differences from more firmly structured large corporate and middle class cultural contexts. The diversity of action and experience which I argue characterizes Japanese working class people employed in smaller enterprises both derives from and is manifest in the organization and histories of firms such as Shintani Metals. However, that diversity is not bounded by the company context, but may also be seen in other aspects of the lives of the people making their livings by working there. It is to an exploration of the lifecourse and leisure-related experiences of the men and women at Shintani Metals that I wish now to turn.

5

Paths to Shintani School boys, working men

INTRODUCTION In the next three chapters I will examine how the people working at Shintani Metals at the time of my fieldwork came to be employed there and why several of them left during that time. I look at the paths of experience leading the men and women to the factory in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively. In Chapter 7 we will turn to a brief discussion of factors leading people to consider quitting or actually to leave. In each chapter, we will see a diversity of experience that is individually constructed and that is structured by interrelationships with the people and institutions constituting the contexts of experience and action. Family and educational backgrounds, previous career histories and individual preferences and decisions are considered. These are, in turn, interrelated with broader social, economic and historical contexts. Individual action is not, however, seen here as determined by these latter contexts, but as both constrained and enabled by them. There has recently been much discussion in the English language literature about the Japanese education system, much of it generally laudatory (White 1987; Rohlen 1983). Education in Japan is popularly seen as exhibiting great egalitarianism, whereby entrance to higher level and more prestigious institutions is based on meritocratic performance in publicly administered entrance examinations. One is thought to succeed or fail to enter certain schools primarily on the basis of one’s own academic abilities and performance. The grand finale to this series of examinations, which can begin with kindergarten entrance, and its presumed primary source of scholastic motivation (for both students and parents, especially kyo-iku-mama—“education mothers”) are the university entrance examinations. Rohlen (1983), in fact, suggests that there is a “national obsession” with university entrance exams. That things are not quite as egalitarian as they seem in the Japanese education system has, conversely, also been pointed out by a number of authors. Rohlen (1977, 1983), for example, has shown that educational stratification is perhaps most crucially manifest at the high school level, and that “Japanese secondary education witnesses a serious separation and ranking of students that is highly correlated with matters of general social stratification” (1977:51; see also

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Takahashi 1994). This latter observation has been more thoroughly discussed by Ishida (1989, 1993), who extends the discussion to college attendance and shows that educational attainment in Japan is significantly affected by differences in economic, social and cultural “capital” (à la Bourdieu (1984); see also Cummings and Naoi 1974; Tsukada 1991). Sugimoto notes that “Educationalclass lines are discernible in at least three areas: differences in family socialization processes, stratification in high-school culture, and macroscopic patterns of social mobility” (1997:117; see also Lie 1996:38–40). Despite continuing scholarly interest in Japan’s university oriented entrance examination system, the majority of Japanese do not in fact pursue university educations (see Rosenbaum and Kariya 1989:1337; Sugimoto 1997). Okano points out: Studies on non-university bound high school students are rare, in contrast to the amount of research on those involved in the university entrance examinations. This is not to say that the latter group form the majority. Approximately 28% of all high school graduates (including those who later decide to become ro- nin) experience the 4-year university entrance examinations, and about 13% the 2-year junior college entrance examinations…. In other words, those who enter the well-publicized open competition for university places are the “elite,” and it seems that they have been pictured wrongly as the average Japanese high school student. There is a need to redress this popular view. (1993:20) The educational backgrounds of the men and women employed at Shintani Metals show on the one hand surprising variation and on the other hand a majority of men and women with junior high school, high school or vocational school educations. Table 5.1 (page 85), presents a breakdown of educational levels among the people at the factory. This table is based on interviews and so does not cover all Shintani Metals employees, and it includes four employees of Kinsei Fine Metals. Numbers in parentheses represent average ages, the double figures for women with vocational educations representing a generational distinction between three older women in their forties and fifties and three younger women in their twenties. In the present chapter, I discuss the narratives of education and employment of the men working at the Shintani Metals factory.1 have constructed the presentation on the basis of educational levels attained. I will make particular reference to the interrelationships among individual self-identity, lifecourse and class-related contexts as these are revealed in the men’s discussions of how they came to work at Shintani Metals. In doing so, I hope to show the reflexive nature of individual identities and experiences with(in) these contexts, and I will argue that these men’s experiences are manifestations of the social reproduction of the Japanese working class fraction associated with medium-small enterprises.

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Table 5.1 Educational backgrounds of people employed at the Shintani Metals Company

* Vocational Schools refer to senmon-gakko post-secondary non-formal institutions

JUNIOR HIGH GRADUATES As can be seen from Table 5.1, most of the men at the Shintani Metals factory with only junior high school education are older employees. There is one exception to this, whose youth—twenty-two at the time of the field-work— made him somewhat of an anomaly both among these workers (I have excluded his age in calculating the average age) and among contemporary Japanese of the same age since nearly 96 percent of all Japanese enroll in high school (MOE 1993:622). Such high rates of enrollment in high school have not been historically stable, however. Rohlen notes that in 1955 only “slightly more than half of all middle school graduates went on to high school” (1977:39). Bowman provides information indicating that it was not really until nearly 1965 that the number of upper secondary male graduates came to outnumber lower secondary male graduates entering the Japanese workforce (1981:25). Dore and Sako (1989:2), finally, show that in the manufacturing industry middle school graduates constituted 72 percent of new hirees in 1955, 55 percent in 1965, only 15 percent in 1975, and a negligible amount in 1985. The older workers at the Shintani Metals Company, ranging in age from forty to fifty-nine, were graduating from junior high school during the mid-to late 1950s (eleven men) and 1960s (three men). Ushiogi notes that: 50 percent of new job seekers in 1960 were middle school graduates, 42 percent were high school graduates, and only 9 percent were junior college or university graduates. This means that the main suppliers of labor within the educational system were middle and high schools…. Middle school graduates, whom the educational system supplied in plenty, were therefore attractive to employers because the employers could hire them for low wages. Sixty percent of those middle school graduates were absorbed into manufacturing, mostly as production process workers. Manufacturing in the 1960s was a leading industry for the Japanese economy…. In 1960 the rapidly expanding manufacturing industry recruited 47 percent of new graduates from the educational system at all levels. Of those, 63 percent

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School boys, working men were middle school graduates…. Thus middle school graduates were the key labor force for the Japanese manufacturing industry. (1986:199)

The Shintani Metals Company, like other manufacturing companies during that time, sought junior high school graduates, the “golden eggs” (kin no tamago) of industry, to meet its labor needs (see Whittaker 1997:68). Even as late as 1978, Kato was able to write that “Such urban centers as Tokyo and Osaka have to recruit…from communities all over Japan…. Every spring, hundreds and thousands of young people, including junior-high graduates and senior-high graduates, are brought to industrial centers of the country, often by chartered trains” (1978:20–1). Some men were recruited from Tokyo even during the earlier phases of Shintani Metals’ expansion. Recall that the Company President explained that the first men to work for him had come from other shops in Tokyo (see Chapter 3). However, the company soon found it advantageous to recruit from rural Tochigi Prefecture, the original home prefecture of the Company President. When I talked with the Company President about the number of Tochigi men at the factory, he recalled: “That was, after all, the friendship of prefectural fellows (do-kenjin no yoshimi).” He received assistance in recruiting young men from a number of people, including a former work-mate who had moved back to Tochigi during the war, a school teacher (the father of one man still at the company) and a cousin (the father of Mr Shintani of Special-Products A). When I asked Mr Matsukawa, the Personnel Manager, how long people had continued to come to the company from Tochigi Prefecture, he explained: Like now, there was an extreme shortage of labor in the 1950s. Then, if you advertised positions inside of Tokyo nobody would come. Junior high graduates were called “golden eggs” in those days…. And so…we had job offers distributed to schools in Tochigi Prefecture. Then in 1958, those kids went to the employment office to apply. The Company President and I went and conducted interviews. About 50 people applied and came to the interviews, and from them we took six…. So we hired a little better than 10 percent. That was the first time and those men are generally the heads of their sections now. After that, straight on, it continued for fifteen years…for about ten years wasn’t it? The company, then, made use of both various personal and institutional networks to recruit its “golden eggs” from the country. The use of personal connections is still the third most commonly reported means of employee recruitment among medium-small enterprises in Japan (SMEA 1990a: 169; SMEA 1991:302). Making use of such institutional and personal networks, what kinds of young workers were recruited from Tochigi Prefecture or from Tokyo? Before

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considering explanations given as to why they chose to begin working instead of pursuing additional education, I want first to look at the family backgrounds of these men. As Bowman notes, “Family backgrounds condition both the realities an individual may anticipate and his perceptions of the benefits to be derived from continuance in school and from entry into one rather than another type of school” (1981:65; see also Ishida 1993; Sugimoto 1997). The parents of almost all of these men, whether from Tochigi or Tokyo, had themselves only graduated from junior high level schools. Indeed, most had graduated from pre-war elementary schools, which the men considered to be the rough equivalent of current junior high level achievement (since both represent the end of compulsory education). Mr Honda’s father, however, had reportedly graduated from a university level institution and was a school teacher in Tochigi Prefecture (the man referred to above). Among the men originally from Tochigi, parental occupations were predominantly those in agriculture, or combined farming with some other activity such as lye mining, fabric dying and cutting lumber. Other occupations included those of restaurant owner, office worker and the teacher already mentioned. The occupations of the fathers of the older men of Tokyo origin included two manual laborers in the automobile industry, a building painter, a man who had worked as a Japanese confectioneries craftsman and later operated a small printing shop, and one man who had been a chauffeur, owned a small watch shop and finally worked for the Company President at Kinsei Fine Metals. After his parents died when he was young, Mr Nishiyama, originally hailing from Hyo-go Prefecture, was raised by an uncle and aunt who were farmers. Mr Mizuta, from Fukushima Prefecture, did not know the educational backgrounds of his parents, who died when he was in junior high school, his father having done fittings/joinery carpentry work (tategu-ya). In addition to parental education and occupation and to familial residence, position within the family (ie) can also influence the structuring and construction of the individual’s lifecourse. It is interesting to note that, with the exception of the orphaned Mr Nishiyama, all the men of rural origins who came to Tokyo to work are non-successor sons. Olson, in his brief report on a small factory in Kyoto during the mid-1950s, also noted that most of the male workers there were “second or third sons, who are part of the stream of migrant labor moving from farm to city” (1963:21; see also Whittaker 1997:128). Kitao-ji (1971) and Bachnik (1978, 1983) have pointed out that ie succession, carried out on a “positional” basis, stipulates that only one natal family member per generation remain in the household as (preferably) male househead or (less preferably) housewife-head. Non-successor family members typically— ideally—include all daughters and all but the first son. Such non-successor members should, structurally, leave their natal families to either enter other ie or to establish their own. As non-successor sons, then, the Shintani Metals men from rural families would have been socially expected to leave and find employment outside of the family enterprise (agricultural or other). As E.Vogel

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noted, “The move to the city was not a break in the kinship structure, but rather a natural development which proceeded within the structure of the kinship organization” (1967:104).2 Of the five Tokyo men with junior high school educations, three are second or third non-successor sons. Two men are first sons (cho- nan), including Takayama, in his early twenties, and Mr Ikeda. Being first son influenced Mr Ikeda’s decision to begin working early in order to help support his parent’s family: “If I hadn’t done so,” he said, “we couldn’t have lived.” While different in the sense of leaving versus staying at home, both the older men of rural origins and Mr Ikeda can be seen to have been easing the financial burdens of their families by going out into the world to work after graduating from junior high. The former lightened the burdens of their parents by their absence from their poor rural households, while Mr Ikeda made direct financial contributions to his parents. What did these junior high school graduates from Tochigi, Tokyo and elsewhere say regarding their own educational backgrounds and decisions to pursue employment instead of higher education? Why did they not go on at least to high school, but instead leave family and friends at fifteen or sixteen years of age to begin work? Most of these men’s narratives included statements of explanation related to the large size of their families and/or to poverty having made it necessary for them to quit school and make money for their families. Deaths or illnesses of parents made continuing in school beyond compulsory education (junior high) difficult or impossible for several of the men. Mr Ikeda, fifty-one years of age and of Tokyo origin, explained his beginning to work upon graduating from junior high school thus: When I graduated from junior high, I wanted to enter high school and talked about it with my father and mother. I wanted to go at any cost, and I had even submitted an application—to a school in Okubo. At any rate, I’m the first son, right? There were other children below me. At the time, life wasn’t very easy for my father and for my mother. So, if possible we want you to work, they said. I gave up on going to high school and so went out into society (shakai ni detan desu yo). Mr Abe, also fifty-one and from Tokyo, but the second son in his family, explained his entry into the world thus: I’m a junior high grad. The beginning of 1955 was the dirt bottom of a recession. My brother and sister went to school. But me and my friends decided that “Working makes money.” More individually centered motives were also cited as reasons for leaving school after junior high and beginning to work. These included: personal desire to begin earning money, regardless of family need; the desire not to pursue

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education further; or, the desire to go to Tokyo. Peers who themselves planned to quit school after only graduating from junior high schools were also influential for some. While most of the other men from the country stressed the size of their families or their poverty, Mr Kawai, one of the older men from Tochigi Prefecture, both placed himself within a more general discourse and offered an individual motivation when he explained why he had decided not to pursue education beyond the junior high level: At that time, there was no food, shall we say? Just making a living… there were just too many children. In the country only about 10 percent could go to high school or college. There was that point also. But at any rate, I was attracted by the lifestyle of Tokyo (To- kyo- no kono seikatsu ni akogaremashita). I wanted to enjoy myself, to buy nice things. I wanted to buy a car. School was just not on my mind. Some of the Tokyo-born men related their decisions to leave school and begin working after junior high to factors other than just financial problems. Young Takayama said that he thought going to high school would not make that much difference and that he had wanted to go ahead and learn a skilled craft job. Mr Okakura, on the other hand, reflected on his departure from school as a consequence of his dislike of the group lifestyle (shu-dan no seikatsu) of school—although, it may be noted, his mother was divorced and working in or operating small restaurants. Such personal and family-based aspects of the construction of lifecourse experience among these older junior high school graduates must also be understood within the broader structuring contexts of Japanese social and economic history. These men, now in their mid- to late fifties, would have graduated from junior high school some thirty-five to forty years ago, during the late 1950s and early 1960s. This period marks the beginning of Japan’s “economic miracle,” its period of high economic growth. It was during this time that there was a rapid expansion of the working class population, recruited largely from people with farming or old middle class origins (see Ishida 1993; Kosaka 1994c; Seiyama et al. 1990). During this period there was a concomitant population movement from rural to urban areas, before major construction of production facilities in many rural areas (although even now the main reason reported for leaving other areas to go to Tokyo for work remains the scarcity of places of employment; see MOL 1990:454). Almost all of the Tochigi junior high graduates began working for the Company President directly upon graduating. The one exception to this is Mr Tozawa, who had worked at a textile factory in Tochigi for several years before quitting to come to Tokyo to work, in part because of his attraction (akogare) to Tokyo. Mr Ikeda and Mr Abe, both born and raised in Tokyo, had worked for brief one-year and one and a half-year periods at other manufacturing jobs

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before joining Shintani Metals. Mr Ikeda commented that the company he had first entered had gone bankrupt, while Mr Abe complained that he had had to persevere to stay as long as he did in his first job. Asked why he had chosen to join Shintani Metals, Mr Abe cited the comparatively better working conditions and wages. Mr Ikeda recollected: It’s not particularly that it had to be this. It’s just that I like making things. From when I was small I’ve really liked machines, models, engines, radios and that sort of thing. So, if you say which, then [I wanted to work at] a manufacturing company making things, industrial-crafts related, models or toys or things like that. Others of the junior high graduates had more extended work histories before coming to work at the Shintani Metals factory. Mr Nishiyama, for example, who had moved to Tokyo from western Japan, first worked at a furniture manufacturers, but quit when it relocated outside of Tokyo. He then worked at a factory making radio parts, but left when he ran into trouble (had a dispute; momeru) with the president of the firm. Two other men from Tokyo with junior high educations, Mr Okakura and Mr Kamimura, also had extensive prior employment experience. These two men’s narratives reflect the artisanal intentions with which they have pursued employment. Although a second son, Mr Kamimura was preparing to become the successor of the watch business his father then operated, and so went out to work at other watch-related businesses. As noted in the discussion of the Company President’s personal history, such peripatetic training has been a common form of apprenticeship (see also Koike 1983b; Kondo 1990). Mr Kamimura’s father became ill, however, and his watch shop folded. When his health recovered enough to work again, Mr Kamimura’s father started to work at Shintani Metals, then primarily making watch cases, and Mr Kamimura himself was consequently invited to join the company. Mr Okakura had started his work career out of junior high as a craftsman making shoes. He first worked at a business operated by family relatives. Then, in part because of the notion that it is best for craftsmen to work for some time elsewhere in order to improve their skills, Mr Okakura went to work at two other businesses. Although for a while dreaming of having his own business, he decided to continue as a craftsman and returned to his first place of employment. His decision was based in part on a recognition of his own character and since, he said: While I was doing that I came to think that it would be better to value my own time. And then, if [one is] a craftsman then it’s freer, work is. Well, a craftsman is completely, at least regarding shoemakers, completely on a rate system (buai-seido). Do you understand that? If you make one pair of shoes then so much, just that. If you finish the day’s work, then after that it’s okay

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to return at any time. In exchange, at times when there’s a lot of work, you have to work until late. That way is freer, and I thought that this time I could put more of my efforts into the things that I like to do, hobbies and so forth. So I returned there, and was there for a long time. And then, like I said before, I put all my efforts into the art correspondence course and so forth. When this shoe business went bankrupt, Mr Okakura found employment at Kinsei Fine Metals through a newspaper ad. When I asked why he had changed fields, he explained that he had anyway begun to think about changing jobs since working on a rate basis as he had been would have made the future uncertain, because his productivity, and so his wages, would decline with age. A regularly employed person does not have the same uncertainty. As to why he entered Kinsei Fine Metals, he explained that as a craftsman he had gotten used to doing work assigned to him, and that “I like paintings and that sort of thing that you turn out (tsukuri-dasu), I like to make things and so I was thinking of a place tied to [the making of] that sort of thing.” HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES For the junior high graduates discussed above there was no choice but to enter junior high school. Since the post-war educational reforms, compulsory education has been for the nine years through junior high—in Japan’s new six-three-three-four education system (six elementary, three junior, three high school and four university years) (Rohlen 1983:65). While one must graduate from junior high, entry into high school is a more voluntary decision, if now also an extremely competitive enterprise (in both senses of the word; see Rohlen 1977, 1983). Japan witnessed a general rise in levels of academic attainment throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Ushiogi points out that “the proportion of the high schoolage population enrolled in high schools increased from 57.7 percent in 1960 to 94.3 percent in 1982” (1986:197). In 1993, approximately 96 percent of junior high school graduates went on to high school (MOE 1993:622). The percentage of new entrants to the labor force who were junior high graduates has correspondingly declined, from 49.6 percent in 1960 to 6.5 percent in 1983 (Ushiogi 1986:199; see also Dore and Sako 1989:2). High school graduates comprised 41.6 percent of new entrants to the general labor force in 1960, 60.2 percent in 1970, 55.1 percent in 1980 and 50.3 percent in 1990 (Ushiogi 1986:199; Asahi Shimbun 1993:97). The percentage of high school graduates entering manufacturing increased from 23 percent in 1955, to 36 percent in 1965, 57 percent in 1975 and 65 percent in 1985 (Dore and Sako 1989:2). In 1993, however, only about 30 percent of high school graduates became employed directly out of school.3 Among these some 40.7 percent of the male graduates found their first jobs in manufacturing, the single largest sector of employment (MOE 1993:22).4

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Mr Matsukawa, the Personnel Manager of Shintani Metals, noted that after some ten or fifteen years of recruiting junior high school graduates, largely from Tochigi Prefecture, junior high students as “golden eggs” increasingly weren’t around. And then the rate of academic advancement got higher, and when a lot started going to high school, those looking for work after junior high became fewer in number. And so we changed to high schools. Mr Matsukawa then linked increased investments by larger firms in such rural areas to the difficulty Shintani Metals had in finding youngsters from the country willing to go to Tokyo. Thus, he said, deciding to concentrate on Tokyo, we sent requests around to Tokyo area high schools, and have had people come from them. And that is still continuing now. Recruitment of new employees directly from schools is the most commonly used method by which companies—large and small alike—obtain workers. The next two most commonly used avenues among medium-small enterprises are the utilization of public employment agencies and hiring people through personal connections (SMEA 1990a:169; SMEA 1991:302). Some 75 percent of Japanese employees locate their initial places of employment with assistance from their schools (Rosenbaum and Kariya 1989:1341). With the switch of recruitment focus from Tochigi to the Tokyo area, Shintani Metals has used Tokyo high schools, public employment offices, employment magazines and newspaper inserts to find employees. Academic high school graduates During my fieldwork in 1989 and 1990, there were four men who had graduated from academic (non-vocational) high schools, including one who had earned his degree through night school. The four men who graduated from regular high schools included two who came from rural and two from urban backgrounds. The men originally from the country were both from farming families. As was also predominantly the case for the junior high school graduates discussed above, these two men were both non-successor sons. Mr Yamada (from Yamagata Prefecture) was the last of nine siblings, while Yamamura (from Tochigi Prefecture) was the youngest of five children. Moving to Tokyo was explained by both men as due to there not having been work available in their home prefectures. Mr Yamada had worked at a number of jobs before coming to Shintani Metals. He said that he had changed jobs of his own choice in order to improve his wages and that when he found the job at Shintani Metals he was not concerned with the kind of work or its relation to his previously acquired skills.

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Yamamura, for whom Shintani Metals was his first job, spoke of coming to the company fourteen years earlier when, after applying too late to a large automobile manufacturer, a friend working at Shintani Metals suggested: “Well, come to my place.” And well, if this company [Shintani Metals] then anything would be okay, I thought; and it just happened that I came here— to [the Crafts section making] rings. Well, if it had been the watch division then I would have been doing watches. Anything would have been okay— because I’ve always had it in mind to quit. And well, hanging around, the older guys (senpai) at this company were fairly nice, so I’ve just continued to hang out here (zuruzuru zuruzuru nation desu yo ne). The two men of urban Tokyo origin with regular high school educations present two different employment histories. Mr Araki had entered the company five years before my fieldwork, at the age of fifty. His father had made footwear before the Second World War, and afterwards established his own small trading enterprise. The second of four sons, Mr Araki had previously operated a small real estate business with one of his younger brothers—a venture he was still financially involved in. Asked why he had chosen to work at Shintani Metals, Mr Araki replied that since he could not do heavy work or work that required standing, he was looking for something which allowed him to sit, and the factory was also close to his home. Mr Higashi was the eldest son of a man who had worked as a jewelry craftsman (kazariya). He worked for his father after graduating from junior high school, and earned his high school diploma through night courses. Mr Higashi continued this business after his father’s death, but when work dried up in the early 1980s, Mr Higashi, who lives a short five-minute walk away, entered Shintani Metals after gaining an introduction through an electrician who did work at the factory. Industrial high school graduates In 1985, vocational high schools (specializing in commercial, agricultural, music or industrial courses) comprised 16 percent of all high schools in Japan, and the 1,440,000 students enrolled in them made up 28 percent of all Japanese high school students in that year (Dore and Sako 1989:33; Okano 1993:37). Twelve of the men at Shintani Metals, all but two in their twenties and early thirties, had gained their basic educations at industrial high schools. Three of these men, one in his late fifties, another in his mid-forties and the third in his mid-twenties went to different industrial high schools in Tokyo and in neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture. The other nine men were alumni of the same school, Tokyo Industrial High School. The occupations of the fathers of the three men who went to industrial high schools other than Tokyo Industrial High included geta (wooden sandal) maker, employee at a large electronics firm and carpenter. The father employed at the

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electronics firm reportedly had graduated from a pre-war elementary school, and as such can be fairly safely assumed not to have held an elite white-collar position. The geta maker had a pre-war upper elementary level education, while the father working as a carpenter had graduated from a post-war junior high school. All three of the men employed at Shintani Metals explained their attending industrial high schools in terms of the perceived necessity of being able to, or the personal preference to, make things with their hands or work with machines. While one of the older men spoke of the need to acquire a skill (ude ni gijutsu ga atta ho- ga if) because of a leg injury he had suffered, Miyata, the youngest of these three men, told me: I had already decided to enter an industrial high school from my first year of junior high school. That was because my uncle had gone to an industrial high school and I’d heard various stories from him. And then there was also the fact that I really liked electronics construction and that sort of thing, and so I went to an industrial high school. These three industrial high graduates had all worked at various other places before coming to Shintani Metals. Mr Kato, the oldest of the three, entered around the age of forty-four. He claimed to have left several previous jobs because of the firms having encountered worsened business climates. He was introduced to Shintani Metals by his neighbor, Mr Abe of the Crafts section. Both Mr Oshima and Miyata had also left their prior places of employment when these companies encountered difficult times. Unlike others of the men noted above who were not concerned about such things, Miyata said that he decided to enter Shintani Metals because he wanted to learn the jobs and skills related to using metal files and other such tools. Koike (1983a, 1983b) has argued that skill acquisition is a major reason for interfirm mobility among men working in smaller enterprises. While Miyata’s case fits this category of life histories enabled by the flexibility of the medium-small enterprise sector, it also reveals a combination of enablement and constraint. The nine Tokyo Industrial High graduates were all hired directly upon graduation. The connection of Shintani Metals to Tokyo Industrial High (henceforth, TIH) is on the one hand institutional in nature—requests for applicants are sent from the company to the school via the local employment office. On the other hand, the connection is more or less geographic in that both company and school are located in western Tokyo. The ties between the two institutions were initiated when the Factory Manager had himself attended TIH. He enrolled, he said, “because my father is doing this kind of work. Because of the connection with this sort of job, more than a regular high school it’s probably better to go to an industrial high school [I/we thought].” The Factory Manager also attended university, but as a TIH graduate who returned to his family’s business he is not alone. Of TIH

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graduates in 1988, just over 3 percent went directly to work for their families (TIH 1990a: 5). This is consistent with the 5 percent of vocational students Okano (1993:96) found to work for their own families. Ties between the company and TIH were renewed and personalized on occasions such as when the Factory Manager attended TIH’s eightieth anniversary in 1987, and Mr Matsukawa accompanied me when I visited the school in 1990. The institution which became Tokyo Industrial High School was opened in 1908. The Meiji Government, it may be noted, had issued the first Act of National Subsidy to Industrial Education (or the Vocational Education Law) in 1894, granting subsidies to public technical, agricultural and commercial schools (Kim 1978:59, 104; Passin 1965:96–7). The opening of TIH also followed less than a decade after the Japanese Ministry of Education issued its original Industrial School Ordinance (and related Regulations for Technical Schools) in 1899 (Kim 1978:97).5 The original TIH school building was destroyed by fire during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and then again as a result of the Allied air raids of 1945. In 1947 an associated junior high school was established, and in 1948 the schools were moved to their present location in western Tokyo. In 1967 an affiliated technological university was opened (TIH 1990a; TIH 1988). As of 1989, there were approximately 6300 students enrolled from junior high through university (TIH n.d.). There were 2734 students attending TIH in 1987, an enrollment rate which has been generally maintained since the mid-1960s (TIH 1988:420). The fathers of the TIH graduates working at Shintani Metals included two men who had graduated from elementary schools, three from junior high schools, one from an industrial high school, one regular academic high school graduate and one father who had graduated from university. The occupational backgrounds of the fathers included: construction company employee, public employee (ko-muin—two men: one a junior high graduate and the other an industrial high graduate, so it is possible that their positions as public employees were not of very high rank), transportation (and before that at a bathhouse), union official (the university graduate), section chief at Japan Tobacco, machine operator and gardener. While not uniformly so, most of the TIH graduates may reasonably be seen to have come from working class backgrounds (see also Bowman 1981; Ishida 1993). There are no teachers, no bank employees and no elite whitecollar employees among the fathers of the graduates of industrial high schools who were working at Shintani Metals when I was there. All the men who had graduated from TIH had been born and raised in the Tokyo area. For the graduates of high school or beyond, what is of interest is not just why they decided not to pursue higher education but also why they decided to enter an industrial high school as opposed to a regular academic high school or a commercial high school. As Okano points out, “The decision to pursue one curriculum course rather than another at the end of compulsory schooling is the first key occupation-related decision for most Japanese youth” (1993:38).6 Among the Shintani Metals employees there were three basic types of

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personal accounts of why they had chosen to enter industrial high schools: (1) those which focused on grades or academic achievement; (2) those which emphasized more volitional concerns; and (3) narratives which mentioned a combination of academic and volitional factors. Those narratives which focused on academic achievement pointed primarily to inadequate grades and to a search for a high school the entrance exam of which it was felt could be passed. For instance, one man reported having failed in his attempt to get into another high school and so applied to TIH, he said, because of its easy entrance exam. Others claimed to have investigated the schools that they could apply to based on their grades and found that most were industrial high schools. Such grade- or exam-based narratives reflect the tendency, especially in the generally more university oriented Tokyo area, for vocational high school students to “come from lower down the ability range” in test-taking skills (Dore and Sako 1989:25; Fan 1991:72). While vocational high schools are less difficult to enter and less prestigious—and so ranked lower in the fu-sho-ko--no- (regular, commercial, industrial, agricultural) ordering of high schools (Dore and Sako 1989:35; see also Fan 1991; Okano 1993; Rohlen 1983)— this does not mean that all is lost at such schools. Fan points out that “firms prefer employing vocational students, because these students have the identity and spirit of a worker and are more trainable due to their preparations in the basics of their trades” (1991:72). In addition, Dore and Sako also note that Japanese vocational high schools “are serious, well-run organizations,” and that efforts to allow for advancement to university of at least some graduates means that “(t)here remains a high general-education content in the vocational school courses” (1989:15). The second kind of narratives among the Shintani Metals workers regarding entry into TIH emphasized more purely volitional factors. Kuwata, who did not mention grades, noted that he decided to go to TIH because I liked making things. Industrial high schools are places where you make various kinds of things and at that time I liked trains. At that school [TIH] they make miniature SLs [steam locomotives] and since I had an interest in that I entered. Horiuchi, at thirty-three the oldest TIH alumnus employed at Shintani Metals, explained that his going to an industrial high school had been the wish of his father, himself a machinist. In between these first two kinds of narratives were those of the majority of men, who related their decisions to a combination of poor academic records and of personal interests in either making things and/or in working with machinery. While entry into high schools and the selective sorting that takes place particularly through success or failure in entrance examinations have been

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analyzed by others (Rohlen 1977, 1983), the narratives of the TIH graduates suggest that in addition to the structuring contexts of family class background there are also personal decisions which are involved in the reproduction of social stratification in Japan. Bourdieu (1984) reminds us, however, that such seemingly “personal” interests are themselves also related to class socialization and enculturation (see also MacLeod 1995; Willis 1977). What is thus revealed in these narratives are the economic and cultural dimensions of class, which not only comprises the practical material contexts which people inhabit, but which also constitutes the cultural “habitus” (Bourdieu 1977, 1984) on the basis of which individuals construct their identities and actions (see also Ishida 1993). Furthermore, the stratification manifest in the education system is not simply a matter of passing exams and getting into certain types of schools or particular institutions (Kariya 1988; see also Rosenbaum and Kariya 1989). Leaving school for the job market is another space in which academically based stratification can be seen to take place. This is suggested in a general way by the facts that: In 1987, 71 percent of vocational course leavers directly entered employment, in comparison with only 22 percent of general course leavers. Only 10 percent of vocational course leavers proceeded to tertiary institutions while the corresponding figure for general course leavers was 39 percent. (Okano 1993:38) A finely geared mechanism is at work in further stratifying high school students as they leave school and enter the working world (Kariya 1988). In the case of Japanese high schools, this involves the institutional linkage between high schools and employers. As Okano explains: [C]ompanies expect schools to have the most reliable information about new employees (i.e. students) and to be an agent for recruiting in order to avoid cost and risks, and…jisseki-kankei (a long-term, close relationship between school and company) largely determines the way the school conducts career guidance…. [T]he most important determinant in relation to high school graduates’ job opportunities is the status of the school in the institutional labor market (which is dependent on the academic achievement level required for entry and on the school’s history), rather than the students’ individual qualities. (1993:21; see also Fan 1991:75) Schools, and thus their students, become socially ranked and stratified on the basis of the number of companies—and particularly the number of “contract companies”—recruiting from particular schools and on the basis of the number of jobs that each company offers to them (Kariya 1988). According to Kariya, the average high school receives job offers from nearly 700 employers and maintains “Semiformal contract relations” with 77 or so “contract employers,” whereby the

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companies agree to recruit regularly from the school and the school agrees to supply the company with appropriately qualified students. It is interesting to note that industrial high schools obtain fairly large numbers of job requests from a large number of different companies (Kariya 1988:47). The majority of jobs for male industrial high school graduates, however, remain manual (ibid.: 59). As a result of these links, “students’ occupational opportunities are limited from the outset by the types and number of jobs received at their schools, that is, within the boundaries of the ‘fixed quotas’” (ibid.: 29). One consequence of this is that: Although over half of all high school students want to be employed by large corporations, the gate is narrow. Only 32.5% of work-bound high school graduates are employed by large corporations with over 1000 employees, while 35.4% are in firms with 30 to 299 employees, 12.2% are in firms with less than 30… (ibid.: 52–3) While being a “cornerstone” of the Japanese employment system, “This close relationship—between the school, the socializing and selection agent, and the firms, the life long source of income and status—constitutes a key link in transition from child and student to adult” (Fan 1991:76).7 That is, while at a structural level functioning as a system of labor and so social stratification, this system has real consequences for individuals as they negotiate the lifecourse transition from school to work. Within the schools themselves there is a further internal sorting of students based primarily on academic record such that students with better records are recommended by the schools to better companies and for better jobs. Applying for a job is a rather complicated, if highly structured, procedure which begins some ten months before March graduation and which effectively gives the students’ teachers much control over employment decisions. Kariya depicts the general process of job placement in Japanese high schools as involving some seven steps— from collection and display of job offers; to vocational counseling, job choice by students and school recommendation; to job application, exams and interviews; and finally to job entrance (1988:222; see also Fan 1991; Okano 1993). A roughly similar schedule is followed at TIH (TIH 1990b:28). TIH additionally stipulates the following conditions for those students hoping for the school to act as intermediary (ibid.): 1 Must be a student for whom graduation is possible (who is expected to graduate). 2 Must be a student of good conduct. 3 The school will only recommend the student to one company at one time and until that fails the school will not recommend the student elsewhere. 4 If employment has been informally decided (naitei), the student must enter

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the company (withdrawals or changes mid-course are not allowed). According to TIH statistics, an astounding 2608 companies sent request forms to the school in 1988. During that year, the school helped place 293 graduates into jobs. Of these, nearly 30 percent found their first positions in large firms with over 1000 employees. At the other end of the scale, 7.8 percent of these graduates were placed in companies with between 201 and 300 employees, 15.7 percent in companies with between 101 and 200 employees, 10.9 percent in firms with 51 to 100 people, and 16.1 percent in firms with fewer than 50 workers (TIH 1990b:6). Thus, just over half of the TIH graduates in 1988 found their first jobs in medium-small enterprises (defined as those employing 300 or fewer people). Besides these 293 students who found employment with the school’s recommendation, another 30 found employment through personal connections and 26 others in family enterprises (ibid.: 5). While the job referral system described above is highly structured, this does not mean that individual students do not participate as agents in making this important lifecourse transition.8 Okano’s research shows that “Students were not passively sorted by the school, but created their own trajectories of transition from school to work, using a variety of resources” (1993:2; see also Okano 1995a, 1995b). What kinds of narratives did the TIH graduates working at Shintani Metals provide to explain their decisions to enter this particular small company? For essentially all these men, their teachers had played significant roles in their eventually entering Shintani Metals. Kariya writes that “home-room teachers in senior classes and teachers in the job placement department take the part of counselors. Teachers advise and help students make their job plans” (1988:85). Mary Brinton (1988, 1992) has discussed, with particular reference to women, the roles of schools and teachers as “sponsors” or “stakeholders” in the construction of lifecourse in Japan. As with entry into TIH, one commonly noted reason for choosing Shintani Metals had to do with individual preferences to make things or to work with machines. Kawanabe, for example, said that: I was told by the teacher in charge that there’s this company, and that until now several from our school have gone there, so how about it?… Before I was introduced [by the school to Shintani Metals] I had expressed my own wishes. That is, that I like machine-related [work]. And after that, well, I’m doing drafting now but, drafting-related drawings and so forth, I like doing that sort of thing. So, I asked if there wasn’t an appropriate place somewhere. And then, I was introduced here. Three other men had first applied to other companies, and went to Shintani Metals only after having failed to be accepted by their first choices. The following statement by Kuwata, who entered the same year as Kawanabe, shows the consequences of failing upon first application, the role of teachers as stakeholders in spurring students to decide on a firm before graduation, and

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the influence of personal interests and feelings in making the decision to join Shintani Metals: First, I had applied to one company and had failed to get in. Well, but I wasn’t particularly desperate about employment. I had been casually searching at school. But, I was told by my teacher to decide (kimero) my employment, and I had him “pick-up” about three [companies]. Then, he said to go look and from those I went to see two. One was welding work and the other was this company. Then, after seeing both, I decided on this company…. It wasn’t especially a matter of “It’s this” though. When I visited the company they pretty considerately showed me around. And then, I had an interest, shall we say, it’s interesting [work] I thought. At the first it was watches, and at that time, when I tried beginning to make them, I thought it was interesting. Horiuchi’s reply to my question about why he had chosen Shintani Metals reveals in a somewhat different fashion the confusion and contingency that can characterize finding one’s first place of employment: That’s difficult…. Things were fairly confused when I entered. It was kind of like there was no other place. That is to say, activities for finding employment in the case of Japan are now from around August, but for us it was from October, searching for employment and going to see or visit various companies. In my case, at that time I felt like going to university. Then, I changed in February. Graduation is in March, so there was only one month left. So I met with my teacher and, well, if here [Shintani Metals] then the Factory Manager is a graduate of that school as well, though I didn’t know him since he was way before me. It was in that way that I entered (so- iu kanji de haitchatta). Most Japanese companies, of all sizes, require some sort of recruitment examination. These cover “a wide range of fields, from maths to Japanese classical writers, with whom the average citizen is expected to be familiar” (Okano 1993:121). At Shintani Metals, however, there is no recruitment examination. Instead, as is also common elsewhere, job applicants are interviewed and required to write short essays. Popular titles for recruitment essays include “My Thoughts on Becoming a Shakai-jin,” “Best Memory of My High School Days,” and similar such themes (ibid.). This is true for Shintani Metals as well. These essays can reveal the youthful ambitions and ambiguities involved in making the transition from a student’s life in school to becoming a shakaijin working in the social world (see Okano 1993:246–7; Roberson 1995a). VOCATIONAL SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY—GRADUATES AND DROP OUTS Although the vast majority of men working at the Shintani Metals Company had junior high or high school educations, there were seven men who attended

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post-secondary institutions. Two of these men had graduated from two-year vocational training schools (senmon-gakko-),9 and two had been admitted to universities but did not graduate. The three university graduates noted in Table 5.1 include Mr Murakami, the Factory Manager and Mr Matsukawa, the Personnel Manager. I will not discuss the latter two managers. The two men who went to vocational schools were both younger men from Tokyo in their mid- to late-twenties. Nagashima, admitting that he was unsure, reported that his father had graduated from a pre-war junior high school and had worked at several places before finding an office job in a larger company. Kiyohara reported that his father, a farmer, had graduated from an old-system elementary school. Both Nagashima and Kiyohara went to regular high schools, and had originally planned to go to college afterwards. Kiyohara spent two years as a ro-nin student studying for his university entrance exams after graduating from high school (for more on ro-nin students, see Tsukada 1991). During this time, however, he came to feel that he could not find a university department that he really wanted to enter, and began investigating vocational schools to satisfy his interest in art and crafts. Kiyohara claimed to have no regrets about choosing to go to the vocational school instead college. Nagashima more simply explained that: Actually I had thought of going to university, but I was told by my teacher to quit because I wasn’t studying. Then, I thought about becoming employed, but I thought that it was still too early to work, so I decided to enter a vocational school. Nagashima said that he decided to enter Shintani Metals primarily because it was closer to his residence than other jobs advertised. Any work would have been okay, he said, though he also noted that he felt that he was not suited to a job in sales. The cases of Mr Doi and Shinoyama are to some extent similar to those of Nagashima and Kiyohara in that they are likewise not university graduates. However, the former two men’s experiences are complicated by their having entered universities only subsequently to drop out for personal reasons. Both men came to Shintani Metals after having first worked at several other companies and jobs. Mr Doi, from Tokyo, is the second son of a man who reportedly worked for himself and later was employed as a weaver. Although admitted to a national university, he dropped out after only one year because the kind of theater he wanted to learn was not offered there. Mr Doi claimed to have spent nearly ten years doing various kinds of temporary jobs (arubaito) while concentrating on the theatrical group of which he was member and producer, and through which he met his wife. He explained his coming to Shintani Metals eight years previously in connection with feeling that with a wife and a young child he

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should enter a “real” company. The factory is, further, a ten- to twenty-minute walk or bicycle ride from his home. Shinoyama is the only son of a man who worked at one of Japan’s largest public enterprises. Shinoyama was a ro-nin student after graduating from high school, having spent one year at a yobiko- exam preparatory school (see Tsukada 1991) before being admitted to Osaka Technical University. However, he dropped out after only one year: What does one say? Anyway, at that time I didn’t have much of a goal, to put it plainly. Everyone goes to college, so I thought I’ll go too. It was that sort of way of thinking. At that time I was pretty confused about just what I really wanted to do—when I was around nineteen or twenty. Shinoyama then came to Tokyo, where his older sister was already living. Before coming to the Shintani Metals Company in 1988, Shinoyama said that he had held various other manufacturing jobs, Shintani Metals being the third watch maker for which he had worked. The cases in which he quit because of the company’s economic problems outnumbered those of his having quit of his own volition. He decided to enter Shintani Metals on being shown the factory, since “I felt that if this, it’s in the range of my experience so it looks like I can do it. And then, afterwards, there’s also the sense that it’s because I like this kind of work. Because I like to make things.” Like Nagashima, Shinoyama said that he felt that he was more suited to working with machines and doing blue-collar work than to doing sales and working with people. The one non-managerial male employee at the Shintani Metals Company to have graduated from a university is Mr Murakami, whom I personally found to be one of the most interesting, because in some ways the most eccentric, of the people at the factory. According to Mr Murakami, his father graduated from Kyushu Imperial University and taught English in pre-war junior high schools, in addition to spending time in the military. His mother graduated from a pre-war college-level women’s school in Kyoto. Two of Mr Murakami’s older brothers, as well as his wife, also graduated from universities, his wife working for a German pharmaceutical company (her income is, he perhaps exaggerated, five times his own). Mr Murakami thus has a circle of consociates with the highest educational levels of anyone at the factory. Mr Murakami said that he had graduated from Sophia University, majoring in English literature—he wrote his graduation thesis on William Blake. After graduating, he had wanted to become a writer. From the time of his graduation until entering Shintani Metals at the age of forty-nine, Mr Murakami claimed not to have held regular employment, having been, he said, a furii-arubaita(“free temporary employee;” someone who changes jobs frequently, and whose jobs are temporary and with flexible working hours). Mr Murakami said that the jobs that he had held were “uncountable,” but had included a morning

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delivery job; various kinds of physical labor such as working as a gardener, a longshoreman and in road construction; and managing a coffee shop. Mr Murakami and his wife, it may be noted, had no children—a feature of his lifecourse consociates, or the lack of them, which may have allowed Mr Murakami greater freedom than might otherwise have been the case. When I asked how he had learned about the job at Shintani Metals, Mr Murakami replied: This is, well, I wanted to work so, as long as it was a place close to my house, any place would have been okay. It was just timely. I happened to always be doing temporary work (arubaito), and searching [for work] by looking at the arubaito news. And it happens that already being around fifty, there’s no good [temporary work]. So, I thought I’d go to the Employment Office. Going there, there was this company’s card. “Oh, if it’s [that location] it’s a short walk,” I thought, and so I decided on it. It’s only that; because it’s nearby. So doing anything at all would have been okay. Any kind of work would have been fine. Yeah, it was really simplistic. Mr Murakami’s remark here is both idiosyncratic and, in many ways, representative of the experiences and attitudes of other of the men (and, we will see in the next chapter, of the women) working at Shintani Metals. CONCLUSION The men working at Shintani Metals do not fit the linear stereotype of Japanese men who were brought up in families which prepared and outfitted them for success in surviving the “examination hell” of the education system, and who then entered companies in which they could “wrap themselves up” (as the Japanese saying goes—nagai mono ni makarero) for a lifetime of employment. This is a view from and of the middle class (and may be less true even for them than much of the literature would suggest). In this discussion of the paths taken by the men in coming to work at the Shintani Metals Company we have seen that, while there are significant similarities among the men, there is an important amount of diversity of experience. We have also seen that educational and employment careers familially or financially figured, or personally preferred, have played an important part in this diversity, as has encountering contingencies which frustrate educational or employment plans. Such diversity of individual action and experience is constructed on the basis of individual self-identity and in interrelation with immediate lifecourse, educational and employment contexts, and with the broader economic and cultural contexts characterizing their lives as working class people making their livings in one of Japan’s smaller enterprises. Individual action is both necessitated or allowed by, and enabled or constrained by, these contexts, but is not unnegotiably determined by them. As Layder et al., note:

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The pervasive influence of individual variables at all levels also suggests that the process of reproduction here must not be understood simply as a mechanical process, whereby individuals unreflectively reconstruct structural arrangements. (1991:460) One can hear in these narratives, see in these descriptions, aspects of intertwining of self-identity, lifecourse and the individual reproduction of class distinctions in Japan. In Chapter 6 we will see that in the experiences of the women working at Shintani Metals there are both similarities to, and genderrelated differences from, the experiences of the men described here.

6

Paths to Shintani Factory girls, working women

INTRODUCTION In this chapter I examine the educational and employment histories of the women working at Shintani Metals. While the presentation in Chapter 5 was based on the differing educational levels of the men involved, the discussion of the female factory workers in this chapter will be divided on the basis of marital experience. This latter expression is employed instead of “marital status” since two of the women at the company during my fieldwork were divorcees. The distinction between single, never-married women and those who are (or were) wives and mothers is also generally paralleled in the differentiation between regularly employed women and those women working as part-time employees. Marital experience roughly parallels employment status and age. Among the women at Shintani Metals, it is not educational background so much as whether or not one is a wife or mother which separates the factory “girls” from the working women. For readers already familiar with discussions of Japanese women’s participation in the labor force, this correlation between age, marital experience and type of employment should come as no surprise.1 These interrelationships are reflected in the marriage- and motherhood-related “M-curve” of women’s employment: In Japan, women’s participation in the workforce is characterized by this curve, which peaks at the ages of 20–24 and 40–44. The low point at the ages 30–34 reflects the trend toward pre-marriage employment followed by temporary retirement from the labor force for the purpose of childbearing and rearing. The upward curve begins again with re-entry into the labor force when the last child enters elementary school… (Roberts 1986:1) The M-curve of employment among Japanese women is actually of relatively recent historical emergence (Koike 1983a), and continues to undergo change— leading to a leveling of the central dip in employment. Karen Holden, analyzing statistical information from 1960 to 1975, writes that:

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Each new female cohort, when compared with earlier cohorts, is (1) more likely to take up paid work, although beginning at a slightly later age, (2) less likely to stop working during the early years of marriage and parenthood, (3) more likely to return to the labor force in the middle years, and (4) more likely to delay retirement. (1983:41) Such trends shifting all segments of the M-curve upward (except that for the 15 to 19 age group) have continued. Between 1975 and 1990 the low point in the employment curve moved from the 25–9 to the 30–4 age bracket and rose from 42.6 percent to 51.7 percent of all women (JIWE 1991:4–6). Between 1972 and 1984 the number of women stating their preference for continuous employment careers almost doubled, while those expressing the desire to leave their jobs upon marriage or the birth of their first child declined (Lebra 1992a:373). However, over half of the women in this survey also stated a preference for the two-stage work career reflected in the M-curve (ibid.: 371). Another survey, of women in their early twenties who entered the workforce in 1987, reported that 25 percent expressed a desire to continue working without break, 42.5 percent thought that the ideal pattern would be to quit their jobs upon marriage or first childbirth and later to become re-employed, and 29.7 percent responded that leaving employment without later re-entry after marriage or first childbirth would be ideal (TSBK 1989:47; see also Lo 1990:118–20; Shinotsuka 1994:100–1). The M-curve of employment may thus be seen to reflect widespread personal preferences—as well as cultural and social ideologies related to the family-centered female gender roles of being wife and mother (see, for example, Brinton 1993; Roberts 1994).2 In addition, the correlation of age, marital status and employment status is structured by the fact that, as Sano points out, “vacancies for regular workers are mostly for [those] below 25 years of age, and although there are vacancies up through to 30 years old, the percentage drastically decreases past this age” (1983:444). New graduates are most likely to be hired as regular employees. The first peak of the M-curve indexes the full-time employment of younger, single women. When women return to the work-force in their later thirties to early forties, composing the second peak of the curve, they often (must) do so as part-time employees (Brinton 1992:93, 100–1). These women do not return to their former workplaces nor, generally, to their former occupations. Thus Shirahase notes that “mobility between full-time and part-time work is likely to accompany occupational change, which often involves crossing the line from white-collar to blue-collar jobs” (1995:267). Furthermore, older Japanese women work more in smaller than in larger companies. Brinton notes that this “suggests a life cycle interpretation whereby women employees leave the large firms they initially entered, either dropping out of the labor force or shifting to smaller firms” (1989:552). She explains:

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that young men and women employees (ages 20–24), who have generally just left school and entered the labor market, have very similar rates of entrance to work organizations of different sizes. In fact, female employees are slightly underrepresented in the smallest firms and over-represented in the largest ones. But men’s and women’s representation in firms of different sizes changes dramatically in the older age-groups. By age 45–49, women’s participation rate in small firms is one and a half times that of men. Men’s participation rate in small firms remains extremely stable across age-groups. (ibid.: 551) Women thus constitute a significant proportion of the workforce in mediumsmall enterprises in Japan, and the smaller the firm size the higher the percentage of women employed. Almost half (49.4 percent in 1979) of all employed women work in firms with nine or fewer people (Chalmers 1989:55–6). Chalmers notes that: By sector, women workers comprise 40.1 per cent of the workforce in small and medium enterprises compared with 30.2 per cent in large enterprises…. Women workers make up almost 46 per cent of all persons with a job in firms that engage 1–9 persons; 33.5 per cent in firms with 100–299; and from 26.6 per cent to 29.6 per cent in large firms with 300 or more engaged. (ibid.: 55) Throughout the post-war period, women have comprised between 20 and 30 percent of workers in blue-collar occupations (Brinton 1993; Saso 1990). This is nearly double the rate in most Western countries. Brinton notes that “the unusual concentration of Japanese women in manufacturing is especially apparent when we consider part-time workers,” nearly half of whom were employed in manufacturing in the 1980s (1993:8). And, as we have seen, most part-timers are older, married women rejoining the workforce. The two peaks of the M-curve of women’s employment are, Lebra notes, “totally discontinuous” (1992a:366), though this pattern of employment may be seen to be connected to and constructed by the peripheralized nature of female labor force participation as a whole (see also Brinton 1993; Chalmers 1989; Carney and O’Kelly 1990; Kawashima 1995). Lebra, in fact, refers to a “gendered duality in work status” which is: indicated by women’s concentration in small-scale enterprises; the parttime status of middle-aged women; the short-term employment pattern in contrast to that of men in the same age range, who benefit from the seniority rule; gender-segregated job categories; inaccessibility of managerial positions; the insignificant, auxiliary nature of the tasks assigned to women; and so on. This qualitative inferiority of women’s status is manifested in a quantitative discrepancy in wages. (1992a:368)

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When I first entered Shintani Metals, twenty women were employed at the factory. Seven were regular employees and thirteen women were part-timers. Three women—two regular and one part-time employee—working for Kinsei Fine Metals entered the factory when that company moved operations in December of 1989. Two other women joined Shintani Metals during the year in replacement of women who had quit and one as part of the expansion of the Delivery section. In Table 6.1, I list information about those women working at the Shintani Metals and Kinsei Fine Metals Companies for whom I have data (but note that a plus [+] or less than [<] symbol represents my best guess). I have not included here four women who were part-time employees and who quit during my fieldwork at the company. I would estimate that these four women, like most of the other part-timers, were in their forties and married. The third female employee of Kinsei Fine Metals not noted here I would likewise guess to have been in her later forties or early fifties, and I am quite certain that she was married. There are several things of interest revealed in Table 6.1. Here, let me just point out the generally close correlation between marital experience and employment status, and, somewhat looser, that between age and employment status. I want to turn now to a more detailed discussion of the women working at Shintani Metals, looking at how they came to be working there during the Table 6.1 Regular and part-time female employees at the Shintani Metals Company (1989–90)

Note: *=quit company 1989–90; M=Married; S=Single; D=Divorced; R=Regular employee; PT=Parttime employee; JH=Junior High School; H=High School; V=Vocational School (senmon-gakko); JC= Junior College; U°=University drop out; U=University graduate

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time of my fieldwork. With what backgrounds, through what paths and with what objectives did they come to the factory? As with the discussion of the men in Chapter 5, I will describe the family, educational and previous employment backgrounds and experiences of the women. Here again we see the women acting as agents creating and negotiating the construction of selfidentities and lives within broader economic and socio-cultural contexts. FACTORY GIRLS AND OFFICE LADIES During my fieldwork, ten women were employed on a full-time basis at the factory. Two of these worked for Kinsei Fine Metals. Of the Shintani Metals women, Midori was hired to replace Ms Kara when the latter quit prior to her marriage. Thus, for most of the period that I was at the factory, there were nine full-time female workers at any given time. Three women (one for Kinsei Fine Metals, two for Shintani Metals) worked in the office, the others working in various of the shoprooms. Although, as we have just seen, the general pattern in Japan is for women to marry and temporarily leave the workforce some time during their mid-twenties, not all of the regular women employees at the Shintani Metals factory quite fit this pattern—two being in their thirties, two others aged twenty-seven, and another woman aged twenty-eight at the time of my field-work. In larger companies such “older” women, approaching or having overtaken the thirtyyear mark, would already have reached the stage of being potentially “unsaleable” “Christmas Cakes” in the marriage market (Brinton 1992) and would be facing employment career (and marital prospect) dead-ends (Lo 1990), possibly even risking katatataki taps on the shoulder suggesting that it was time that they leave the company to make room for younger, more nubile women (McLendon 1983). The hiring and continued employment of these women at Shintani Metals I take to be one expression of the flexibility of experience associated with smaller enterprises. The women working full-time at the Shintani Metals factory came from a variety of backgrounds. Three women were of rural (or provincial) origin. Two of these women’s fathers farmed, one man combining this with occasional daylabor jobs. The father of the third woman, from the city of Hirosaki in northern Japan, worked for a financial institute specializing in medium-small businesses (having retired and moved to Tokyo, he now works as a building superintendent). The occupations of the fathers of the women from urban families included tailor, self-employed businessman and worker at a plastics processing plant (this man had been a photographer prior to this). Four of the Shintani Metals’ women’s mothers worked part time, the others apparently not working. Except for two fathers, one of whom was reported to have graduated from a regular university (the man who was a photographer etc.) and the other from a night-school university (the self-employed businessman), the parents of these women had graduated either from junior or senior high schools. Of siblings,

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two graduated only from high school, one from an art junior college, one brother had gone to a music college and one woman’s brother had dropped out of a private university in order to help with his father’s farming. While perhaps not from poor families, none of these women can be described as from well-to-do upper middle class, and certainly not from upper class families. The regular women employees at Shintani Metals, including both those hired as new graduates and those with work experience, together constitute the most highly educated group of people at the factory. Three were graduates of post-secondary vocational training schools (senmon-gakko-),3 one had graduated from a two-year junior college, two had graduated from four-year art colleges, and one woman had entered but subsequently dropped out from a four-year university course. In Japan as a whole, the educational levels of newly graduated female employees in 1990, the most highly educated cohort up to that time, consisted of 14.9 percent with university degrees, 28.5 percent with junior college educations, and 53.7 percent with high school educations (JIWE 1991:13). The Shintani Metals female regular employees are thus more highly educated than one might statistically expect. These women’s educational careers reflect a combination of factors and influences. First are practical considerations which, for example, influenced Ms Hara’s decision to enter a vocational training school in order to become a certified typist. Next, one may note the roles of parents as “stakeholders” (Brinton 1992) who may act to facilitate or to frustrate the academic or other pursuits of their daughters.4 Japanese parents generally have lower aspirations and are less willing to make financial investments in daughters’ educations (Brinton 1988, 1993; Fujimura-Fanselow and Kameda 1994). Two of the Shintani Metals women talked of having had to overcome the resistance of their parents in order to pursue their educations in a vocational training school and a four-year art college, respectively. However, not all of the Shintani women encountered parental resistance to their post-secondary educations. In fact, several women spoke of having attended junior college or university at their parents’ insistence. Ms Fujikawa, for example, spent one year as a ro-nin student going to a yobikopreparatory school before entering junior college, where she studied nutrition. Ms Fujikawa is her parents’ only child, and, it might be noted, her father had himself graduated from university. As Brinton notes, “Daughters who are only children or who have no male siblings get more encouragement than others” (1993:217). The educational careers of several other of the women also reflect personal preferences and goals in one way or another. Ms Shimada, for example, moved from her rural agricultural family in northern Iwate Prefecture to pursue postsecondary training in Tokyo. Entering a vocational training school was, she said, an excuse or pretext she gave her parents to be allowed to come to Tokyo— where she actually hoped to pursue her interest in becoming a voice-over radio

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actress (seiyu-). Ms Imai, about whom I will have more to say in Chapter 10, went to an art university against the financially based opposition of her parents, spending one year as a ro-nin student after having failed to get into the English Literature department she had first applied for. And, in a somewhat contradictory example, Ms Haneda dropped out of her four-year university course in nursing education because of her dislike of the subject. Of the seven full-time women employees with whom I was able to talk about such matters, three had entered the company directly upon graduating from school and four had various amounts of prior work experience. Two common themes appear in these women’s stories of how they came to work at the Shintani Metals factory. The first of these themes emphasizes convenience and a certain casualness or nonchalance regarding employment and jobs. Several women related choosing Shintani Metals as a place of employment on the basis of commuting distance. For example, in addition to mentioning that the Company President’s youngest daughter had been a classmate at the post-secondary vocational training school she had attended, Ms Hara also explained that: First of all, commuting is convenient. And, other places [start] from eight and this company is from nine, right? So, it was just [a matter of] that [starting] time. First of all, I decided based on that at the very beginning. Ms Terauchi, an art university graduate who had chosen to study art because it was something that she enjoyed, related her decision to enter the Design section of Shintani Metals in part to her interests in art. She also said, however, that she thought that any kind of work would be all right and that she had thought that she would try Shintani Metals for a week or so. Then, if the job was satisfactory, she thought that she would stay on for a while, and if not that she could quit the company: I went to the interview, and they said to please come—it was only that. I hardly went to any other places…. The time and days off and basic wages and so forth were written out. It was just that sort of thing. Thinking of my lifestyle level… The comments of these women, like those of some of the blue-collar women Glenda Roberts (1986:32–3) discusses, reveal a certain casualness towards job and work context in seeking employment. This should not be construed to mean that the women did not subsequently take their work seriously. Rodney Clark wrote of the women employed in the large company he studied that: “Though women worked hard…they did not take much interest in their work, or in the progress of the company over the longer term” (1979:194). I would suggest that, as is true for men as well, one needs to distinguish between “work” and a particular “job,” and that while people in Japan take their work very seriously,

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they take their jobs (especially if in smaller companies) somewhat, or for women rather, less so (see Mouer 1995:59; Sugimoto 1997:87). However, Roberts’s (1994, 1996), fieldwork also suggests that there are indeed women (as surely there are men) who take both their work and their jobs very seriously indeed. The second common theme which may be found in many of the full-time women employees’ comments about their having entered Shintani Metals relates their employment to study- or skill-related interests. Ms Terauchi, Ms Shimada, Ms Fujikawa and Ms Imai all applied to Shintani Metals at least partly on the basis of interests in jewelry design or production. Ms Shimada, who had previously worked at two different jobs for one year (total) as a temporary employee (arubaita-), entered Shintani Metals thinking that if she learned a manual skill she could work and earn wages even after marrying. She had wanted to learn how to make jewelry and thought that a place doing that must be clean. Like several other women, she found after joining that the factory did not match her image and that she was assigned to do accounts and so forth, not the manufacturing work she had hoped to learn. Although graduating from junior college where she studied nutrition, Ms Fujikawa started to work at a perfume manufacturer. After five years, she quit because she wanted to study tailoring and pattern-making. Ms Fujikawa entered Kinsei Fine Metals since she had learned metal engraving during the time that she had worked at her previous job and she thought that “perhaps I’ll be able to see the real things, good stones.” At thirty-two, Ms Fujikawa was the second oldest of the single women working as a regular employee at the factory, and she was the only one to do primarily production work. As with Ms Terauchi and others, we find a combination of considerations in the comments of Ms Imai, one of the four full-time women employees with previous work experience. Ms Imai was a confident, straightforward, and somewhat “off-the-wall” woman in her later twenties. Following graduation from an art college, she worked for about ten months at a small business engaged in jewelry wholesaling which employed only four or five people. When she was asked to leave that company because they were not making money and decided to have freelancers do the design work she had been doing, she chose to work at Shintani Metals—in part because of the positive impression she received from Mr Matsukawa at her interview, and because, she said, Of course, they were advertising for jewelry design, and then I entered for that kind of work. But otherwise [I thought that] anything would be fine. My wages were better at the other place but even if your wages are good, if the work isn’t interesting it’s a problem. Karen Holden (1983:43) notes that even by 1975 nearly 70 percent of all female employees were in white-collar jobs, and certainly it is the OL “Office Lady” who dominates popular images of young women employees in Japan. However, as the examples of several of the women above indicate, this does not mean

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that all women want to do clerical or other white-collar jobs (see also Lo 1990; Painter 1991). Women often, however, end up doing work which the men around them consider to be women’s work and are denied opportunities to pursue the other work (in the Shintani Metals case, Crafts production) which they are actually more interested in. As Painter remarks: “even after women have proven their ability as talented and diligent employees, they will still remain ‘only women’ (tada na onna) for many men in Japan” (1991:103). Clerical work need not mean office work, as is seen in the examples of Ms Terauchi and Ms Shimada, who did paperwork in one of the Crafts sections of the company. Some women, such as Ms Fujikawa, are assigned more skilled production work. And, of course, there are many women (many of whom are part-time employees) in industries and companies of all kinds and sizes in Japan who are directly engaged in manufacturing (and are denied the converse opportunity to become white-collar employees). None of these women expressed a concern over company size or prestige. This contrasts with Glenda Roberts’s informants at Azumi, for whom “Company size, in particular, was important, since it meant there was little likelihood that the company would go bankrupt in the foreseeable future, and bonuses would be higher than at small or medium sized firms” (1994:34). One might also note that, even for people having post-secondary education such as do these Shintani Metals women, making the decision not to seek employment at a large company makes subsequent entry to such a firm difficult if not impossible—an aspect of the “irreversibility” of lifecourse transitions that Brinton describes (1988, 1992). The decisions of the Shintani Metals women to enter a smaller manufacturing enterprise upon graduation (whether initially to Shintani Metals or not), are also interpretable as displaying a certain lack of concern regarding marital prospects and prestige. This is contrary to the currently popular notion that young Japanese women are demanding that men meet a san-ko (“three highs”) requirement of being tall, coming from a highly ranked university and having a high income. This also differs from what McLendon (1983) describes for OLs in large firms. He suggests that choice of company is primarily predicated upon prospects in the women’s search for marriage partners. Although Ms Kara did marry Kawanabe, one of the young men at Shintani Metals (and we have seen in Chapter 5 that several men met their wives at the company), neither she nor any of the other young women talked of working at the factory in terms of the company’s (lack of) suitability for finding a husband. WORKING MOTHERS AND WIVES When I entered Shintani Metals, thirteen of the fifty-five employees (23.6 percent) were part-time women workers. As Kawashima points out,

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Part-timer is an ambiguous term. Official statistics use different definitions: those who work less than thirty-five hours a week; employed workers whose number of work hours or workdays is less than the firm’s regulations stipulate; or those who are employed as “part-timers” regardless of the number of hours of work. (1995:291; see also Carney and O’Kelly 1990:130; Shirahase 1995:258–9) Depending on the definition used, then, many women actually working as part-timers may not be included in surveys since they work more than thirtyfive hours per week (Roberts 1986:210). However defined, though, close to 30 percent of all women employees work as part-timers (Shirahase 1995). Part-time employment accounted for 42.6 percent of the net increase in female paid labor between 1979 and 1986 (Carney and O’Kelly 1990:133), and the rate of increase for female part-timers continues to be greater than that for regular female employees (JIWE 1991:9, 12; see also Saso 1990:147–9). Manufacturing firms began to recruit female part-time workers during the labor shortage of the 1960s, and close to one-third of female part-timers now work in the manufacturing sector of the economy (Shirahase 1995:263–4). Some 62 percent of these women are employed by firms with fewer than 100 employees (Eccleston 1989:191). Over half of all women working part-time do so in firms with fewer than thirty employees (Carney and O’Kelly 1990:133). Companies hire part-time workers for three primary, related reasons: because of difficulties in recruiting full-time employees (Brinton 1993:137); to reduce labor costs (Roberts 1986:223); and to obtain a flexible workforce which may be hired or fired depending on “fluctuations in work pace and in demand for the product or service” (Kondo 1990:275), something especially important for smaller subcontracting enterprises. Part-time women employees in Japan earn 30 to 40 percent less than do full-time women employees (Roberts 1986:212; Shinotsuka 1994:110; Shirahase 1995:267–8), who in turn receive some 40 to 50 percent less in wages than do men (Brinton 1993:8; Kawashima 1995:278). One reason for this is that the hourly wages paid to part-timers increase very little with seniority (Shirahase 1995:268). Bonus payments received by part-timers are only around 15 percent of those received by women regular employees (Roberts 1986:212; Shinotsuka 1994:110; see also Ito 1983:125). Very few part-time employees receive the same kinds or amounts of benefits and allowances given to fulltime employees (including insurance and pension plans, and merit, managerial, commuting, family or housing allowances; see Shirahase 1995; Carney and O’Kelly 1990:134). One may note, finally, that unions generally (Kawashima 1995:280; Roberts 1994:121), though not always (see C.Turner 1995), exclude part-time workers; and though perhaps not as often as unions (Chalmers 1989:210), so do workers’ organizations such as the Shintani Metals Shinwakai,

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which only began to discuss the inclusion of part-timers as full members in 1990 (see Chapter 4). Given what would seem to be overwhelming reasons not to become a parttime employee, one might wonder just why the women at Shintani Metals made such a choice. I was able to interview eight of the thirteen women working part-time about their backgrounds and their reasons for choosing part-time work at Shintani Metals. The discussion that follows is based primarily on those interviews. The natal family backgrounds of these women can for the most part be considered working class in nature. Most of the women’s fathers and mothers were reported to have graduated from either pre-war elementary schools (jinjo--sho-gakko-) or from junior high schools, though several of the older women were uncertain about their parents’ educations. Occupations of fathers included: cabinet-maker (sashimono-ya), painter (toso-), sake shop owner, SelfDefense Forces soldier, electrical company employee and textile firm employee (this man was the only one reported to have attained a titled rank). Two fathers were farmers, one of these combining agriculture with logging work. Two of the part-timers’ mothers died when the Shintani Metals women were still very young. Four other mothers were said to have been otherwise unemployed housewives, and one woman’s mother helped in the family saké shop. Only one mother was reported to have worked outside the household, as a full-time employee doing food preparation work at a hospital. None of the Shintani Metals part-timers were only daughters. It will be recalled from the previous chapter that being in non-successor positions in the ie family structure none of these women would have otherwise structurally been expected to stay in their households and bring in adopted husbands (mukoyo-shi). Unlike the full-time women employees, none of the part-timers were graduates of junior colleges or universities. Three women did say that they had gone to vocational training schools, one in nursing, one to become a nursery school teacher and one in dressmaking. The latter woman, however, said that she had not gone to high school but instead only to the dress-making vocational school, where she learned both Western and Japanese sewing techniques (for more on vocational schools, see Van Pelt 1975). Another woman said that she chose her high school on the basis of her liking for dressmaking. Two women were graduates of regular high schools. Two women in their fifties, whose fathers were a farmer and a painter, and who had four and five other siblings, respectively, graduated only from junior high schools. These latter two women were explicit about family finances having influenced them not to pursue their educations further. The three women with vocational school educations each worked using their training before their marriages. One of these, Mrs Matsuda, continued working part time as a nursery school teacher for some time after having her own children. Among the other women, one had worked in an office for some

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six years in her native city of Kagoshima, while another had worked for three years at a large electrical products manufacturer. Mrs Tanabe, in her early fifties, described having come to Tokyo from Ibaragi Prefecture at the age of nineteen to work as a stationery store clerk. Like some of the men, she was from a relatively large farming family—and also like them, she came to Tokyo in part because she was attracted to the big city. All of the women working as part-timers during my fieldwork had been or were married. Of the Japanese female labor force as a whole in 1990 (including both regular and part-time employees), 32.7 percent were single, 58.2 percent were married and 9.1 percent were widowed or divorced (JIWE 1991:13; see also Carney and O’Kelly 1990:128; Kawashima 1995:277–8). The divorce rate in Japan has been slowly increasing over the past several decades, but still remains low by American standards (Brinton 1992:97; see also Lebra 1984). Two of the Shintani Metals part-timers were divorcees (10 percent of all female employees). One was a younger woman in her late twenties or early thirties. The other divorcee, Mrs Hayashi, was originally from Aomori in northern Japan and had come to Tokyo to live with her two sons, already there, five and a half years prior to entering Shintani Metals. None of the women interviewed had met their husbands in the more institutionally structured context of schools or companies. Several had been introduced by friends; Mrs Tanabe met her husband in the neighborhood where she worked as a stationery store clerk; Mrs Takeuchi first met her husband at a social dance party; and, two women spoke of their marriages as having been omiai (marriages which are the outcome of more formally arranged introductions; for more on marriage in Japan see Edwards 1989; Hendry 1981; Lebra 1984). Six of the Shintani Metals part-timers reported that their husbands were involved in one type of entrepreneurial venture or another. These businesses included: tailoring (two men), construction (one man), printing (two men) and packaging materials (one man). Another of the husbands worked in a construction company operated by friends of his. The number of women whose husbands were engaged in some sort of small business was very high. This seems to contradict Brinton’s finding that “Women whose husbands are selfemployed are…less likely to work part time than to be housewives” (1993:179). However, as wives of working class men, these women’s employment must be considered in light of the lifecourse contexts of their families and the broader context of coming from and continuing to live in a class cultural context that makes working appropriate if not necessary, and that makes working in a small factory acceptable. All of these women appear to have followed the M-curve pattern of taking several years off from employment either upon marriage or after having children. Such statistical conformity should not be taken to mean that there are no experiential differences or distinctions to be found among Japanese women. The Shintani Metals part-timers are not members of the “new middle class” (E.Vogel 1971) who become and remain “professional housewives”

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(Hendry 1993; S.Vogel 1978) and who instead of working can find fulfillment (or diversion) in “culture classes,” volunteer activities and so forth (Imamura 1987; Iwao 1993; compare with Roberts 1994). As Imamura notes: A housewife whose husband is highly educated and employed in non-manual work is more likely to concentrate full time on home and family. If the husband is less educated and does manual work, he is more likely to expect the wife to engage in work of some kind. (1987:42) Work experiences among the part-timers at Shintani Metals are similar to those of the women in Dorinne Kondo’s study of a small confectioneries manufacturer. Kondo writes that among her informants, The narrative conventions shaping their work histories seem contingent and non-cumulative, a series of episodes that focus less on the joys of work itself than on the general value placed on adding a bit to the family income and doing something other than sitting at home. (1990:260) Although focusing on full-time blue-collar women committed to or struggling for continuous (if not necessarily cumulative) employment, Roberts (1994, 1996) also notes financial and psychological incentives for the women to work. Like the women at Kondo’s Sato factory, the post-marital employment histories of the Shintani Metals part-timers tend to be “fragmentary” and “contingent.” One woman had previously worked as a door-to-door insurance salesperson before leaving when she could no longer get along with a new supervisor; another had worked part-time at children’s nurseries, then for ten years at an electronics manufacturer, which she left when it seemed about to relocate; and a third woman had previously worked at a telephone parts producer, quitting after seven years when she did not receive a raise in wages to which she felt entitled. Mrs Sugimoto, meanwhile, spoke of her alternating entry to and exit from outside paid labor depending on the need for her help in her husband’s tailoring work. Even while employed at Shintani Metals she spent more or less time helping her husband, depending on the season. Brinton has noted that the second peak of the M-curve “is not indicative of either the resumption or commencement of a career, but represents instead the supplemental character of work to a woman’s primary set of obligations: her family” (1992:93). Shirahase similarly notes that women “tend to choose parttime work because it is often close to home and it is easy to arrange work to accommodate family life. In fact, geographical proximity between home and place of work is the most important criteria in choosing part-time work” (1995:271). Most of the women working as part-timers at the Shintani Metals Company also spoke of the proximity of the factory to their residences as of

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major importance in their choosing to apply for work. As Mrs Takeuchi said, “After all, when you’re a housewife [the company] being close is the best. You go shopping and return home and it’s still not even six o’clock.” Only two of the part-timers interviewed commuted by train to the company, although Mrs Hayashi’s total commuting time amounted to only fifteen minutes. Several of the part-timers lived close enough to allow them to go home for lunch, though others did stay at the factory or go to nearby restaurants to eat. In fact, half of all part-timers in Japan live within a fifteen-minute commute, and over 70 percent within a thirty-minute commute (Shirahase 1995:271). The importance of geographic proximity at Shintani Metals is also related to the fact that positions are advertised through newspaper inserts distributed only in certain surrounding neighbor-hoods. The influence of the family is also variously revealed in several other women’s employment histories. Employment at Shintani Metals was Mrs Umehara’s first experience working outside, though she had done dress-making work at home both before marrying and afterwards until her child was born. While her husband did not care either way about her working at the factory, she thought her son, then an elementary school student, would be kawaiso(sad, sorrowful, pitiable). She started to work only after first getting her son’s understanding and acceptance. Mrs Naito-, on the other hand, explained that for her work was not simply a matter of money since: When I’m not going outside, I get the feeling that I’m being left behind. That’s why I’m working. I have the feeling that I’m gradually becoming separated from the rest of the world…you see, I don’t have any children so I don’t have any of those various relationships (tsukiai) one gets through children, and so just spacing out (bo- to shiteru) at home… The importance of gender-based family roles in influencing the location and the part-time nature of work among the Shintani Metals part-timers was also revealed in replies to my questions about what the women did or did not like about working in a small company or about being employed as a part-timer. Many noted that part-timers can take time off more easily to attend school functions and do other things connected with their children, or to help with their husbands’ work if need be (as was occasionally the case for Mrs Sugimoto). A common comment was that in working at a smaller company or in being a part-timer one is freer (jiyu- ga kiku), which of course essentially means free to spend more time on other family-related responsibilities and obligations. CONCLUSION As was also the case among the men described in Chapter Five, we have seen in this chapter that in the educational and employment histories of the women

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working at Shintani Metals there exists a tension between a diversity of individual experiences and attitudes, and a similarity of structuring life-course and class-related contexts. Each of the women—whether full-time or parttime employee, Office Lady or factory worker, single or married, mother or other—has her own individual set of experiences and relation-ships of which employment at Shintani Metals is a part. Each woman’s presence at the factory is the current outcome of interrelated individual, life-course, gender- and classrelated factors and influences. The women working at Shintani Metals appear to have backgrounds and experiences similar in many ways to those of other blue-collar women, whether employed in larger (Lo 1990; Roberts 1994, 1996) or smaller (Kondo 1990) enterprises. Kondo notes of the women working at the small confectioneries factory where she did her fieldwork that: The class inflections are unmistakable…. The part-timers, and my coworkers generally…seemed resigned in many ways to their place in life as people who work with their hands, not with “paper and pencil.”… The discourse on gender identity is thus crosscut by class structure. Japanese women could be said to share an identity as women—those who are defined by and dedicate themselves to the uchi world. But economic and social differences mean that this defining devotion to uchi will be expressed in very different ways. Indeed, when one is delineating the various cleavages among women, class differences are replayed in a powerful, distilled form. (1990:284) Company size would also appear to differentiate blue-collar women, based on the wages and benefits received and on the relative degrees of commitment to their jobs, as is suggested by the contrast between the commitment among the women working at a larger firm described by Roberts (1994, 1996) and the “contingent” and “non-cumulative” work histories among the women at the small factory described by Kondo (1990) and at Shintani Metals. There is perhaps a differentiation of class fraction suggested here. The “fragmented,” “contingent,” and “non-cumulative” character of the work histories (experienced and narrated) of blue-collar women working in smaller companies may, however, be too easily overemphasized. On the one hand, this fragmentation is given cohesiveness by taking place within—by being a recognized part of—the working class context in Japan. It is easier and more socially acceptable to leave or to have been made to leave (and, from the companies’ side, to make leave) smaller companies. This is perhaps especially true for women, for whom gender-relative cultural notions of the primacy of domestic, familial responsibilities (see Edwards 1989; Lebra 1984) can both constrain their employment options and enable (legitimate) their own construction of fragmentary and non-cumulative work careers or contingent company or job commitment. However, as we have seen in Chapter 5, such

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movement and social perceptions may also (though to a lesser extent) be found among the men working in smaller companies. For both men and women, smaller companies are easier to leave or are more likely to require departure (see Chapter 7 for more on this). On the other hand, such “contingent,” “non-cumulative” work histories are given coherence by being produced in interrelationship with, within the context of, the on-going construction of lifecourse experience and relation-ships and of individual self-identity. Neither the dynamics of family-centered work and outside employment, nor those of private identities and public personas need be taken to suggest a contextual “fragmentation” or “multiplicity” of self (see Bachnik and Quinn 1994; Rosenberger 1992a, 1992b). To understand the presence at Shintani Metals of someone like Ms Imai, who went to art school and then worked at another small jewelry business before entering Shintani Metals to do jewelry design, it is not enough simply to invoke class context and note this individual instance of class reproduction, though these are important. Nor, despite the importance of context, is it enough to suggest that she is the bearer or builder ef multiple (contextual, fragmented) selves. We will return to this issue of self-identity again later.

7

Paths from Shintani

In the previous two chapters I described the paths taken to the Shintani Metals factory by the men and women working there. We have seen that many of these individuals had prior employment experiences of various sorts and lengths of time. Fifteen of the thirty-five men (42.8 percent) and ten of the fourteen women (71.4 percent) for whom I have information had worked elsewhere. For many of the men now in their forties and fifties, the Shintani Metals factory may well be their final place of employment. However, for other of the men—including some of the older men—and perhaps for most of the women, Shintani Metals will eventually become one, even if temporally the longest, of the places where they will have been employed during their working lives. While I was at the company, four men and four full-time and seven part-time women workers quit. By the time I returned for a brief visit in August of 1991, another three men who had been working there during my fieldwork had left Shintani Metals for greener valleys, and others have continued (or have been forced) to leave (see Chapter 3) since then as well. For people making their livings by working in smaller enterprises it is perhaps more appropriate to talk about lifetimes of employment than about lifetime employment. In this chapter I want to explore the discourses of dissatisfaction or of alternative attractions which people related to me in discussing their thoughts of leaving the firm or their final decisions actually to do so. Such discourses and actions need to be interpreted in interrelationship with the particular selfidentities, lifecourses and encompassing economic and cultural contexts which characterize the lives of the men and women working at the company. The working class context associated with smaller companies in Japan may once again be seen to constitute a conditioning context which both enables and constrains people in their decisions to leave the company. COMINGS AND GOINGS I pointed out in Chapter 1 that the so-called lifetime employment system has been one of the central foci of most discussions about work in Japan.1 I also 121

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argued that such discussions have been part of a class-biased concentration on large enterprise contexts in the scholarly discourse on work, workplaces and workers in Japan. The contradictions involved in the importance of the so-called lifetime employment system in such discussions are suggested by estimates such as those given by Robert Cole that only 32 percent of all employees and that only 20 percent of all those gainfully employed experience permanent employment (1979:61; see also Cheng 1991). Cole notes, furthermore, that: Permanent employment is presumed to be least applicable to the smallscale private sector, where working conditions are poor, product demand unstable, and capital funds often in short supply. In any given case whitecollar employees and management officials are more likely to be convinced of the guarantees of permanent employment than are regular blue-collar employees. Moreover…regular male employees are more likely to believe that they have some guarantee of employment security than do female and temporary employees. (1979:61) Although it is not clear just what Cole means by “small-scale,” recall that medium-small enterprises as a whole account for over 80 percent of all employment (SMEA 1991), and that nearly 70 percent of all Japanese employees work for firms with fewer than 100 workers, 50 percent for companies with 30 or fewer employees (MITI 1986:130; JIL 1986:20). As suggested by the above quote, there are two interrelated sets of factors that need to be considered when discussing employee mobility: firm size and occupational sector (for example, white-collar or blue-collar). In terms of firm size, Seiyama shows that for both white-collar and blue-collar workers, the smaller the company, the higher the level of intercompany mobility; and, the smaller the company, the less the intracompany mobility (1994:81ff). In his comparison of intra- and interfirm mobility rates in Detroit and Yokohama, Cole has likewise shown that in the Japanese case there is an inverse relationship between firm size and proportion of interfirm job changing (1979:80; see also Cheng 1995). Permanent employment may be an ideal to which many smaller enterprises, as well as larger firms, strive or at least profess commitment. However, as Cole notes, smaller firms “may be offering employment security as long as the company lasts, but workers may still choose to move on in search of better wages and working conditions” (1979:21; emphases added). Cole also points out that: There are market situations which do not allow traditional practices and ideology [such as that of long-term employment commitments] to operate. Such is the case in many small-scale firms where high rates of employee interfirm mobility are based on high bankruptcy rates, low wages, failure of

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wages to increase with seniority, unstable product demand and a shortage of capital funds. (ibid.) When we combine a consideration of (white- or blue-collar) occupation category with firm size in looking at worker mobility in Japan, we find that: The frequency of [mobility between firms] is greatest for blue-collar workers in small firms; then, in descending order, come white-collar workers in small firms, blue-collar workers in large firms, and white-collar workers in large firms…. Blue-collar workers in small firms move within their sector about four times as often as white-collar workers in large firms. (Seiyama 1994:89; see also Cheng 1995:200) Firm size and occupation are thus the two most important factors affecting interfirm mobility (Cheng 1991:167; see also Ishida 1993). Conversely, regardless of firm size, there is less intracompany mobility among blue-collar workers than among white-collar workers; though again, the smaller the firm, the less the internal mobility of blue-collar employees (Seiyama 1994:82–3). As Seiyama notes, the “Mobility of blue-collar workers occurs mainly between companies” (ibid.: 81; emphasis added). During the latter half of the 1980s, job turnover rates in Japan increased in all sectors of the economy and, in manufacturing, in firms of all sizes (EPA 1995:317–18). Beck and Beck (1994) were among many who focused on the rapid increase in the numbers of people changing jobs during this period, looking for changes in the permanency of employment in Japan. This was a time of prosperity, and of the labor shortage discussed in Chapter 3. Koike notes that The separation rate rises in a period of economic prosperity and falls during a recession. Because most job separations are the result of workers quitting of their own volition, they mainly occur when the economy is booming and workers find it easier to find new jobs. (1995:32) However, it is important to note that, in manufacturing at least, while job turnover rates among employees in large firms with 300 or more nearly doubled between 1987 and 1990, even at their peak they remained some four to five percentage points below job turnover rates among workers in firms with between 30 and 99 employees (EPA 1995:318). Figures provided by the Japanese Ministry of Labor indicate that the annual separation rate in 1990 among manufacturing firms with 500 or more employees was 14.64 percent; in firms with 100–499 employees, 17.28 percent; in firms with 30–99 workers, 19.56 percent; and in companies with between 5 and 29 employees, the separation rate was 23.64 percent (MOL 1990:359; see also EPA 1995:318; Koike 1995; SMEA 1991).

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Among firms with between 5 and 29 workers, the increase in the turnover rate during the boom years of the late 1980s and the decrease in the turnover rate after 1990 and the post-bubble recession were both on the order of only a few percentage points. Among the employees of larger firms the turnover rate, which doubled during the late 1980s, has since declined much more rapidly than has been the case among smaller firms (EPA 1995). The Economic Survey of Japan 1993–4 notes that: the recent recession has had a negative impact on both the job turnover rate and the number of companies interested in hiring mid-career employees. This backlash leads to the conclusion that the rise in the amount of job turnover that occurred in the late 1980s was largely due to labor shortages which emerged during the extended economic expansion rather than a structural change, and that any improvements in the fluidity of the labor market were only partial. (EPA 1995:317) Although many people in smaller firms like Shintani Metals took advantage of the economic opportunities of the late 1980s to change jobs, it appears as though things did change or have since changed less for the employees of smaller companies than for larger firms. While job turnover rates in Japan have declined from their heights in 1990–1 (EPA 1995:317–18), there continue to be men and women who voluntarily leave their companies, in addition to those workers forcibly released. And, of course, there are men and women who remain. GOING, GOING, GONE Whether or not they act accordingly, people in companies of all sizes, of course, contemplate leaving. Rohlen notes, for example, that most of the people at the bank where he conducted research had contemplated quitting at one time or another: “Most consider it seriously enough to speak to others about it. Few, however, actually quit” (1974a: 82; see Beck and Beck 1994 for a discussion of elite businessmen who did quit). During my interviews with the people working at the Shintani Metals factory, I asked if they had ever considered leaving and, if they had, why they had not in fact left. As mentioned above, during my year there several people—four men, four full-time women employees and seven part-time women workers—did not simply talk about quitting but actually did so. By the summer of 1991, three more men had left; and by 1996 several other men I had known had either quit or been fired (see Chapter 3). In the following discussion, I will describe the discourses of departure among people who only thought of leaving and among those who actually did leave the company. Only six of the fifty people I talked with during my fieldwork claimed not to have considered leaving Shintani Metals for employment elsewhere. Age

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and the concomitant difficulties and monetary consequences of attempting to change jobs must be considered to have played a role in the responses of all of these people: two women (both aged fifty-two), two men in their fifties and two men in their forties. Mrs Sugimoto, a part-timer, referred to the convenient closeness of the factory to her residence as another aspect of her not seriously thinking of quitting, while Mr Nishiyama said that he would just have to start working again anyway, so he had not really thought of leaving Shintani Metals. A number of men’s remarks suggest attitudes more of contingent tolerance than of dedication or commitment towards either their jobs or the company— attitudes also reflected in many of the stories of the men and women leading to their employment at Shintani Metals (see Chapters 5 and 6). They were working to make their livings: for people working in small companies and living working class lives, one company is often as good as (or no worse than) the next. The attitudes reflected in these remarks reveal a cultural pragmatism or realism that itself reflects the economic conditions which constitute an important dimension of the working class context (see also Mouer 1995:59; Sugimoto 1997:87). The majority of the people working at Shintani Metals, like people at Rohlen’s (1974a) Uedagin bank, had at one time or another considered leaving. Of the fifty employees interviewed at the factory, forty-four confessed to at one time or another having contemplated quitting their present jobs. While the majority of those men and women in fact stayed with the company, their willingness to discuss this subject may perhaps itself be taken to be an indication of a qualified or contingent “commitment” and “loyalty” felt towards their jobs at the company—the latter being qualities often used to describe the relationships of white-collar salarymen employed in larger firms with their companies (see for example, E.Vogel 1971; Beck and Beck 1994). In listening to the discussions of dissatisfaction or departure offered by the Shintani Metals employees for having thought of quitting and then deciding in fact either to stay or to leave, we once again hear discourses embedded in and reflecting the interrelationships among self-identity, lifecourse and the working class context of the lives of these men and women. I have categorized the explanations given by the Shintani Metals employees for (having contemplated) leaving the company into six groups. It must be remembered, however, that many of the reasons offered included dimensions of two (or perhaps more) of my categories. However, I think these categories retain enough integrity to justify being used for expositional purposes. These six types of explanations for (having considered) quitting are listed below. The number of people pointing to a given problem are noted in parentheses, and multiple responses per person account for the overall total surpassing the forty-four people responding. 1 Dissatisfaction with wages (21). 2 Dissatisfaction with other working conditions (8). 3 Dissatisfaction with personal relations at the company (12).

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4 Desire to pursue skill acquisition (2). 5 Desire to do new/different jobs (6). 6 Desire to pursue other personal interests (6). Rohlen also suggests six major causes for contemplating quitting among the people at the Uedagin bank where he conducted research (1974a: 83–4): 1 2 3 4 5 6

Dreams of a more interesting or more exciting life and work. Bad relations with one’s superiors. A general sense of unsuitability for banking work. Loneliness. A special opportunity for advancement elsewhere. Unsatisfactory social’relations.

There are a number of significant differences between the Shintani Metals case and that of Uedagin that may be briefly pointed out here. Of the six reasons for wanting to quit listed by Rohlen, three are not replicated in the Shintani Metals list. Unlike Rohlen’s bankers, loneliness was not noted by any of the Shintani Metals workers as leading them to long for leaving; and as we have seen in Chapter 5, in particular, it was a sense of unsuitability for other kinds of (white-collar) work that had led several of the men to manufacturing work to begin with. None of the working class people employed at Shintani Metals expressed having had dreams of more interesting lives or jobs, although several eventually did exchange their work clothes for suits. Mr Kamimura, explaining why he had not left Shintani Metals after having contemplated it, said: Well, in my case, after all, you know there is my educational history. My educational history is, after all, the problem (gakureki to iu no ga yappa nekku nan da yo ne). After all, there are hardly any places to work for junior high grads. That’s right. And with that, after all, wages are low and now wages are almost all [set by] high school grads. And so, if you’re not [a high school grad] nobody will hire you. Yea. Because there’s that problem, I just can’t quit. This kind of comment, like that by the workers noted above who realized that their ages would make re-employment problematic, reflects a pragmatic realism about individual conditions. What is most obvious in looking at these two lists is that dissatisfaction with wages is absent from Rohlen’s white-collar example. In fact, Rohlen writes that: Salary, we should note, is an insignificant factor. Moving elsewhere is never prompted primarily by the promise of a larger pay check. Nor is the chance for promotion and career advancement very significant, although a few cases do exist. (1974a: 84)

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At the Shintani Metals Company, dissatisfaction over wages was the reason offered most often for thinking of leaving, cited by twenty-one people (two women and nineteen men). The importance of dissatisfaction with wages, and the distinction between Shintani Metals and Uedagin on this point, must be understood to reflect the different class contexts represented by the respective companies. For most of the men and women working at the Shintani Metals factory, concerns or problems related to wages were cited as the major or the only cause for contemplating or for actually quitting. Some people referred to past occasions when money was an issue. Other people cited low wages as an ongoing problem. Mr Kamimura, though himself one of the longer employed men at the factory, having worked there for twenty years, provided an insight into the problem of low wages when he commented that: “…wages are extremely bad. That is to say, the wages of the men standing above us are low. Being low, even if we do our best the maximum [wage] doesn’t go up.” Other worries expressed about wages included the financially uncertain futures men fear that they may face. Two of the younger men in their thirties, Shinoyama and Tanimura, were among those citing this concern. When I asked Tanimura, who had joined the company thirteen years earlier upon graduating from Tokyo Industrial High School, if he thought that he would stay until retirement, he replied that after spending a few more years learning to do the work he thought that he would leave to work elsewhere. In fact, Tanimura left the next year. While being concerned about being able to support their families adequately was one reason cited for having considered leaving the company, at least one man, Mr Yamada, said that it was his wife who had discouraged him from actually quitting his job at the factory. Family consociates can thus play facilitating or constraining roles in considerations of the financial (dis)incentives for quitting. Three of the factors that Rohlen lists (numbers 2, 5 and 6) have also been influential in leading several of the men and women working at Shintani Metals to think about quitting or actually to leave. The second most frequently referred to set of reasons for considering quitting were those based on dissatisfaction with interpersonal relations at the company, cited by twelve of the men and women. Four women mentioned social relations or personal problems as having caused them to think about changing jobs. For example, Mrs Naito followed Mrs Kido by one month in quitting the same workgroup due to what she termed “differences of opinion” with her male supervisor. Mrs Naito said: “When I’m someplace for a long time, I guess my selfishness comes out (wagamama ga detchau). When the foreman’s way of doing things is bad, I just want to oppose it.” Talking more generally, however, she said that a major source of irritation for the part-time women is being constantly told, in often rough language, to do something different by their supervisors even when, with a bit more time, they could finish the tasks currently engaged in. Ms Fujikawa of Kinsei Fine

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Metals said that when she first entered that company Mr Honda’s way of handling people was too harsh, that he apparently did not at that time really know how to deal with women workers very well. The social relational problems mentioned by the men at the factory as reasons for having thought of quitting also include complaints about supervisors. Kawahara, who left Shintani Metals in March of 1990 after working there for six years, told me that he had quit in order to do some other kind of work and that he thought he should move while still young (he was twenty-four at the time). However, he was thought by many others at the factory to have had a particularly hard time getting along with the head of his section. Other kinds of social problems cited by the men further reveal the social complexity of even a small company such as Shintani Metals. Some of this complexity is contingent upon and consequent to the more personal, informal, unstructured organization of the company—itself related to the size of the enterprise. Inoue, a young man placed in charge of the Press section and so in a position above two older men (who, however, had been with the company for shorter periods than Inoue), talked of the difficulties of having to act as a communication channel between those working below and those in positions above himself. There were differing positions and opinions regarding company paternalism and familialism. Horiuchi, for example, talked about having thought deeply about whether or not to quit Shintani Metals because in the past he had received special personal consideration from the company. In particular, when his mother had been seriously ill some years before, he had been allowed to begin and end work at hours which allowed him to take care of her. Having received this special favor, he said that he felt that he should do on-gaeshi (returning a debt of obligation). Not having yet done so, he felt that quitting without having repaid his debt was somehow wrong. Despite this culturally inspired and socially focused personal confusion, Horiuchi did in fact leave Shintani Metals. Another man, talking of the human relations problems that had at times led him to consider quitting, explained: The company is extremely partial…. There was an extremely large amount of that sort of thing. We all thought that was selfish. The way of speaking was also bad. Really different from the way of dealing with everyone else. About that sort of thing, I have a lot of extremely unpleasant memories. Mr Shintani, implicated in this passage, was well aware of the feelings of others. In fact, one day towards the end of my second month at the company, he told me that other people resent that he is close to the Company President, talking with him freely, driving him to go fishing and so forth. In a prior conversation Mr Shintani had made similar remarks, and had said that having been at the company since the age of fifteen, the Company President has in many ways been like a real parent. As an employee but at the same time a relative of the

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Company President, Mr Shintani has long been in a contradictory position of kinship-based consideration, obligation, exploitation and accusation. When I later asked if he had ever thought of quitting the company, Mr Shintani replied: Well, after the company was [formally] established and when the number of people was around thirty or forty, I thought of it. When I was about twenty years old…. When I would join the younger people and they would talk with me, and say bad things about the company, they all thought that I would go and report that to the Company President. It was something like bullying (ijime)…. When I would try to enter those groups and talk, everyone would leave or stop talking and so on. I thought of quitting any number of times… It is in many ways the smallness of the company, the directness of the social and personal relationships involved, the informal structuring of the company organization which allows such situations to develop, such feelings to be felt, such experiences to become part of the lives being constructed by the men and women in interrelationship with each other and with or through the company context (see also Whittaker 1997). Problems with working conditions (broadly defined) were noted by eight people as leading to thoughts of quitting the company. Included here are responses that pointed to such practical considerations as long working hours. Ms Haneda, who left Shintani Metals in April of 1990, said: After moving [her residence while employed at the company], my commuting time became longer; and, I didn’t have the desire to work (shigoto ga yarigai ga nai), shall we say. Along with that, I was made to help with inspection, right? That was boring and tiring, and when we were busy I was made to do overtime every day until seven o’clock. That’s not too terrible, but if you work every day until seven you get worn out and you can’t do anything at all. You just return home and sleep. If you keep that up every day, it’s not good for you. And then, labor conditions aren’t particularly good either. There aren’t many days off, right? Although there may be some gender-related inflections in openly complaining about the physically tiring nature of the work (see Kondo 1990), Ms Haneda’s dissatisfaction with long hours, insufficient holidays and having to do work she would have preferred not to do were all commonly cited grievances among both women and men.2 A number of men said that they had thought about quitting when their work had not gone well. Mr Ikeda said that next to wages as a reason for thinking of quitting were the times when nobody would support or help him, when he could not seek the advice of others, including the Company President. Kawanabe likewise mentioned that he had in the past felt like quitting when the company’s ideas about his work conflicted with his own.

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Takayama, with whom I talked in 1995 after the economic bubble had burst, expressed frustration about being a jewelry craftsman when the managers, designers and others at the company did not understand (or, he implied, fully respect) the nature of the work that he was doing. He spoke of thinking of leaving the company, but also of feeling that it would be “a waste” (mottainai) not to use the skills that he had worked so long to acquire. And, like Mr Kamimura above, he also noted that having only a junior high school education would make finding a new job difficult regard-less of whether he did related work or not. The reasons given by six other people for (having considered) changing jobs reflect the desire or decision to pursue personal interests or obligations. The following motives were cited: religious involvement (one man and one woman); the desire to take extended vacations that might not be recognized by the company (two men); to get married (one woman); to return to the country and live with his wife’s parents (one man). I will discuss the men and women whose religious involvement or vacation plans were of great personal importance in greater detail in Chapter 10. However, let me point out that it is impossible to understand the actions of these people without considering the interplay between company or class context and some life-course-related notion of central, inner self-identity. Yamamura, who at age thirty-two had been with Shintani Metals for fourteen years, left the company in 1990 to move to his wife’s parents’ home in Tochigi Prefecture. His wife is an only child and so, Yamamura said, she would have to look after her parents in the future. It was thus better for he and his wife to return while he was still young and able to change jobs. Many of the representations of work in Japan have emphasized the personal and familial sacrifices concomitant with the supposed corporate commitment of men working for larger Japanese enterprises, especially in cases of company-directed transfers which demand that the men live separately from their families for extended periods of time (for two, not unequivocally negative examples, see Arai 1991; Hamada 1992). However, as Yamamura’s case illustrates, the small company context does not necessarily carry either similar economically or socially compelling reasons always to put company before family. Five other of the people working at Shintani Metals had thought of leaving in order to pursue other job opportunities—three men actually quitting to do so. Mr Higashi, who had worked on his own before joining the company, said that he sometimes thought of going independent again and that he was prepared to do so should there be enough work to justify it. In the meanwhile, working at the Shintani Metals factory was convenient (and, one might add, more or less stable). Two of the younger employees, Ms Shimada and Miyata, who both eventually quit, expressed dissatisfaction with their inability to acquire the skills in working with metals that they had been hoping to learn. When I asked Miyata if he had ever thought of leaving the company, he replied that he had, and explained:

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Right now I’m doing rings [in Special Products-A]. I’ll think of things to be able to make the rings more easily and quickly, but then even if I make various suggestions, even though they’re effective, somehow my suggestions just aren’t accepted. There are those sorts of things. When I asked if he thought that he would be allowed some time in the near future to do the kind of work using metal files that he wanted to learn, Miyata responded: I don’t know. My hopes haven’t completely died, so there’s still a little hope. Anyway, it’s a simple thing to quit this company…. If I say that I want to quit, then I can quit soon, just like that. I may not be allowed to move to the position I want to do, the skills I want to learn at Shintani Metals, but those still exist. I haven’t made it as far as expressing my opinion that I’d like to do this or do that, so I don’t know if that will be taken up, if they will cooperate with what I want to do…. My own efforts are still insufficient, there still remains some scope (yochi) for effort. When that space no longer exists, I’ll probably leave, but because there is that space, I’m still here. On a number of occasions throughout my year at the company, Mr Shintani had referred to Miyata as his right hand man and had promised to allow Miyata to expand his range of skills and responsibilities. During March of 1990, at one of Special Products-A’s meetings in the third-floor dining room, Mr Shintani had even acknowledged that Miyata must be bored with doing nothing but soldering after one and a half years. Mr Shintani said that he had hoped to have Miyata begin doing other things, but being so busy and short of hands, that was not fully possible at the time. Mr Shintani explained that having recently had Miyata do more of the ordering and so forth, was part of Miyata’s “study.” Projecting things further into the future, Mr Shintani said that it would be important for Miyata to be able to do many things in order eventually to fill his position. In January of 1991, less than a year after this meeting in which Miyata was portrayed as central to the workgroup, and less than seven months after my later interview with him, Miyata left the company. WHAT NEXT? Such were some of the discussions of dissatisfaction or departure among the men and women working at the Shintani Metals Company. As we have seen, several people did in fact choose to leave the company, for a variety of reasons, during my year at the factory and thereafter. What became of these men and women after their departure? For the most part, I cannot answer this question. However, I have been able to talk briefly with a few people about what they would be or had been doing after leaving, and will here briefly discuss the kinds of jobs they have settled upon.

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As is commonly the case, all of the men and women leaving Shintani Metals appear to have subsequently entered other small enterprises. These include a printing company, a graphic design and printing firm, a maker of parts for airline jets, a company engaged in the sale of various kinds of machinery, a firm doing fire equipment inspection and (for one of the parttimers) a supermarket. These jobs were secured primarily through personal connections and the use of government employment offices. While most of those that I talked to seemed either relatively satisfied or unconcerned with the changes in the kinds of work they were doing, others had some concerns and worries. Horiuchi, who initially changed from manufacturing to sales work, said that he was a bit worried about whether or not he was suited for sales, since he felt himself not to be a good talker, at ease with others. This change of jobs was especially interesting since he had previously expressed unhappiness with his job at Shintani Metals precisely because he was not being allowed to work with machines to the extent that he desired. He has, in fact, more recently returned to a machine operating position. Movement to new firms meant changing the kind of work done for most of the (former) Shintani Metals employees. When I talked with Yamamura before he left Tokyo to return to Tochigi Prefecture in 1990, he said that his next place of employment had not been firmly decided upon, but that there was some possibility he would enter a drug manufacturing plant being constructed in the area. When I asked about doing work unconnected with the skills that he had acquired during his fourteen years at Shintani Metals, Yamamura responded that it could not be helped, and said: “I thought that even just pushing buttons or anything else would be okay.” After some sixteen years at the company, Kuwata quit Shintani Metals and jewelry making work in November of 1996. For several years prior to this, while working on assignment (shutcho-) at one of Shintani Metals’ parent companies, he had also studied for and received a certificate qualifying him to inspect fire extinguishing equipment. He left Shintani Metals in order to enter a company (with only ten employees) doing such inspection. While his friend Takayama warned him about the risks of failure in leaving, Kuwata later spoke of the promotion opportunities that his new job would offer. If he passed higher levels of certification, he would also be qualified for raises in pay and status. Kuwata joked that it was funny that (now in his early thirties) he found himself studying hard about certain things that interested him (he had studied English before traveling to Europe some years earlier, and more recently had been studying for his inspection certification), while when he was a student in junior and senior (industrial) high school he had not been very interested in studying. While most former Shintani Metals employees have continued working as employees elsewhere, Mr Murakami, who left the company in 1992, has in characteristically idiosyncratic style become the Director of a small company which he, his wife and a friend have established to import natural olive

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oil-based soap from Syria. When I met Mr Murakami and his wife in 1996, they talked of their now yearly trips to Nepal to stay at a lodge operated by another friend of theirs, Mrs Murakami laughing and explaining to me about her husband having quit Shintani Metals in order to go on their first such trip. They also talked of their new business venture, which takes Mr Murakami to Syria once or twice yearly. Mr Murakami, who studied English Literature in college, is having to study English again, for the first time really in some thirty years. After having spent those years as what he once described to me as a “free-arubaita-,” Mr Murakami now finds himself with the title of “Director” of a company of which he and his wife are coowners—which position still allows him to avoid being tied down or bound by a position in a large corporate organization. ROOM TO MOVE To conclude this chapter, I would like to place into context and put into perspective the discourses of departure among the men and women who quit the company during the year of my fieldwork, including as well a few others who left during the subsequent year. In Table 7.1, I provide basic information about most of these individuals. Not included here are two or three women who entered the company, as full-time employee trainees, and then left within just a couple of months—not long enough for others at the factory to consider them members of the company, and apparently not long enough for them to feel committed to either their co-workers or to the firm. Table 7.1 Men and women leaving the Shintani Metals Company (October 1989 to August 1991)

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During the period from late 1989 to the end of 1990, the number of women leaving the factory was nearly three times that of the number of men (eleven women versus four men), although if one extends the period under view until the end of August of 1991, this ratio evens out somewhat. These ratios in and of themselves are not surprising—even if the sheer numbers involved are a bit shocking. This shock was felt by people at the factory as well. When Mrs Naito- quit the company in April of 1990 she, like all others who left, went around to the various workshops saying goodbye and thanking everyone for their help over the past several years. After she exited the second-floor Special Products workroom, Mr Shintani said, to no one in particular, “It seems as though everyone is quitting.” And, in a workgroup meeting held not long thereafter, Mr Shintani noted that everyone in the company had been requested to pay special attention to social relations (ningen-kankei). More interesting than the departure of the part-timers, however, is the fact that of the four full-time women employees who left the company, only one did so on account of marriage. That Ms Kara chose to quit the firm in anticipation of her wedding is, as was noted earlier, an individual but genderbased act of cultural reproduction. However, that two of the other women, Ms Terauchi and Ms Shimada, left the company in order to pursue personal goals other than marriage suggests that gender-based differences in lifecourse need also to be considered within broader class contexts. These women, along with others of the full-time women such as Ms Imai (who so far has chosen to continue working at the company), add complexity to the images of young female employees portrayed, for example, in McLendon’s (1983) discussion of “Office Ladies” employed in a large enterprise. Rohlen noted that at the Uedagin bank, “it is agreed that the majority of quittings do take place during the first four years and that quitting for men over thirty is almost unheard of” (1974a: 83). While among the men at Shintani Metals there is some support for or conformity to this notion that interfirm mobility becomes more difficult the older one is (see also Clark 1979; Dore 1973), the Shintani Metals case manifests more diversity of action and experience than discussions such as Rohlen’s suggest. Koike provides data showing that separation rates among men in manufacturing fall from around 35 percent for men aged twenty-four or younger to approximately 15 percent for men in their thirties or older, and that this latter rate remains more or less stable until the men retire some time after the age of fifty-five (1995:30–2). Until men in large firms reach the mandatory retirement age (generally of fifty-five), the separation rate for men in smaller enterprises is roughly ten percentage points higher than for men in large firms at all ages (ibid.; see also Cheng 1995:190). In Chapter 5 we saw that several of the men who entered Shintani Metals did so during their later thirties if not later forties. Among the seven men referred to in this chapter who quit the company (see Table 7.1), four were

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over thirty years of age, Mr Hamabe being forty-seven at the time he chose to leave. Personal age is not the only factor of significance here. A man’s family is also of importance, and it may be noted that among the men who left only Mr Hamabe had school age children. We have also seen that family considerations and connections acted as pull factors leading Yamamura to quit. For men and women working in smaller companies, concerns over sacrificing careers or salaries, although present, do not seem to have the same force that they do for white-collar employees of larger enterprises in particular. Rohlen writes of his white-collar informants that, in considering quitting, “The stakes of a man’s career, his dreams for the future, his sense of personal strength and justice, and the web of personal ties and obligations are all placed on the line” (1974a:82). Among the men working at Shintani Metals, the “stakes of a man’s career” influenced the departures of Horiuchi, Kawahara and Oda; “dreams for the future” led Miyata and Ms Shimada to leave in their searches to acquire certain skills and led Ms Terauchi to devote herself more fully to her religious commitments; and “the web of personal ties and obligations” influenced the departures of at least Horiuchi and Yamamura. Each of these decisions to leave Shintani Metals is of course an individual decision made in reference to particular sets of factors, including employment at a particular factory. Such individual actions and attitudes, and the related conceptualizations of self-identity and considerations of careers and families, must also be viewed as structured and constructed within a working class context. Rohlen notes that “The possibility of being judged unstable or irresolute, serious matters among Japanese businessmen, will follow the quitter” (1974a:86). Statements such as this are much less applicable to women and to employees (male or female) of smaller companies, and suggest differences in class culture that must be considered in dealing with the diversity not just of action or practice but also of self-identity and of judgment or perception among Japanese people. The willingness of people employed at the factory to contemplate quitting or actually to do so on the basis of considerations such as those noted above again reflects not only their relationships with the particular small enterprise involved, but also the general economic and employment contexts which they are or will be faced with in making their livings. And the willingness to think such thoughts or to actualize them may also be seen to reflect and manifest class-based social-cultural attitudes towards work and places of employment. We have seen that the majority of complaints about the Shintani Metals Company cited in discussions about quitting were related to wages, working conditions and social relations particular, though not necessarily peculiar, to that company. However, the actual departures of these men and women reflect not just individual dissatisfactions, desires and decisions, but are also contexted within and contribute to the generally greater interfirm mobility of workers in

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smaller firms cited at the beginning of this chapter. Furthermore, conditions in the broader context of the Japanese economy must also be considered in attempting to understand these individual decisions and actions. As noted in Chapter 3, Japan was experiencing a shortage of labor during the later 1980s and early 1990s which affected smaller manufacturing enterprises in particular. It became more practically possible to change jobs, even leaving manufacturing for other types of work, because of the demand for labor power. At the same time, working in smaller manufacturing firms became more socially or culturally stigmatized as a form of employment because of the denigration of “3K” (in English, “3D”: dangerous, dirty and draining) manufacturing jobs. After the bursting of the late 1980s economic bubble, Shintani Metals, like many other firms, has had to restructure its operations, a downsizing that resulted in the non-voluntary departure of several of the men. Other people, like Kuwata and Mr Murakami, left the company more freely, while others have stayed on or have themselves entered Shintani Metals from elsewhere. Work, careers, inter- or intra-firm mobility, and so forth, while significant aspects and indices of the lives of the blue-collar employees at Shintani Metals, do not constitute all that is of importance to them or about them—even, in fact, if we are trying to understand their work careers. In the next three chapters we will examine various dimensions of the nature and role of leisure in the lives of these working class men and women.

8

After-Hours Sponsored leisure events

INTRODUCTION Leisure in Japan has typically been considered to be as much work as play in either the sense that spending time together after work is almost always only another form of doing overtime (see Atsumi 1975, 1979, 1980, 1989), or in the sense that it is only people who get paid together that play together (see Nakane 1970; E.Vogel 1971; see also Allison 1994, 1995). In his seminal work on the nature of play, Johan Huizinga noted that the then dominant hypotheses all “have one thing in common: they all start from the assumption that play must serve something which is not play, that it must have some kind of biological purpose…. Most of them only deal incidentally with the question of what play is in itself and what it means for the player” (1950:2; emphasis in original). If one substitutes “work-related” for “biological,” the same may be said to be generally true for discussions of leisure in everyday Japanese society (except, of course, those dealing with community festivals; see Ben-Ari 1986; Bestor 1989; Nussbaum 1985; Robertson 1991). Reproducing similar statements by Chie Nakane, Ezra Vogel and others, Witold Rybczynski, for example, writes that: In Japan the line between work and leisure is often blurred, especially for salarymen—white-collar workers in large corporations. Eating and drinking after work are often done at company expense, and much free time in the evening is spent in the company of one’s workmates. (1991:159) Certainly, the relations between work and leisure are complicated and, as Calagione et al. contend, “the domains of work, leisure, and popular culture, of productive activity and everyday life, will always overlap, which is to say that there is no fixity to the character of the relations between them” (1992:5; see also Inoue 1995; Rojek 1995). However, common representations of Japanese (men) deny them true personal pleasure or meaning in leisure and play that is not somehow work- or company related—directly, or compensatorily such as in the passive “playing” of pachinko.1 Instead, Japanese people are assumed to display and engage in what Victor Turner more generally 137

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calls a sort of “play-and-work ludergy” (1982:43). Furthermore, by providing images primarily of “salarymen,” such portrayals of “leisure” reinforce the class-biased conceptualization of Japanese (male) employees as white-collar workers in large corporations. In the next three chapters I hope to provide a view of leisure in Japan in which it is seen to be more than transformed work, and in which “the Japanese” are not white-collar male employees of large corporate enterprises or government institutions. And I hope to show that leisure can become a significant site for the creation of self-identities for working class Japanese men and women. The diversity of associations and activities that are found among the Shintani Metals people also remind us that these are people, individuals, for whom working at Shintani Metals is a multiply constituted and contexted aspect of their lives as wholes and which does not compose the totality of their lives. There is not a complete or ubiquitous corporate structuring of After-Hours and Private Time. In their socializing activities, in their non-work leisure time, if we look at the employees of the Shintani Metals Company as more than simply “workers” (or managers) bounded by the corporate physical or ideological context but as men and women living and constructing class-contexted lives, then we may begin to understand them more fully as people. I will be employing a set of distinctions which it will be useful to define beforehand. There are two fundamental ways in which, two basic sets of persons with whom, people at Shintani Metals spend their non-working time: they may either spend time together with other people from the company; or they may choose not to do so. I refer to the former as “After-Hours” time (which does some injustice, perhaps, to David Plath’s [1964a] original discussion), and to the latter as “Private Time.” Three sub-categories of Private Time events may be distinguished: “Family Events” are those in which the Shintani Metals employee engages in leisure activities or outings with family members or kinspeople; “Friendship Events” are those in which the worker spends leisure time together with friends who are not (now) employed at Shintani Metals; and “Private Self Events” are those activities which the individual does by or for himself or herself. Chapter 10 will examine Private Time activities and relationships. In their “After-Hours” socializing with co-workers, the Shintani Metals employees and managers may be seen to be interacting within two general kinds of context or event. Sepp Linhart has noted that: “Many leisure activities of the Japanese employee are performed either under an official programme of his company…or unofficially as a member of the work group” (1975:207). The first of these kinds of context I call “Sponsored Events.” These refer to activities which are organized under the auspices of some sort of formal or semi-formal company-related group sponsorship. The second subcategory of “After-Hours” events I term “Nakama (co-worker friend) Events.” These are here understood to be leisure activities in which co-workers interact but which

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are informally organized by pairs or groups of workplace, not necessarily workgroup, friends. Nakama events will be discussed in Chapter 9. KINDS OF SPONSORED EVENTS During the fourteen months of my contact with Shintani Metals, there were four kinds of formal or semi-formal groups within the company which organized sponsored events: (1) the company itself; (2) workgroups; (3) the Shinwakai workers’ association; and (4) the Baseball Club. Before proceeding to a discussion of some of the more significant features or characteristics of the events sponsored by these various parties, I would like to provide brief descriptions of the kinds of events sponsored by each.2 Company sponsored events After-Hours sponsored leisure events were the only occasions on which all (or the majority) of the people at the factory were gathered by the company, there being no factory-wide morning ceremonies (cho-rei) or other such meetings. During the period from October 1989 to October 1990 there were four major company sponsored leisure events, at all of which I was present. December and January can be busy celebratory months in Japan, as people mark the end of one year with “Year’s End Parties” (Bo-nenkai; literally, “forgetting the year parties”) in December, and then mark the start of the next year with “New Year’s Parties” (Shinnenkai) in January. The first of the company sponsored events that I participated in was a New Year’s Party held in the factory dining room in early January of 1990, on the first day of work after the company’s six-day New Year’s holiday. The party was scheduled to begin at five-fifteen, after the end of the regulation working day. As with most other such events, opening remarks were made by the Factory Manager and the Company President (I will discuss these further below). The main events of the evening included singing to karaoke accompaniment, the dispensing of gifts (packages of sweets, coffee, soap, vitamin drinks and isotonic “sports” drinks) provided by the company, and of course eating, drinking and talking. The second company sponsored event was a “Long-Time Employment Party” (Einenkinzoku-Kai), held in late May in the dining room, after work, to provide acknowledgment and awards to twelve individuals—including one full-time and three part-time women employees—who had been with the company between five and twenty-five years. The party had been announced just a few days before by means of a handwritten sign posted in the dining room, the typical method for the company or for the Shinwakai to publicize messages. After the awards had been given out, the Company President spoke for a few minutes, and then the party entered its informal socializing phase. People began drinking, talking and laughing, some going from table to table to pour drinks for others.

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The next major sponsored event given by the company took place only a few weeks after the Long-Time Employment Party. This event was called a “Supper Party” (Yu-shoku-Kai) and was held at a large, fancy Chinese restaurant in the Harajuku district of western Tokyo. This location occasioned a bit of joking among the older men about venturing into an area so popular with the younger generation. The official purposes of the party were to dispense monetary rewards to those sections of the company which had surpassed their production-sales quotas during the preceding period and to thank, by way of the evening’s food and fun, the older employees, foremen and others in positions of significant responsibility. The evening also functioned, less formally but perhaps no less significantly, to provide Mr Matsukawa with a chance to make a public apology and correction to a wage policy promulgated in April that had not been at all well received among the employees (see Chapter 4 for a discussion). His explanation and apology were listened to with what I felt to be sanctioning silence. In late July of 1990 the last of the four major company sponsored events which I attended took place. This was the “Summer Breeze Party” (No-ryoTaikai—this implies a party to enjoy the cool and refreshing breeze of a late summer evening). The Summer Breeze Party was held in the factory dining hall. As with other parties, the Summer Breeze Party included brief remarks by the Factory Manager and Company President, and consisted primarily of singing karaoke, eating, drinking and talking. In addition to these events, there were two other events in which I was not able to participate but which deserve mention. The first of these was held on a Monday in early April of 1990, when a company holiday was taken in order for the Company President, the Factory Manager, Mr Matsukawa and six or seven of the older men to go to Yamanashi Prefecture and play golf. This special treatment was obviously one way for the Company President to express consideration for certain of his most favored long-employed men. The work holiday was not necessarily appreciated by everyone in the company, however— particularly those in need of the money that the day represented. The second event was a company sponsored Year’s-End Party held in December of 1990, in recognition also of the Company President’s seventy-second birthday. The President had thus completed six full twelve-year Chinese astrological cycles, certainly an event worth celebrating. Workgroup sponsored events Besides the company sponsored events described above, there were also a number of workgroup sponsored leisure events in which I was able to participate. Special Products-A sponsored only three such events during the fourteen months I was present at or in contact with the company. Special Products-B section also sponsored one event which I attended; to the best of my knowledge the only event hosted by that section. I believe these rates of sponsorship to be typical for the remaining seven sections of the company.

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The first of the Special Products-A parties took place in late January of 1989, on a Saturday evening after working an hour of overtime until six p.m. The participants included the four members of the Special Products-A group, myself and two employees from Kinsei Fine Metals who had been helping Special Products-A over the previous several weeks. We went first to a neighboring Korean restaurant and afterwards to a nearby Snack bar—one of Mr Shintani’s “regular” places, but to which he had not been in months. In addition to being the only occasion on which Mr Shintani, as workgroup foreman, paid for the expenses of such entertainment, the evening provided one of the first chances for Shintani Metals and Kinsei Fine Metals employees to socialize in a non-work environment. The Special Products-B Party was held at the end of August 1990, on a Friday evening before a two-day weekend. This was, formally, a Farewell Party held for me. From the beginning of the following month, I was no longer scheduled to be present at the factory on a daily basis as I had been for the previous eleven months, instead working only one day per week. The Special Products-B members used my “departure” as an “appropriate” opportunity to sponsor the party, to which were invited a number of people from other work sections as well as the Factory Manager and the Company President. The party was held at an izakaya restaurant near the factory, and was followed by a visit to a nearby Snack to sing and to continue talking and drinking. The third of the workgroup sponsored After-Hours events that I joined was sponsored by the Special Products-A section and was held after work on a Saturday evening in late September of 1990. Like the Special Products-B party, this was to be funded by the special “compensation” bonuses (ho-sho-kin) that Special Products-A had received for surpassing its production goals. The venue of the main party was an izakaya restaurant a few train stops away. With a total of sixteen participants, this was the largest of the three work-group sponsored events that took place during the year. Membership was eclectic, being a congregation of workers from various sections who had helped Special Products-A during the prior several very busy months, and including the Company President and the Factory Manager. The last of the workgroup sponsored events was a Year’s End Party cosponsored by the work sections occupying the second-floor shoproom—Special Products sections A, B and C, the Delivery section and Kinsei Fine Metals. Shinwakai sponsored events: day-tripping The workers’ association, the Shinwakai, sponsored two recreational AfterHours events during the year. One was a Bowling Meet held after work at a hall in the neighborhood of the factory. The major Shinwakai sponsored event was a day-trip to nearby Saitama Prefecture. I will describe the Shinwakai Trip only.

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The Shinwakai sponsors, or co-operates with the company in sponsoring, a company trip on an annual or biannual basis. The Saitama day-trip was thus not a “Company Trip” in the same sense as those described in numerous other discussions of Japanese companies (see for example, Han 1991; Kondo 1987, 1990; Rohlen 1974a, 1974b; C.Turner 1995). The trip was not a company sponsored event, organized and funded by the Shintani Metals Company as a part of its non-wage benefits or as part of its employeetraining program. Instead, all arrangements had been made by the Shinwakai, and participation by regular company employees, who are also thereby automatically dues-paying members of the workers’ association, was paid for out of the Shinwakai’s general funds. Participation by the parttime women employees required that they pay ¥3000 (about US $24) to cover expenses. The company provided only a nominal amount of financial assistance (to which we will return below). Arrangements had been made through a travel agency for a short river boat trip (Line-kudari), a “barbecue” lunch and a strawberry-picking excursion. The travel agency also provided a tour bus—with driver, female guide (not the stereotypical young woman but a woman well into her fifties or sixties with prognathic teeth and a short-haired wig that did not fit), and of course a laser-disc karaoke machine. This was not an overnight trip to the Hakone resort area, or one of the overseas sojourns increasingly popular in Japan even as company trips.3 It was, instead, a day-trip of the sort that the people working at the company, via their workers’ association, could afford to put together. The day chosen for the trip was one of the two regularly scheduled Saturday holidays in May. Going on a Saturday allowed participants to rest the next day before going back to work, and going on a regularly scheduled holiday obviously meant that the trip did not represent a loss of labor for the company. Although a few people chose not to or were unable to be present, the majority of employees of all ages, both men and women, regular and parttime workers, participated in the trip in 1990. This was apparently not the case with the company trip of 1991—a group of younger workers, for example, electing to go on a previously arranged ski trip, despite being told by the Factory Manager that they were to go on the Company-Shinwakai trip. The 1991 trip was co-sponsored by the Shinwakai and the company, and was apparently plagued with dissatisfaction among the employees from the beginning (as described in Chapter 4). Furthermore, when Horiuchi, as vice-president of the Shinwakai went to the Factory Manager with a request for an additional ¥40–50,000 to help defray transportation costs, he was told curtly, “That’s impossible.” To Horiuchi this seemed unreasonable since the sum would not have been great to the company, but for each of the employees the couple of thousand yen saved would have been significant and appreciated.

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Baseball Club sponsored events The Baseball Club was the only company-subsidized recreational group at Shintani Metals. Formed in the late 1950s, originally it was in part a way of attracting young junior high graduates from the country districts of Tochigi Prefecture to come and work at the company. In times past, the team had participated in tournaments organized by the larger contracting firms from which Shintani Metals receives its business. Displayed in the third-floor dining hall were certificates of commendation, awards and team photographs, team members dressed in uniforms bearing the company name—even in the most recent photograph, the faces of the players still with the company were a good ten years younger. The nature of the team has changed with the times. When I entered the company, the baseball team had become more of a club in that it was primarily a recreational group which very rarely competed against other teams (and then not in uniforms as before), and in which women, previously excluded, were also players. Participants in Baseball Club sponsored events varied somewhat with each occasion, but there was a “core” of fourteen members— including two people working at other establishments owned by the Company President. Another six people were present at one event or another. The Factory Manager acted as “General Manager,” delegating organizational responsibilities to other employees and orchestrating events on and off the field. From October of 1989 to December of 1990 the Baseball Club sponsored two baseball game and picnic outings, a New Year’s Party and a Farewell Party for Ms Hara, who was quitting the company to marry. Like most mediumsmall companies, Shintani Metals does not possess its own sports or recreational facilities. For both of the baseball games, a diamond was reserved at a littleused facility located in the small town in Saitama Prefecture where the remaining Kinsei Fine Metals factory is located. Although public transportation from Tokyo is available, participants traveled by car on both occasions, providing opportunities for those young men owning cars to drive, and for the other men and women to enjoy the ride. By the time that I returned to Japan in the summer of 1991, seven of the twenty participants in Baseball Club events had left the company—five core and two occasional Club “members.” Talking with Kuwata and Nagashima, both expressed skepticism that the Baseball Club would have enough remaining members to be able to sponsor a game during the coming year. Whatever the case, the skepticism is significant as a reflection of the social “After-Hours” ramifications of the departure of people from the firm.

INTERPRETATIONS Such, in brief, were the kinds of events sponsored by various of the (semi-) formal groups at the factory. Now I would like to turn to a consideration of

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four general (sets of) characteristics that mark these events, regardless of sponsorship. Lack of company facilities and financing Many of the earlier discussions of the recreation or leisure activities of Japanese company employees focused primarily on these as aspects of the “welfare corporatism” typical of large “community-like” enterprises which are able to offer their (full-time) employees a range of recreational facilities and opportunities (Dore 1973, 1987; Rohlen 1974a). Cole, for example, writes that: “A manifestation of company paternalism is control over the leisure time of bluecollar workers…. In Japan, a good deal of worker leisure time still revolves around the company” (1971:178). Rohlen, mean-while, has emphasized the importance of sponsored events in the creation of company identity and workgroup solidarity (1974a, 1974b, 1975). And from a somewhat different perspective, Allison also suggests that corporate entertainment functions to create masculine identities tied to work and company (1994, 1995). Han suggests that the community-like features of such company sponsored events are often more constructed than natural and “have been consciously encouraged to make the company seem more community like” (1991:80; emphases added). Shintani Metals itself owns no sports or lodging recreational facilities, though it is a member of a “resort trust” which allows employees to stay at certain lodgings for reduced prices. The company did also buy a new laser-disc karaoke machine for use at parties held in the third-floor dining room, but that is about it. The Baseball Club team has declined into an informal “club” (if not having subsequently perished). Furthermore, as we have seen, the sponsored leisure events at Shintani Metals are for the most part rather small scale, and often inhouse affairs. With the exception of the “Supper Party” held in an upscale Chinese restaurant, parties were held either in the factory’s dining room or at local izakaya restaurants (and, on a number of occasions, subsequently proceeding to small, local Snack bars). Even the Shinwakai’s day-trip must be viewed in the light of the grander versions and venues reported for other companies. The range of “programs” and facilities in smaller companies such as Shintani Metals is in general much more restricted than those of larger corporations such as Rohlen’s bank. An indication of this difference is given in Table 8.1, from a survey reproduced in the Japanese Ministry of Labor’s 1990 White Paper on Labor (MOL 1990:262). It may be suggested that as company size further decreases so will the percentages of companies providing recreational facilities or support. Such differences are multiply meaningful, even if it is true that for people working at both large and small enterprises participation in sponsored events also provides opportunities for pleasure otherwise less (or, un-) affordable. In a statement which I believe is even more apropos for employees of smaller enterprises than for the white-collar bankers to whom he refers, Rohlen points

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Table 8.1 Recreational facilities by firm size

Source: MOL 1990:262

out that for the individual employee, “the potential benefit of these programs is considerable when compared to the cost of enjoying such facilities and activities on an independent, individual basis” (1974a: 167; see also Han 1991:81). Kondo, however, has recently argued that “It is important to underscore the ambivalence involved” (1990:187) in manifestations such as company trips of the “discourse” of corporate paternalistic benevolence. This is certainly an important reminder and, I would argue, one in many ways most relevant for working class men and women employed in smaller firms, where the promise of paternalism is not as fully provided for through opportunities to play. In addition to the paucity of facilities and the small, localized scale of the activities organized, I would also suggest that there was a relative—though by no means absolute—lack of financial assistance provided by the company in these various sponsored events. Chalmers notes that non-obligatory welfare allocations accounted for 2 percent of total labor costs in firms with 30–99 employees, 3 percent in companies with between 1000 and 4000 workers, and 4 percent in enterprises with 5000 or more employees (1989:52). Of course, the smaller the total labor costs, the smaller the actual amounts spent on such facilities: “the amount paid out in the smallest firms is 31 percent of amounts set aside by the largest firms” (ibid.). Shintani Metals was, of course, spending money on the events it sponsored, as well as contributing in various degrees to other of the events. However, we may see some of the ambivalence to which Kondo refers here as well. For example, some time after the 1990 Shinwakai trip, I discovered that the company had not, for this particular trip at least, provided any significant financial assistance. This was much to the disappointment of Mr Ikeda, one of the oldest and longest employed men, who in response to my question about the company’s support replied: Well, it wasn’t really enough to be called assistance. There wasn’t much. They just won’t give us real assistance. At the time of the recent strawberrypicking trip, the money we received from the company amounted to only

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¥20,000. At first there were forty-four people, then three or four backed out, and finally there were thirty-nine people. Even then, the budget we first estimated was about ¥380,000. And we were given only ¥20,000! I’d thought we’d be given a bit more. Well, that’s the way it is. On the other hand, though the evening’s expenses at the workgroup party sponsored by Special Products-B were to have been covered by using “compensatory” bonuses (ho-sho-kin) that Special Products-B had received for surpassing its production goals, Mr Kawai (the section foreman) was pleasantly surprised when the Company President, as an individual and not as “the company,” picked up the bill. I found out about this when, upon returning from the “after-party” (nijikai), Mr Kawai asked if I had had a good time. When I responded that I had, he chuckled with pleasure and replied that he was glad, and that it was especially great since the Company President had also been in a good mood and had paid for everything. The Company President’s action here is multifaceted: on the one hand quite possibly being an act of pure kindness, and on the other hand being a display of favor for particular of the employees; and also perhaps being part of the Company President’s continuing attempts to present good images of the company and of himself to me. Infrequency Over the course of the fourteen months during which I was in touch with the company, there were five major events sponsored by the company, two by the Shinwakai workers’ association, four by the Baseball Club, and perhaps two or three for each workgroup. Certain of these events, such as the Year End parties held by the company and the Baseball Club, were held close together, and of course not all employees participated equally in these events. While together constituting a set of activities which provided some leisure-based continuity to their presence at the company, no particular group sponsored events frequently enough to thereby really create a strong sense of company or other solidarity. And, as we have seen (and will discuss further below), many events bore a burden of ambiguity which weighs against such a straightforward solidarity. In particular, I would like to point out that people at the Shintani Metals Company do not spend most or actually even very much of their time socializing in workgroup sponsored activities, and the degree of their “emotional involvement” in such events is arguably also minimal. This contrasts with the image of the “diffuse relationship” Dore reports to have existed between Hitachi foremen and their work teams where: as paterfamilias, the foreman presides over the team’s communal leisure activities—outings and/or drinking parties for the spring cherry-blossom viewing, a mid-summer “cool-in”…a new year’s party, farewell parties for

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someone going…abroad, victory parties when the group’s team wins a soft-ball competition, celebrations of some notable work achievements…or just straightforward “social parties”. (1973:235) Thomas Rohlen, also emphasizing the importance of “company work groups” in Japanese enterprises, notes that “For the group to coalesce and realize the potential for cooperation and team motivation, informal social activities after work and on weekends are needed” (1975:190). For the bank in which he did most of his research, he estimated that office groups spent four to six hours every week socializing (ibid.: 191). He notes that “drinking parties” among even these employees occur only once every month or two, but contends that they “represent pinnacles of emotional involvement that are not soon forgotten” (ibid.). Such descriptions do not seem appropriate for the workers at Shintani Metals. Rohlen does, to be fair, also point out that among blue-collar workers such events are declining. It may be fair as well to say that factory workers in daily face-to-face contact with a limited number of co-workers perhaps have less need for the solidarity and information exchange facilitated by After-Hours socializing than do white-collar workers such as bankers (see Atsumi 1975). Smaller companies, and the foremen in these, are also less able and perhaps less willing frequently to help finance such workgroup sponsored leisure events than is the case in larger firms. Non-obligatory attendance There is, at Shintani Metals, no simple company-related and so obligatory versus non-company-related and so non-obligatory character to presence at sponsored events, as has been suggested by Atsumi’s research (1975, 1979) on After-Hours tsukiai (obligatory personal relationships), among white-collar salarymen (discussed again in more detail in the following chapter). This may be seen at Shintani Metals in the voluntary absence from various sponsored events, even by men with up to twenty years of employment. At the company sponsored Summer Breeze Party held in the factory dining hall, for example, several of the regular male employees who had been at work that day chose not to attend, as did several of the women from Shintani Metals and two of the young men from Kinsei Fine Metals. At the Special Products-B Party held at the end of August 1990, Yamaguchi, one-third of that workgroup, was not present. Perhaps the most interesting fact about the Year’s End Party co-sponsored by the various second-floor work-groups was the number of people who did not attend: from Special Products-A, Miyata; from Special Products-B, all three men; from Special Products-C, neither of the two male workers remaining there; from Kinsei Fine Metals, nine of the thirteen members. Kuwata told me that the ¥5000 charge was too steep for him, but I was unable to learn what had kept so many others from being present at what

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should have been an opportunity to socialize and create a renewed sense of social solidarity at the end of the year. And we have seen that a group of young employees defied the Factory Manager’s command to attend the 1991 “company trip.” All of this suggests to me that attendance at sponsored events is not mandatory or compulsory even for “core” male employees, and that these “workers” exercise their own discretion in whether or not to act as “company men/women.” The small size of the company and the more personal, socially flexible attitudes of these members of the working class may be seen at work in the absences of these people. Conversely, owners/managers of smaller firms may also be more easily able to decide to be absent from particular events than is the case in larger enterprises. In fact, none of the three management level men participated in the 1990 Shinwakai “company” trip. However exceptional this particular case may have been, even for Shintani Metals, it suggests a difference from what Han describes for a larger company (with just over 300 employees) when he notes that “Many of the division or department heads feel obligated to participate in [company] trips” (1991:82). In smaller companies where social relations are more direct and personal, and perhaps power more naked, management need not constantly keep up the company’s “face.” Multidimensionality Leisure time spent in sponsored events also manifests a multiplexity of meanings, a simultaneity of significances that are not strictly structured according to corporate imperatives. To concentrate only on the corporate and/ or organizational significance(s) of sponsored events is far too reductionistic, construing people in their class-relative social, cultural and personal complexities and contextualities simply as “company employees.” This type of simplification also reduces the complexities of the events themselves, failing to consider adequately the importance of the interactive relationships and phases that are enacted in and that characterize such events. I want to turn now to a brief consideration of some of the dimensions of the sponsored events, looking at certain aspects of the events as such and of the company-related and workerrelated multidimensionality. Event-related dimensions Whether formally or informally, most sponsored events served multiple purposes. We have seen, for example, that Mr Matsukawa made use of the “Supper Party” to withdraw officially and apologize publicly for an unpopular company policy. At the “Summer Breeze” Party, four full-time women employees hired over the previous several months were introduced, even though, at least in the case of the new “Office Lady,” Midori, she was already

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well known by the others (and we may note that, ironically, the three other women all quit the company within the next couple of months). The 1990 Baseball Club game and picnic likewise also served as an occasion for bidding farewell to Yamamura, who was quitting the company to return to Tochigi Prefecture where he had been born and raised. Horiuchi, the “MC” for this phase of the picnic, was himself kidded that he was using the occasion as a chance to practice his public speaking before the upcoming wedding of Kawanabe and Ms Hara (it is common for select guests to give brief speeches at weddings in Japan—see Edwards 1989). Any given sponsored event is in fact characterized by several phases of action and interaction, which are in fact fairly consistent with the configuration of drinking parties elsewhere in Japan (see Moeran 1986). In many of the company sponsored events, for example, formal, company-oriented introductory speeches and presentations were followed by much more informal phases of drinking, eating, singing and talking, during which it was common for people to go from table to table pouring drinks for others. These interactive phases allow for and are reflexively constructed by the enactment of various social interrelationships, many of them properly termed friendships, which are not strictly structured by company organization or imperatives. At events held in the factory dining room, the Company President also often took advantage of such times to pour drinks for some of the employees and to exchange brief remarks with them, the older men in particular—though the Factory Manager and Mr Matsukawa generally remained seated and non-interactive. Brian Moeran (1986) has provided an interesting discussion of the political aspects of drinking parties in a pottery community in Kyushu. Dividing such events into five “encounter stages,” he contends that beginning especially with the third “mobile cup exchange” phase: “The more mobile a man and the better able he is to talk to all, the more likely he is to assume authority. Drinking is thus a political activity” (1986:237). A pottery community in Kyushu is a long way from being a small manufacturing company in Tokyo. Even though their drinking parties witness similar interactive phases, it would be difficult to argue that Shintani Metals factory workers were pursuing political strategies in a fashion similar to Moeran’s potters. The Company President’s pouring of drinks for others, while certainly political, was more an authority-based expression of benevolence, and a benevolent expression of authority, than an attempt to “spread and reinforce his web of contacts as widely as possible” (ibid.: 232). For most others, such mobile exchange of cups is simply one way of “breaking the ice” or of beginning conversations. Pouring drinks for others, at most social events, is more purely a matter of thoughtfulness, gratitude or polite sociability than might be assumed based on Moeran’s analysis alone (which is not, however, to deny the possible politics of pouring). In addition to drinking alcohol, eating and talking, the other now essential, inevitable and inescapable feature of most group leisure events is singing karaoke. It may be noted here that in none of the contexts where singing took

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place among the people at Shintani Metals—in the sponsored events described here or in more casual visits to Snack bars—was it true that “A group of drinkers will get up to sing in a definite rank order…. Junior colleagues must get up…before senior colleagues will” (Taylor 1983:248). Where the Company President was present he was in fact often encouraged by the other men to have the honor of singing first. However, once the President had sung, there was no “definite” order followed in who sang next. Company-related dimensions The company benefits both directly and indirectly from these events. In so far as sponsored events can be seen as expressions of corporate benevolence, whether by the” company as such or in the person of either the Company President or the Factory Manager, the company derives, or may be seen to be acting so as to derive, benefit. Somewhat more indirect profit is gained by the more purely social or personal enjoyment of the employees in such events as the Shinwakai’s trip or the Baseball Club’s games, or in the informal phases of all of the events. Direct benefit is gained by the company by making use of certain of the company sponsored events as opportunities to communicate information, and to offer acknowledgments and reassurances of corporate stability. At the New Year’s Party, for example, the Factory Manager made brief sectionby-section comments on the previous year’s performances and statements of goals or objectives for the coming year. This reflections (hansei) and objectives (mokuhyo-) speech included an acknowledgment of the “veterans” remaining in the recently much diminished Watch division, and concluded with an appeal for everyone in the company to “ganbaru” (to make a great effort). The Company President then spoke of the difficult changes of the last few years, which had included the loss of watch orders when one of Shintani Metals’ primary contractors opened a factory in Singapore. He called on everyone to work hard for their own sakes and for the sake of the company’s growth. With this statement of the intertwining of the fates of the employees and of the company, the Company President offered the kanpai toast to begin the informal part of the evening’s party. Another, related aspect of the multidimensionality of sponsored leisure events may be found in the presence and tension between hierarchy and authority, on the one hand, and benevolence and informality, on the other. Status hierarchies within the company are both reproduced and resisted in many if not all sponsored events. The casual tardiness of the Company President, Factory Manager and Mr Matsukawa in arriving at many events and their segregated seating replicated temporally and spatially their status distance from the other members of the company. This hierarchy was also reproduced in the Company President’s often being loudly cheered while singing karaoke, and in the absence of the three management level men from the Shinwakai trip.

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There is no mystification of hierarchy here. In small companies there is no need to attempt such disguises: power and authority reside clearly in the persons of the owners and managers. Such expressions and manifestations of hierarchy or authority coexist with those of benevolence and familiarity between the company (in the persons of the Company President, the Factory Manager and Mr Matsukawa) and the employees. The Company President’s pouring of drinks for others, and the Factory Manager’s acting as “General Manager” for the Baseball Club, are in this sense multivocalic, speaking both of their authority and of their friendly familiarity with at least some of the workers. Worker-related dimensions While the company tries to make use of sponsored events in various ways, the workers have their own experiences and perspectives on things, both as employees and, simultaneously, as individuals. These experiences and perspectives add further complexity, extra dimensions of significance, to the sponsored leisure events. First of all, let me emphasize that the participants at any given sponsored event are not just work associates but are also social consociates (Plath 1980). These are men and women who have known each other for years, if not decades; who have worked together in close contact, sharing the same work- and company-related experiences; and who have not just worked together, but have also celebrated marriages together, exchanged congratulations and condolences on significant life-stage events, are originally from the same rural prefectures, are graduates of the same high school, or who are also nakama friends (to be discussed in Chapter 9), and so forth. The more broadly social nature of such personal relationships is seen, for example, in the seating and socializing patterns and partners at all such events, which are not determined by workgroup or rank. The social relationships enacted at such events cannot be appropriately reduced to those necessary for the workgroup “to coalesce and realize the potential for cooperation and team motivation” (Rohlen 1975:190). In this regard, After-Hours events, whether sponsored events or nakama events, must be understood as providing these people with occasional opportunities to enjoy themselves together in informal, non-work settings. This is a very simple, but also very important point—these are, after all, people and not just “workers” or “employees.” We will encounter the romantic possibilities of this again in Chapter 9, but meeting new people or conversing with someone usually not talked with were certainly important dimensions of several of the sponsored events. The first Special Products-A workgroup sponsored event, for example, provided one of the earliest chances for Shintani Metals and Kinsei Fine Metals employees to socialize in a non-work environment.

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At the Summer Breeze Party held in the factory dining room, I sat next to Mr Murakami at the beginning of the evening, talking of the Ken Wilbur book he had been looking for, of his enjoyment of modern jazz (by John Coltrane, Miles Davis and others), and of the days when he had visited the many jazz pubs lining Do-genzaka boulevard in Shibuya. Mr Okakura (of Kinsei Fine Metals), sitting at the same table and also a jazz fan, became interested in the conversation and moved next to Mr Murakami. The two men, whom I had never before seen talking much together, then became involved in an on-going conversation, initially at least about jazz. This conversation, like others, though among co-workers at a company sponsored event, had nothing to do with either work or the company as such. Talking, joking, singing and drinking together are simple personal pleasures that were hoped-for parts of most leisure-based social gatherings. This does not mean, however, that the workers were uncritical. “Resistance” to the corporate hierarchy is manifest in such acts as when, while waiting for the Company President and Mr Matsukawa to appear at the Summer Breeze Party, some of the people at my table began to complain that the beer was getting warm; that, in fact, there was not enough to drink or to eat anyway; and that all of the refreshments and so on were actually just some kind of tax write-off and so not really costing the company much money. Having just listened to such complaints, I could not help but wonder how the other employees were taking the Factory Manager’s opening remarks when he said that, “As you can see on the tables in front of you, the company has provided more food and drinks than usual: all the beer you can drink, and while maybe not all the food you can eat there is also sushi and lots of yaki-tori. The reason the company has provided this special ‘feast’ is, as you know, to celebrate the introduction of this laser-disk karaoke machine [which had appeared in the dining hall a few days earlier] which has been bought just as the company promised.” The ambiguity, contradictions and contestations of power-based relationships witnessed in similar such events has been thoroughly analyzed by Dorinne Kondo (1990). CONCLUSION: COMPANY SIZE AND CORPORATE FOCUS The corporate and personal character and significance of sponsored events and of participation in them must be viewed within the contexts of Shintani Metals as a small manufacturing enterprise. This relates to the consequences of company size in physical, monetary and social terms. Sponsored events among the Shintani Metals employees are, because of the size of the company, more personal (not simply paternalistic), more socially informal, less well capitalized and arguably less frequent than are similar events in larger companies. As workers in one of Japan’s smaller companies, receiving lower wages and fewer of the benefits of the “corporate welfarism” of the “Confucian communities” (Dore 1973, 1987) of larger Japanese enterprises, these After-

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Hours events constitute important social and leisure opportunities for the people working at Shintani Metals. I would also suggest that the After-Hours sponsored events described above are in many ways less corporately constituted than similar events in larger firms have been reported to be. As I have pointed out on several occasions, for example, the workgroup as a unit, its harmony and solidarity, are much less salient features of leisure events among the Shintani Metals employees than is suggested by discussions focusing on larger corporate contexts (e.g. Nakane 1970; Painter 1991; Rohlen 1974a, 1975; E.Vogel 1971). The weakness of a workgroup-focused identity or solidarity-creating function for these leisure events can be seen in the general infrequency of workgroup (and company) sponsored events, in the frequent absence of workgroup members from AfterHours events, in seating arrangements which depend not on workgroup but friendship, and in critical comments of various of the participants. Much the same may be said of a strong company-focused function for such events (see also Allison 1994, 1995). This is not to deny the importance of the attempted or achieved creation of social bonds among the various participants of these leisure events—company, individual workers, Shinwakai and, yes, workgroups. However, to leave the discussion here would be a form of functionalistic reductionism, taking us back to Huizinga’s comment quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Rojek has similarly noted that in functionalist views “Leisure is… seen as one of the functions that must be fulfilled if society is to remain in good order” (1995:37). We can here substitute “company” or “corporation” for “society.” This is an issue which is relevant not just to leisure research focused on small companies and the people working in them, but to discussions of larger enterprises and white-collar salarymen. To emphasize, as does Rohlen (1974a, 1975), the importance of leisure events in the creation of company identity and workgroup solidarity is at once to make statements which may be read as related to a particular kind and size of enterprise and as functionalistically focused on the “company” as anthropological “community.” In the latter regard, we see a collusion between the traditional anthropological/sociological study of “bounded” cultures and communities and the Japanese corporate ideology of the company as “family” or “Confucian community” (Dore 1973, 1987). We find a company-focused functionalism also in the more recent writing of Anne Allison (1994) on “night work.” Here, writing of elite salarymen’s tsukiai in expensive hostess clubs, Allison contends that: By adding night-time recreation as an extracurricular routine, companies routinize workers in manners that are beneficial and complementary to those that structure sarariiman during the day…. Being drawn for more hours into an arena negotiated through money, worker relations, and stylized masculinity fashions an identity more appropriate to the company…. The

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objective of nightlife recreation sponsored by corporations is ultimately this: to fashion a construction less of work than worker—a worker whose subjectivity is such that work is his prime orientation. (ibid.: 200) Allison has moved the discussion to one of sexuality, subjectivity and ideology but, among many other problems such as her denial of critical knowledgeability and agency to Japanese salarymen, I find her to be as (if not more) functionalist in her views of leisure as were Rohlen, Dore, Cole and others twenty years earlier. In this chapter I hope to have shown that the company context is significant in many ways which often distinguish smaller from larger enterprises, and that leisure sponsored events must be interpreted from a perspective which also allows for ambiguities and multidimensionalities that are not easily contained within a functionalist corporate focus. In Chapters 9 and 10 we will continue to explore the social and the personal significance of leisure in the After-Hours and Private Time of the men and women at Shintani Metals.

9

After-Hours Nakama leisure events

“Where’s next?” “How about some karaoke?” “Still have some time?” Extending or confirming invitations among themselves, smaller groups of friends will often continue their merry-making after larger sponsored events have ended. At the conclusion of most, although not necessarily all, larger After-Hours gatherings, many of the participants will have already made plans to go together somewhere else for a “second-party” (nijikai). Others may make more spontaneous arrangements with friends, typically to go to either an izakaya restaurant or to a Snack bar. Walking to favorite or familiar nearby spots, or taking a train a few stops, these smaller groups are those of nakama co-worker friends. Not all sponsored events are followed by second-parties of nakama friends; nor, of course, are all nakama events second-parties. However, such simultaneous acts of parting and keeping company with others from the factory draw attention to one of the socially most significant, if at once natural and oddly overlooked, aspects of working for companies in Japan: friendships are formed with fellow employees. In this chapter, I want to look at the nature of After-Hours friendships among the men and women at Shintani Metals. THE NATURE OF NAKAMA Before describing such friendships and events among the people at Shintani Metals, I want to explain a bit more fully what I mean by the notion of nakama. This important social category has been discussed by the Japanese anthropologist Yoneyama Toshinao in a number of works (1973, 1976, 1990). According to Yoneyama, nakama are contextually defined reference groups, essentially (but not exclusively) composed of non-kin-related in-group members. Nakama generally are, or have been, involved in some mutual activity (1976:23). Some nakama, Yoneyama says, “last for one’s lifetime, and others are ephemeral. Nakama are important in establishing one’s life pattern; some form one’s basic peer groups throughout life” (1973:95). Atsumi Reiko, however, rejects the utility of the nakama concept because of its apparent allinclusiveness, “unless both the conditions and qualifications by which individuals become one’s nakama and the different types of nakama are 155

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specified” (1980:66). For those desiring a cut and dried categorical definition of who is or is not nakama, this is perhaps a telling point. However, it is the very flexibility, or the contextuality of nakama that provides the concept with descriptive and analytic utility. Yoneyama’s notion of nakama is consistent with Lebra’s (1976) discussion of the situational constitution and construction of interactive contexts. Lebra has argued that: “While evincing a trans-situational persistence in behavior patterns, the Japanese also show sensitivity to situational change and readiness for situational adjustment” (ibid.: 111). The overall situational context of interaction reflexively gives definition to, and is given definition by, activities and actors.1 Of particular interest here is the distinction Atsumi draws between what she terms tsukiai relationships and friendships: the term tsukiai is used…to refer to those non-kin relationships cultivated and maintained as a result of social necessity or obligatory feelings. The use of the term friendship, on the other hand, is restricted to those relationships that have developed through mutual likings, attraction, interests, and like-mindedness. (1980:67) This is a very important differentiation, helping to counter the reductionistic portrayal of Japanese salarymen offered by E.Vogel (1971) and Nakane (1970) in which a man’s friends are his co-workers and business partners, and in which After-Hours socializing is not considered to be necessitated by workrelated obligations. Atsumi cautions that “Although friendship and tsukiai may look alike in some of the outward behavior, these two types of relationships [are] clearly differentiated in the minds of male company employees” (1989:131). The difficulty with Atsumi’s distinction is that she contends that: These two categories of personal relationships, tsukiai and friendships, are mutually exclusive…the same individual does not assume both roles vis-àvis another individual…. Most of one’s personal relationships with fellow workers and other work-related people outside the work situation proper fall into the category of tsukiai, obligatory personal relationships, whereas “private” friendships are maintained with a small number of the employee’s former classmates…and with people with whom he shares common interests but with whom he has no work relationship. (1979:64–5; emphases added) This contention of the mutual exclusivity of tsukiai and friendship relationships rests on an acknowledged bias towards male white-collar employees of large Japanese enterprises. Atsumi confuses the issue, however, when she notes on the one hand that “a substantial majority of Japanese company employees

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feel obliged to spend at least a part of their after-work hours with their coworkers and other work-related people” (1980:69; emphasis added), and on the other hand writes that “tsukiai and tsukiai activities with work-related people are neglected or underdeveloped among the employees of small Japanese companies” (1979:66). The confusion is, of course, that most Japanese employees work in small companies. The utility of Atsumi’s categorization of personal relationships beyond whitecollar male employees of large companies is made even more questionable when she writes that: If the employees of a small firm do associate with their fellow workers or other work-related people, such as dealers, it is not because of the need to know them better or to get background information on some problem; rather it is because of a common interest or some other relationship, such as neighborhood, of residence or kinship. (1979:67; emphasis added) The incorporation of “common interest” as one of the bases for After-Hours association suggests that this includes friendship relationships, which “develop out of mutual likings, attractions, interests, and like-mindedness” (ibid.: 64). A later article, which retains this definition of friendship (1989:130), confounds our assumption that, among working class Japanese at least, co-workers can also be friends. Here, Atsumi claims that relationships “between workmates who drop into a pub and have a drink together after work” should not be termed friendships since they: are framed by special circumstances (for example, they work in the same place or live in the same neighborhood), and their place of interactions is confined to the same setting. This means that when the circumstances change, the relationship is likely to dissolve. (1989:136; emphases added) If these working class male relationships are neither really tsukiai nor friendship relationships, then, one may ask, what are they? Atsumi can only conclude that “the relationship between mateship and friendship remains ambiguous” (ibid.). Her notion of friendship seems to allow only for relationships between “close” or “old” friends (in Japanese, shinyu- or kyu-yu-; she does in fact make use of the term shinyu-) (1980:70). In the Japanese case, further, we are not even given an equivalent relational category to that of English or Australian “mateship” into which to place workers like those of smaller companies who associate after work “because of a common interest or some other relationship” (1979:67). It is precisely such relationships among co-workers which the notion of nakama allows us to describe. Robert Cole, in his classic discussion of Japanese blue-collar workers notes that “the carry-over of worker friendships to offthe-job association suggests that the firm as a corporate group still tends to make work and work-established relationships central to the workers’ lives”

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(1971:140; emphases added). There is a very important difference between “work-related associations” and “work-established friendships.” Without a conceptual category such as that of “nakama,” very significant interactive contexts and on-going and past relationships become conceptually impossible to handle: who are people who as co-workers are categorically denied “friendship” but who in actuality socialize in non-tsukiai, “friendship-like” manner? As particularly defined for use here, then, nakama is meant to refer to informal groups of co-worker friends. When these informal groups of friends socialize together outside of the workplace at events which they have organized and that are not sponsored by a more formal group within the company, I call those events “Nakama Events.” PARTNERS, PLACES AND PATTERNS OF PLAY In the following discussion of leisure activities among nakama co-worker friends, I will be focusing on the composition of nakama groups, the kinds of places they go to, what they do and how often they tend to get together. Partners In contrast to descriptions of larger companies where, as we have seen in the previous chapter, After-Hours leisure is portrayed as involving members of the same workgroup or section, nakama groups at Shintani Metals are not formed on a workgroup or workshop basis. Instead, age, gender and marital status are most important in determining with whom a Shintani Metals person will or will not associate as nakama during their leisure time. A clear expression of the combined importance of age and marital status may be found in the group of young men and women who spend time together in the After-Hours. No one in their later thirties or older, even if still single, joined in the nakama events of the Shintani Metals youth. This included two single men in their forties who as members of the Baseball Club were present at related sponsored events together with the younger employees. Among the older men and women, several nakama groups seem to have existed. The part-time women workers, most of whom lived within short bicycling or walking distances from the factory, would at times get together to go to local cafés—though some of the part-timers would also occasion-ally join in nakama events with certain of the older full-time (male and female) employees. One of the sociologically most interesting groups of “older” men at the factory were the five men in their forties who were single. There is now a popularly perceived difficulty for factory workers in medium-small enterprises to find marital partners—one of the extra “K’s” (Kekkon, marriage) sometimes added to the “3K’s” of Kiken (dangerous), Kitanai (dirty), Kitsui (physically

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draining) of laboring jobs in increasing disfavor in Japan. Remarks were made to me on a number of occasions about the “large number” of unmarried older men at the company. Three of these older single men would occasionally go out drinking together, to the best of my knowledge rarely if ever joining in the nakama events with other older workers. Two of these middle-aged bachelors seemed never to participate in nakama events, leading more private if not indeed solitary lives. Two other nakama groups were both composed of cores of older, married men. What separated these groups was not related to age, length of employment or residence. Instead, these two groups of older men were separated by the closeness of two of the men to the Company President and the Factory Manager. These two, both from Tochigi, were the only men I am aware of who socialized with either the President or the Factory Manager with any frequency (though another claimed to do so on occasion). The other group of men included three who were of Tokyo, not Tochigi, origin. Two of these men were among the longest employed men still with the company. There were many possible reasons, including personality, as to why they might not have closer relations with the Company President and Factory Manager, but I felt that a certain amount of favoritism on the part of the President towards the Tochigi men he recruited as boys cannot be discounted. Although certain sets of people tended to form nakama groups, membership was relatively (situationally) fluid. Presence at a particular nakama event was not obligatory, and certainly not on the basis of workgroup membership or of work or company responsibilities. Depending on the type of event, the range of co-worker friends invited might contract or expand. A person who was normally a member of a nakama group but who had no interest in a proposed event, who already had something else planned, or who could not financially afford to join in might acceptably decline to attend. Conversely, nakama membership could expand in relation to a particular event. Going to a large fireworks show across Tokyo at Harumi along with Mr Okakura and Ms Fujikawa, I was surprised to find Mr Abe and Mr Araki, whom I knew to be drinking partners, also there and accompanied by Mr Honda and the parttimers Mrs Hayashi and Mrs Kimura. Places Most nakama events centered around or included eating and drinking in izakaya or yakitori (grilled foods) restaurants or drinking and singing at karaoke Snack bars (see Linhart 1986 and Stephen Smith 1988 for descriptions of various kinds of drinking establishments in Japan). While many of the activities engaged in and venues visited were essentially the same whichever the nakama group, each group seemed to have its own special spots. The Snack and Hostess Bars of Shinjuku, Akasaka, Roppongi and the Ginza,

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with their attractive young female hostesses and attentive “mamasans,” have aroused most attention in the West (see for example: Allison 1994, 1995; Bornoff 1991; Jackson 1976; Louis 1992; see also Mock 1996; see Morley 1985 for a romanticized description of one foreigner’s encounter with the “water trades”). However, the only time I went to a Snack bar in Shinjuku was when Mr Shintani took me to a small place on the fringes of the Kabukicho- area, a spot he had not been to in months and where he had to remind the mama-san of who he was. And although the young people at Shintani Metals held a number of their nakama event gatherings at izakaya restaurants in the popular Shinjuku district—one of Tokyo’s more famous sakariba entertainment districts (for an interesting discussion of such sakariba, see Linhart 1986)—they went elsewhere for their “after-party” visits to karaoke Snack bars. While not the focus of much academic interest (but see S.Smith 1988), there are in fact neighborhood Snacks to be found around nearly any train station and even scattered here and there in many residential areas. While perhaps most of these local Snacks are equipped with high-tech laser-disc karaoke machines, they may or may not have (young) hostesses, are often run by very unpretentious “mamas” or even “masters,” depend on a local clientele and are less expensive than the Snack bars found in more popular entertainment districts (see Bestor 1989:41-3). The older Shintani Metals people seem primarily to visit such local, less expensive neighborhood restaurants and Snack bars. I also often went with the young Shintani Metals workers to a Snack located a good five-minute walk from a train station three stops away from the factory, operated by a balding, middle-aged “master,” that certainly did not fit my image of the kind of place young Japanese people in their twenties would patronize. After going there a few times, I asked Kuwata why they always seemed to stop at that particular Snack to sing karaoke, and he replied, simply, because it was cheap. The places that the Shintani Metals people patronized, while perhaps not quite fitting the Western image of “working class” eateries, bars or pubs, were very arguably working class in “style” (Bourdieu 1984). It is perhaps not just what people do but also the frequency and scale on which they do it which distinguishes the Japanese working class from their more economically endowed fellows. The pursuit of pleasure in Japan, as elsewhere, is influenced by both preferences and pocket books. Although the younger people did travel to Shinjuku to eat and drink at izakaya restaurants, the spots they chose were always done so with price and comfort, not fashion-able image, in mind (these are not members of the kurisutaru-zoku inscribed in Tanaka Yasuo’s [1983] novel). Patterns Whether for tsukiai purposes or not, it has become an almost taken for granted “fact that workers drink together several nights a week” (S.Smith 1988:168).

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Ezra Vogel, for example, talked about “daily” “company gang” activities (1971:104); while Nakane writes that: “Each evening in Tokyo after the offices close many office workers stop at bars on their way home, and some of them remain drinking there until well after the last train” (1970:124; see also Fallows 1989). Rohlen, meanwhile, notes that in the bank and in the manufacturing firm which he studied “hikes, after-work drinking expeditions, mahjong and bowling, involving some but not all people in an office (age and sex being the primary sources of separation), are frequent activities” (1975:190). Among the people at Shintani Metals, how often did people get together, to do what, at nakama events? Frequency People working at Shintani Metals, for the most part, did not participate in groups which went out together after work on a daily, or even a frequent weekly basis. When I first began asking in interviews about after-work socializing with other people from the company, I had phrased the question in terms of “times per week” and soon found it necessary to modify this to “times per month.” Of thirty-six men for whom I have responses to this question, the most frequent responses were that they went out once each week (six men, or 16.6 percent), only once per month (six men, or 16.6 percent), two or three times per month (six men, or 16.6 percent), that they rarely joined in such socializing (eight men, or 22 percent), or that they never do (six men, or 16.6 percent). There were only four men (11 percent) who claimed to go out with co-workers more frequently than once per week—one man claiming to go out about five times per month, two men saying they did so twice weekly, and one man saying that he did so five times per week. Of the thirteen women for whom I have responses, three claimed to go out about once per month, two women said they did so twice per month, and seven women said that they went out with others from the company only rarely or never. Only Ms Kara, dating Kawanabe, claimed to go out with anyone from the company on a weekly basis. These self-reported rates of After-Hours relaxation and reveling with fellow factory hands must perhaps be taken with a certain measure of caution. Based on observation and participation while doing fieldwork at the factory, I would suggest that most of the men got together after work about once every week or two. Among the women, four of the younger, unmarried full-time women generally joined in nakama events with other of the company youth perhaps two or three times per month. I am unable to substantiate frequencies for the older and/or part-time women, but would defend the once- or twice-monthly rates as reasonable for women who have family responsibilities. The infrequency with which people at Shintani Metals seem to spend time together socializing may be surprising to readers accustomed to state-ments such as those quoted above about the nearly nightly drinking sessions of

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Japanese salarymen. However, the Shintani Metals rates may be reflective of patterns among Japanese working class employees of smaller enterprises. Atsumi (1975:67), for example, notes that among the nineteen white-collar employees of medium-small companies for whom she has questionnaire responses, 53 percent had not had supper with work-related people during the previous five days, 21 percent had done so only once, 16 percent only twice, and only 10 percent of these employees had had supper with work-mates three or more times in the preceding five-day period. Linhart, further, points out that, during the early 1970s at least, “Pachinko, reading comics, playing go or sho-gi, and caring for pets, flowers or a garden can be said to constitute typical blue-collar leisure pursuits” (1988:302). Such usually more solitary activities are less likely to involve co-worker friends than are playing golf or mahjong, drinking at bars, visiting coffee shops and dining which, along with reading books and going to concerts or exhibitions, Linhart reports to be typical white-collar leisure activities (ibid.). There are class- (culture-) related distinctions suggested in the types of leisure preferred and in the styles (here, frequency) of their pursuit (see Bourdieu 1984). The low frequency of nakama events among the workers at Shintani Metals may thus be suggested to be typical of blue-collar workers of smaller Japanese companies, reflecting patterns of After-Hours time expenditure that are not as corporately structured as are those of white-collar employees of larger firms (see also Mouer 1995). We will return to the importance of “Private Time” events in the next chapter, but it is important to bear in mind that they are part of a general pattern imputable to blue-collar workers and particularly to the employees of smaller enterprises. Lastly, let me mention that among the reasons the workers at Shintani Metals gave for not going out drinking very often, especially during the working week, were those of having to wake early in the morning and that since their work involved making things with tools and machines it was safer and sounder not to go out (see Mouer 1995:52). Besides such working class-related aspects of the (in)frequency of presence at nakama events, there are also a number of important lifecourse-related factors that influence presence to one degree or another. The importance of lifecourserelated variables must be understood (here and later) in relation to the absence of corporately structured factors—such as workgroup solidarity, information exchange or business networking—which influence (stereotypically, determine) After-Hours socializing among employees of larger enterprises. As also noted by Rohlen (1974a), age is an important factor related to frequency of presence at nakama events. Of the fifteen men claiming that they rarely or never went out after work with company friends, eleven were in their forties or fifties (55 percent of this age group), four were in their thirties (two-thirds of this age group), and none were in their twenties. Of the fifteen men claiming frequencies of once or more per fortnight, seven were in their forties or fifties (35 percent of this age group) and eight in their twenties (80 percent of this age group).

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What these numbers indicate is, simply, a tendency for younger men to participate more often in nakama events than older men (see also Cole 1971). There was also a tendency for single men to claim that they socialized after work with other people from the company twice or more each month (9 out of 19 men, or 47 percent of the single men), and for fewer married men to make similar claims regarding their nakama event socializing (5 out of 17, or 29 percent of the married men). As with age, the frequencies reported by married and non-married men were not clear cut and strictly contrastive. Age and marital status were, however, two significant factors which influenced participation in nakama events. Related to marital status is also the influence of a male worker’s family’s stage of development. Younger married men in their thirties who have small infants and children are, for example, less likely to be after-work socializers than are older men whose children are correspondingly older and whose personal wages and household incomes (including those of wives) are more substantial. Illnesses of family members, especially of mothers or wives, may also influence the frequency of presence at nakama events. Such was the case for Horiuchi who—in his early thirties, single and with no (female) siblings—became responsible for the household care of his father after his mother’s death. Frequency of presence at nakama events, finally, is also related to a number of factors related to individual personality and being a social person in Japanese society. When explaining to me their infrequent presence at nakama events, several of the Shintani Metals men made reference to their not drinking alcohol as the reason for this. This can, of course, cut several ways. A man who does not like alcohol can use not drinking to justify absence from activities he wants to avoid. Conversely, abstinence may be used as an explanation to account for one’s not being invited to join in events one otherwise might have wanted to join. The importance of alcohol for creating adult male identity in Japan and its socially integrative functions have been often pointed out (see Ando and Hasegawa 1970; Moore 1964; Sargent 1967; S.Smith 1988, 1992; for notes on the cultural history of drinking, see Yamamuro 1954, 1958, 1964). Stephen Smith provides a useful sociological interpretation as to why men are at times excluded from joining nakama events: A man who does not drink does not partake equally in the rituals of drinking. Equally important, he does not share in the emotional warmth and camaraderie that goes with drinking and therefore inhibits others who do drink. (1988:150; emphasis added) The point here is that not only is the teetotaling man felt not to be loosening up and joining in, but also that by not at least appearing to be or acting as if he is inebriated he inhibits the intimate spontaneity (or, in Befu’s terms, “emotional

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interpenetration”; 1971:164–5) deemed desirable or appropriate in such contexts (Smith 1988:162). The absence of certain people from nakama events appears to be a reflection of individual personalities. Even if they drink everyone else under the table, people who remain quiet are not very desirable partners at nakama events since they can thereby also prevent others from relaxing and enjoying their own ludic interludes. A person who does not laugh at others’ jokes and antics, who does not talk much even when among friends and drinking, who will only reluctantly sing, is a person who “will not ‘join in’” or who “will not ‘go along’” with the others (notte kurenai), a person who will not help the others to “get down” (a loose translation of moriagaru). There is, finally, also a certain amount of personal decision-making involved in being present at or absent from certain or all nakama events. Mr Honda, for example, said that he did not go out very often since he disliked going from one place to another and being made to hear others’ complaints. Ms Terauchi, who as a single woman in her mid-twenties should otherwise have been a popular partner for the nakama events of the young adults at the company, chose not to join in such events, partly because of her conservative Christian faith, and so became excluded from joining. Given the above discussion, I think that it is important that a distinction be made between presence at and participation in nakama events. The former relates to choosing to be present at or absent from a particular event, while the latter refers to participating actively in the goings-on once one has chosen to be present. In contrast to Atsumi, who has argued that white-collar workers are more (corporately) constrained in being present at after-five tsukiai, we have seen that the people at Shintani Metals exercised greater flexibility in choosing whether or not to be present at After-Hours nakama events (and even at sponsored events, as argued in Chapter 8; see also Mouer 1995:52). Presence at nakama events is not an unavoidable social obligation. Presence is, further, not required by the company or one’s workgroup, nor is it determined by the requirements of one’s job. Several events, such as not going on the Shinwakai/company trip in favor of skiing with nakama friends mentioned in Chapter 8, were in fact almost oppositional in character, contrasting the friendship among the co-workers to their employment at the company. And, when with co-worker friends, while people may complain about their jobs or about the company, gossip about other workers or the managers, or compliment each other on their work, discourse vital to the completion of work-related tasks is rarely if ever a part of nakama socializing among these blue-collar workers. Sports, romance (and sex),2 and other personal matters and social concerns are the dominant conversational topics. These events must be understood as significant, first, for the participants as people at certain stages of their lives and as members of nakama groupings within a company that is small and does not constitute

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a “Confucian community” (Dore 1987) such as larger Japanese corporations are said to strive to be. While presence at nakama events is not as obligatory as Atsumi’s tsukiai, the social obligation—towards one’s nakama friends—to participate once present is much more tangible. Once present at a nakama (or a sponsored) event, one is socially (not corporately) obligated to help the others present enjoy themselves. Although silence is in certain contexts perhaps even more golden than it is in the West (Lebra 1987), in After-Hours co-socializing one is obliged to appear to be enjoying oneself, and more particularly to act so as to help, or at least not hinder, the enjoyment of the others present and participating. Active participation in conversations, even if only as listener, is generally speaking a social obligation; as is, especially during the evening, drinking alcohol, for men, and singing, for both men and women. The importance of drinking and singing in Japan have been often remarked upon (for example, in Embree 1939; Linhart 1986, 1988; S.Smith 1988, 1992; C.Turner 1995); and, indeed, many Japanese have been literally raised on or by song (for two rather different discussions, see Tamanoi 1991; Tobin et al. 1989). In this distinction between presence and participation lie a set of social dynamics relevant to the academic debate regarding the relationships between groups and individuals in Japanese society and culture (see Befu 1980; Mouer and Sugimoto 1980, 1986; Sugimoto and Mouer 1989). Neither the Shintani Metals Company or particular workgroups thereof, nor the nakama groups of the people working at the factory, constitute all-encompassing “frames” (Nakane 1970) of identification or belongingness (Lebra 1976) such that presence at After-Hours events is obligatory in either the corporate sense of Atsumi (1975, 1979, 1980, 1989) or the exclusive social sense suggested by either Nakane (1970) or by E.Vogel (1971). However, once one has chosen to be present at a group event, even with one’s nakama friends, there are groupbased social obligations impinging upon the individual to act appropriately. Individualistic behaviors—which do in fact occur—are sanctionable in contexts of group interaction, reproducing in the practice of nakama friends the “internal cultural debate” that Moeran (1984a) discusses for Japanese culture more broadly conceived. The small company context allows people the flexibility not to be present at certain group activities. However, once present one is expected to participate as a group member with and for the other group members. Types of activities While the company may be considered uchi (inside) or uchi no kaisha (our company) when relating as employees to others outside (Kondo 1990), and while there may be an ideology of the firm as family (Fruin 1980), neither the company nor even the workgroup is as intimate (Lebra 1976) an interactional setting as are nakama events. As noted in Chapter 4, “the most uchi [inside,

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in-group] of contexts” (Kondo 1990:213) is not the workgroup but groups of nakama co-worker friends, at the workplace and even more so outside. What the various Shintani Metals nakama groups do is, in a certain sense, very much the same whatever the group. The restraint (enryo) and seriousness of the working hours give way to more spontaneous action and talking at nakama events. The most common nakama events are those which, as mentioned earlier, center around or include going to izakaya restaurants and karaoke Snack bars to eat, drink, sing and talk. Other activities include such seasonal events as going to view cherry blossoms (hanami) during spring, going to watch fireworks displays (hanabi), usually during the summer months, and having Year’s End Parties (Bo-nenkai) during December. Although I had a number of opportunities to participate in nakama events with groups of older workers, I was most often able to join with the younger employees (henceforth also wakamono, which means “young person/people”) in enjoying time together in the After-Hours. The nakama events of the wakamono group can be divided into two categories. The first type of events were employment related. There were, during my stay, one Welcome Party (Kangeikai) and two Farewell Parties (So-betsukai) organized to mark the beginning or ending of relationships with others as they entered or left the company. The Welcome Party, I should point out, was held for Midori, a young woman who had been hired to replace Ms Hara in the office. This party was partly held in compensation for the fact that the company had not held a formal ceremony of introduction, and, of course, the party was partly thereby justified. Midori’s employment at the company and entry into their nakama group also held romantic significance, if only fanticized, for the single young men. A third Farewell Party was held in late December of 1990, but since this was for me, I am somewhat hesitant to call this an “employment-related” nakama event. The second kind of nakama event among the younger employees were those that were organized more purely for play, to join together and simply have fun as friends. These may be somewhat crudely organized into five categories. First, there were drinking parties other than the Welcome and Farewell Parties mentioned above, including smaller “second-parties” following sponsored events, where the focus was on drinking and singing. The next type of event, with no direct employment associations, involved participating in or patronizing sports events. The young Shintani Metals employees played badminton together three times after work or in the holidays—once each month during April, May and June of 1990—with a drinking party following on each occasion. I was rather surprised when I was twice invited to watch sumo with certain (in May two and in September three) of the younger employees. These were surreptitiously enjoyed outings in that the employees involved were absenting themselves from a day of work at the factory. While not routinely done, and certainly not (openly) condoned by the company, the younger workers did in fact take occasional days off to go to

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sumo matches or professional baseball games—and I was told that some of the older men, as well, would occasionally take days off to play golf or go fishing (which begins to get us into a discussion of Private Time, on which more in Chapter 10). Every winter for the past few years, a group of the wakamono had also gone skiing a number of times (at weekends, without skipping work) throughout the ski season. From at least early December until February or March, the frequency of other events decreased as the skiers saved money for ski trips, and snow conditions in the nearby ski districts of Nagano and Niigata Prefectures became topics of discussion at the company. Who had bought what kind of ski gear or wear became both a private monetary and a social concern, and such investments were often paid for with winter and summer bonuses. As nakama events, these ski trips were not characterized by the conformity and co-ordination that Brandt (1986) reports among a Japanese ski club he encountered in Korea. Third, the wakamono went on two excursions that are best described as car drives. David Plath has noted that, in Japan, “As maika [sic—from ‘my car;’ personally owned automobiles] rolled into arena after arena of Showa society, it triggered a remapping of not just transportation routes but also the lines of human sociability” (1990:235). Indeed, the Japanese language equivalent of “to go for a drive” is doraibu suru, a recognizable category of leisure in Japan. Cars were an important focus of the private and social lives of the Shintani Metals employees—young and old—acting frequently as conversational topic while at work, as ludic catalyst and context outside of work, and as statusdisplay points of pride. In some cases, just getting there (and back) was (more than) half the fun. The final category of just-for-fun nakama events among the Shintani Metals wakamono was a miscellany which included going to a small sumomo-plum festival (followed by drinking and singing at an izakaya restaurant). I also spent the day of Emperor Akihito’s enthronement, 12 November 1990, with two of the young Shintani Metals men, and many thousands of other Japanese, walking up Mt Takao, west of Tokyo. Not all nakama events, even among the younger people, need include a large group of co-workers. Certainly dating among the young men and women co-workers was not (usually) a group activity, and considering the privacy and near secrecy of dating it may perhaps be best to view these as closer to “Private Time” events and relationships. Lovers (?), friends and photos Before leaving this discussion, there are two more topics that I want briefly to mention which in different ways reveal the social and personal importance of nakama co-worker friendships and After-Hours leisure events. Romantic relations or the lack thereof were frequent topics of conversation at nakama events among the younger employees, often

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focusing on the follies of Oda, or on the bachelorhood of Nagashima and Inoue. Both of the latter were approaching thirty, by which time Japanese men are socially expected to (at least be planning to) get married.3 As mentioned above, the single men, at least, were very much interested in nakama events as opportunities to socialize informally with the young, unmarried women working at the factory. One of the young workers’ drinking parties was obviously an excuse for Nagashima to court Kyo-ko, a young part-time worker at Kinsei Fine Metals. On one of the long car drives, it was arranged for Midori to ride with Oda in his car, alone. And, when I remarked before going to play badminton that it was unfortunate that Midori would not be joining us, Kuwata, himself single and twenty-seven at the time, laughed and replied, Yoku wakaru nee! (“You really understand;” or, less literally but more meaningfully, “You can say that again!”). Love, sex and dating are of course concerns that are not unique to employees of smaller enterprises—in Japan or elsewhere. However, the small company context at Shintani Metals did provide these with somewhat distinctive significance. Because of the small size of the company and the blue-collar nature of the work done, there were few young women employees. (We saw in Chapter 4 that most of the women were older, married, part-time employees.) Also because of the nature and negative social perception (of the “3K’s”) of factory-based work, and because of their working hours and work week, the Shintani Metals male employees had relatively limited opportunities to meet women outside of the company. The interests of the young single men, and women, in creating opportunities to socialize with each other were both humanly and sociologically understandable. At many nakama events, and at some sponsored events such as the Shinwakai’s day-trip, people took photographs of, with and for each other— and, as mentioned in Chapter 4, making and distributing copies of the photographs taken with one’s own camera was also commonly done. For example, at the Farewell Party held for him, Oda went around posing for pictures with all of his nakama friends, duplicates of which would also be made for each person photographed. The photographs, taken here and elsewhere, insured that Oda would long remain in the memories of all as one of their nakama friends who had at one time been at the company but had then gone to work elsewhere. The photographic construction of “portrait-chronicle[s]” (Ben-Ari 1991:91) during the events and associations of the After-Hours and Private Time exemplified here is also significant, in contrast to the absence of similarly constructed memories of the company as a site of work. The memories of coworkers and nakama friends thus most available for later reconstruction are those of the human, social, sexual relationships and interactions of nakama events, in particular, and in After-Hours events generally, not those of the many more hours spent working together.

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CONCLUSION: OF PLAY AND PEOPLE IN JAPAN That Japanese people get together after work to relax with friends and coworkers is, ethnographically, nothing new. John Embree, in his classic study of a small rural village in pre-war Japan, noted that: No community work is ever done without a party at the end. After the buraku has worked together to build a bridge, a party is held; after working to prepare things for a funeral, drinks are served. The same is done after ricetransplanting, after road-building, after housebuilding, and after roofbuilding. After the work and the evening bath, a party of the workers begin. (1939:99) Many things have changed in the half-century or more since Embree did his fieldwork in Kyushu, and no doubt the parties of farmers celebrating the conclusion of a communal work task and the After-Hours leisure of urban blue-collar workers are in many ways distinct even now. The importance of such nakama(-like) activities and relationships for each, located in their own defining historical spaces, cannot, however, be easily denied. Play and leisure, as represented by nakama relationships and events, are replete with significance for understanding the lives of blue-collar workers employed in Japan’s smaller enterprises. We see in leisure an intersection of company- and work-related, and of lifecourse- and personal-related dimensions of these people’s lives. The fact that Shintani Metals is a small company is reflected in several ways. As with the sponsored events discussed in Chapter 8, presence at nakama events is not obligatory, nor is it based on workgroup membership. This is pragmatic, workgroups being limited in size; and it is social, being a reflection of flexible attitudes and understandings. The infrequency of nakama getting together reflects financial and time constraints related to the low wages and long (six-day) work weeks consequent to working in a small company such as Shintani Metals, and to the manual labor done by these workers; and, one might add, to their sense of responsibility regarding that work. Events such as Farewell Parties are leisure-based reflections of the small company context, with its higher rates of interfirm mobility (discussed in Chapter 4).4 Other events in part at least compensate for the failure of the company to sponsor appropriate events, as was the case with the Welcome Party held for the new OL, Midori. Tobin has recently noted that “in a changing Japan, what people consume may be as important as what they produce in shaping a sense of self” (1992a: 8). This is an important reminder, but consumption must be extended to include leisure practices and relationships more broadly conceived; and “sense of self” must be taken to include class-related self-identities. The people at Shintani Metals might be participating in the consumption oriented prosperity of

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contemporary Japanese society and in consumption driven definitions and enactments of contemporary Japanese youth (see Field 1989; Fields 1983, 1989; Skov and Moeran 1995; Tobin 1992b; Treat 1996; see also Hidaka 1984). However, the ventures pursued and venues patronized by the Shintani Metals people reveal their own styles, tastes and constraints in leisure. Going to less expensive and more local venues, and by preferring to do so, for example, the Shintani workers reflect and reaffirm their economic, social and cultural positions as members of the working class. The importance of lifecourse-related factors in nakama relations and events must be seen in the context of the relative relaxation of corporate imperatives— allowing nakama events to remain personally and socially constructed among co-worker friends. Nakama groupings are based on complicated lifecourse and social relational characteristics of the participating individuals, including age, sex, marital status, residence, commonality of interests and compatibility of characters. Nakama events, like sponsored events, are multidimensional, with participants relaxing from work; enjoying more intimate and spontaneous conversations and time spent with co-workers; having fun drinking, singing, talking or playing games; and some dreaming of romance. If one takes a functionalistic company-centered perspective it is easy to suggest that the company benefits from the solidarity-creating functions of nakama events. However, while co-worker “solidarity” is no doubt important even from the point of view of the nakama co-worker friends, it must also be emphasized that the primary purposes and meanings of these events are social and personal. For the people working at the Shintani Metals Company, spending time together with co-worker nakama friends was an important part of who they were, not just as company employees but as people. The company context is important, but to ignore or deny the social and personal significance of such friendships and of such leisure is a form of methodological reductionism, and it transforms these blue-collar workers in one of Japan’s medium-small enterprises into poor versions of Japan’s stereotyped white-collar employees of larger companies, thus again reaffirming from afar the hegemonic hold of the salaryman image (cf. Allison 1995; Hester 1988).

10 Private Time

INTRODUCTION The Shintani Metals Company employees spend a significant amount of their time outside of work in “After-Hours” activities, participating in sponsored events and as co-worker friends in nakama events. Work, the company and coworkers (even as friends) do not, however, constitute the entirety of these people’s lives. As noted previously, the people employed at Shintani Metals also engage in “Private Time” activities and relationships that involve interacting with family and friends not, or not now, working at the company, or that are pursued more personally, privately (but not necessarily in a solitary fashion). The activities, relationships and personal identities constitutive of and constructed within Private Time, further, often do more than simply supplement those of work and the After-Hours. Private Time activities and relationships must be seen as important, and in some cases the central, source(s) of a sense of individual identity and personal meaning for the people working at Shintani Metals. This is not to suggest, however, that work, the company and co-worker friendships are not also important. I have argued above that the latter in particular are more meaningful than has been suggested by research focused on large companies and their employees. For Japanese men, work—which, at least among blue-collar workers in smaller firms, needs to be distinguished from “job” or “company”— is indeed a very significant aspect of their overall sense of self and purpose in life, their ikigai (for more on ikigai among both men and women, see Mathews 1996). However, what I wish to emphasize here is that to speak only of work and workmates is to overlook, and thereby to discount, other aspects, relationships and contexts important to such men. The significance of other, complementary or alternative avenues to the construction of meaningful, fulfilling lifecourses outside of the company for blue-collar workers is more generally suggested by Linhart when he writes that even among employees of large companies, “blue-collar workers have a significantly higher percentage of my-home types” than do white-collar workers (1988:290; see also Imamura 1987:68), and that “male blue-collar workers

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show a much stronger leisure orientation than white-collar workers opting for a career” (ibid.: 306). Sugimoto has similarly noted that blue-collar workers: find more satisfaction at home and in community life than do white-collar employees. Generally, they value family life and take an active part in community affairs. In community baseball teams, after-hours children’s soccer teams and other sports clubs, blue-collar workers are prominent. (1997:87) I argue that this kind of differentiation is even more pronounced if one considers blue-collar workers employed in smaller companies. The importance of Private Time activities and relationships, further, lies in their complementary contribution to the diversity of the leisure space of these people’s lives. Suggestive of the importance placed on Private Time activities and relationships among the men and women working at Shintani Metals are the rates of absence on weekdays and Saturdays. Based on viewing cards in the time-clock at the front door of the factory and on other observations it became apparent that many people were frequently taking Saturdays off. For the days that I recorded the number of red “absent” time cards, there were an average 1.7 absentees on weekdays among the 40-odd men present at the factory and 4.5 absentees on “working” Saturdays. (My information on the women at the company is in basic agreement with this trend, but is made more problematic by the fact that part-time women could be requested not to come to work and that many left at noon on Saturdays.) These men (and women) were absenting themselves from the factory in favor of leisure or other activities which formed part of their private lives.1 In the following I will discuss only certain aspects of the “Family Events” and the “Private Self Events” pursued by people working at Shintani Metals. This is not meant to suggest that friendships with non-company persons (in “Friendship Events”) are necessarily unimportant. However, with a few exceptions which will be mentioned below in the discussion on “private self,” most references to non-company friends generally emphasized their paucity and, among the younger employees at least, their infrequent renewal in occasional shopping trips or other such outings together. The significance of friendship in Japan certainly deserves fuller treatment than can be offered here. FAMILY WOMEN AND MEN Most of the men and women working at Shintani Metals claim usually to return home after work, going out with friends from the company or elsewhere only occasionally. The basic everyday patterns of the non-work time of the people employed at Shintani Metals revolves around their Private Tune family relationships and roles. To borrow Linhart’s distinction between “passive” and “active” leisure pursuits (1988:297), it is possible to argue that there are passive and active modes of participation in family affairs.

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Among the workers at Shintani Metals, active participation in family activities is related to gender and to lifecourse, the latter here being particularly defined in terms of stages of family development and intrafamilial relationships. While perhaps more Japanese women are seeking non-domestic careers and identities than was previously the case (or, the ideal), it is still generally accepted that most Japanese women, working or otherwise, find “their primary role and identity in the domestic sphere” (Lebra 1984:300; see also Imamura 1996). The women working at Shintani Metals, by the mere fact of their employment, do not conform to the “professional house-wife” image and ideal of middle class women (S.Vogel 1978). However, the domestic roles of the women working at Shintani Metals who have their own families (this somewhat awkward phrasing is necessitated by the presence of two divorcees who have children) remain the primary context of action outside of the company and, as I have suggested in Chapter 6, the primary context of identity, for these women. Just as most of the women employees with whom I talked claimed to spend little if any time outside of work socializing with others, so most of the older women claimed to spend most of that time fulfilling their domestic responsibilities. Masugata (1996:161) points out that (after watching television, listening to music, reading and generally just relaxing around the house) taking care of housework and other aspects of bodily physical maintenance is the second most common set of free time activities among Japanese, and this is reflected here in a gender-based fashion. Asked what she did on the weekends, Mrs Naito-, for example, replied that she took care of those things around the house that she usually could not get done during the week. Mrs Ueda, in response to a question about what sort of hobbies or the like she enjoys, responded that she did not do anything in particular because she did not have the time—if you take care of the children or do things for them, she said, you cannot really have your own time. For the older women at the factory, Private Time activities center around the house and the family. These are not necessarily what one could call leisure activities. Linhart has suggested that the “Leisure activities of women are much more limited than those of men” (1975:204). One set of reasons for this may reasonably be suggested to be that “the woman’s domestic role is characteristically diffuse, unpunctuated, multiple, or generalized” (Lebra 1984:301). The diffuseness and constancy that characterizes women’s domestic roles are reproduced in the remarks of the women working at Shintani Metals, where we see these women as wives and mothers shopping, preparing meals, cleaning the house, doing laundry, doing things for their children and even helping with their husbands’ work. Although, and while, working close to forty hours per week, the older parttime women workers at Shintani Metals also take responsibility for most if perhaps not all of the same domestic activities that non-working Japanese housewives do (for more on the latter, see Imamura 1987; E.Vogel 1971; S.Vogel 1978). Lebra has noted that Sundays are the peak day for doing housework

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among Japanese women, and suggests that “Sundays are when the around-thebody care [by women] is in constant, day-long demand [by men]” (1984:133). The activity of women is necessitated by and allows the passivity of men. Women, as is typical in Japan, are much more likely to be more constantly active in family contexts than are men. Conversely, women appear much less likely than men to (be able to) spend their leisure time in non-family oriented or contexted activities. Although I have little data regarding this among the women at Shintani Metals, Barbara Mori (1996) points out that family centered roles may also be used to justify the pursuit of certain kinds of leisure among women. In an interesting discussion of the traditional arts (such as the tea ceremony or flower arrangement) as leisure activities among contemporary Japanese women, she notes that these are popular because “these arts affirm traditional views of women as nurturing and supporting others in society” and are seen as helping women in their roles of wife and mother (1996:117). At the same time, though, the traditional arts allow women to “exhibit their personal skills and pursue friendships and activities that otherwise might place them in conflict with their roles in society” (ibid.). Among the married men at Shintani Metals active participation in family affairs seems to be primarily related to the ages of their children. Mr Tozawa, one of the older Tochigi men, for example, claimed to have acted as a baseball coach for a group of neighborhood children for five or six years while his own two sons were in elementary school. During this time he would spend many Sundays from eight in the morning until three or four in the afternoon coaching and, when he could, he would return home and play catch with his sons for about thirty minutes on weekday evenings as well. He claimed to have not gone on company trips during this time, unable to tell the children that he would not be able to coach; and, he said, coaching was more enjoyable than going on such trips since his kids happily followed what he said (sunao ni tsuite kuru kara; sunao more literally means “gently” or “obediently,” but I have rendered it as “happily”). Now that his sons have gotten older (they are both now in their twenties), they will not do things with him, he said. Two other men, both single, appear to have been most actively involved with their families when there was no other person (which essentially means a woman) available to take care of households in which the mother had fallen ill. Over several months in early 1990, one of these men, Miyata, was often absent or left work “early” at five—without doing any overtime, even though others in his section were staying late. When the shoproom phone rang late one March morning at about 8:10, Itai said “It’s Miyata right?... Boy, that’s dirty (Miyata desho- …Kitanee…).” Mr Shintani, Miyata’s foreman, said he thought that Miyata should get married soon so that his wife could take care of his mother and house, otherwise Miyata would not progress in his work. The other of these men, Horiuchi, talked of his experience in relation to the

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company thus: The good points of this company are good, you know. The time my mother was ill, being the only child I had to take care of her. For about a year, the company allowed me to arrive at work late, to leave early and to take days off from work to take my mother to the hospital. In that way, the company is really very good … I was often told by a friend that the company was really allowing me to do a lot (yoku yurushite kureta). That’s what a friend who’s employed at a large company said… These examples remind us that work and company involvement are intertwined with the lives, as wholes, of particular people, with their lifecourse relationships, here defined -by their families. The small company context is reflected here in several different ways. In the cases of Mr Tozawa, Miyata and Horiuchi, we can see—at both work and in the After-Hours—the flexibility of their company and companions. The firm made relatively few demands on their time outside of work, and even at work showed a recognition and understanding of the practical familial contingencies facing the men. There was no corporate ideology requiring these men to place the company before their families as is often reported to be more typical of larger Japanese enterprises (see, for example, Allison 1994). For other men, their employment as blue-collar workers in a small factory is implicated in being at home and helping with the kids in that they explained this in part as a consequence of their not having the money to engage in other more individually oriented activities. PRIVATE SELF “Private self” activities are those which people pursue on an individual basis by themselves or pursue for their selves. Two categories of private self activities are discussed below: those of which people talk without seeming to invest a sense of personal identity, which I label “free-time activities;” and those in which people seem to find a sense of personal identity, which are discussed under the rubric of “personal fulfillment and identity.” Free-time activities “Free-time activities” are typically those in which people engage by themselves to pass their leisure hours enjoyably, and which involve neither actively pursued interaction with others nor an investment of self-identity. Sepp Linhart has noted that: For a long time, the typical leisure behavior of the average Japanese was said to be nothing but killing time (hima tsubushi), and in many surveys on leisure behavior, “lying around” (gorone) placed ahead of all activities during

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leisure time. After the spread of television, gorone turned into terene (lying down to watch TV). Although terene and gorone are still fairly common features of Japanese free time, conspicuous forms of new and active leisure have appeared over the last 20 years or so, indicating a change from de aru [passive] leisure to suru [active] leisure. (1988:298; see also Masugata 1996) This description is appropriate for the “free-time activities” of the men and women working at Shintani Metals—primarily the men—as well. The main types of “free-time activities” among the men and women working at Shintani Metals included simply killing time by sleeping or watching television, playing pachinko, individually indulging in dissipation in the world of the “watertrades,” betting on horse races, and driving automobiles or motorcycles.2 Particularly conspicuous among the men who listed playing pachinko as a major way in which they spent their leisure time were four single men in their forties. Mr Nishiyama, occasionally referred to jokingly as “the Pachinko Uncle” (Pachinko Ojisan) by some of the younger men, spoke of now doing nothing but pachinko on weekends and holidays. Other men, young and old alike, also spoke of spending time at pachinko. Mr Ikeda, for example, remarked that he played pachinko “On Sundays, to kill time. For example, where I’ll be in the house throughout the morning and from after noon, I’m bored so, well, how about trying some pachinko. I play in that way.”3 Going to watch or betting on horse racing was another common activity that many of the men at the company claimed to engage in, usually on an individual basis or with one or two friends. The popularity of horse races first became apparent to me when I noticed that on Saturdays during the short tenminute afternoon break several men would gather around the television in the factory dining room to watch what races they could. Mr Murakami explained his enjoyment of betting on horse races, which he did in one form or another almost weekly, in reference to the fun of investigating horses’ pedigrees, records and so forth, and remarked: “Even if I lose, I don’t become disappointed at all. [The process] up to choosing is what’s enjoyable, considering all kinds of factors and then choosing.” Mr Tozawa’s comments, meanwhile, provide other psychological and economic bases for his fondness of racing: I like horse races. So, if I’ve got a little bit of money, I go to the racetrack to refresh myself (kibarashi ni). When I do that, whether there’s something at the company or some other disagreeable time, I completely forget such times. I forget whatever it is that I’m concerned about. When I returned to Japan during the summer of 1991, the enthusiasm for horse races had extended to more of the younger employees. This reflected the current popularity of horse racing among Japanese of all ages. The 1990 Japan Derby, for example, was reported to have had a record attendance of approximately

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196,500 people (Asahi Shimbun 1990). Apparently some of the women at the Shintani Metals factory had also been introduced to racing, though I imagine that they were yet far from becoming oyaji-gyaru (young women who enjoy activities such as horse races, golf and so forth previously associated with middle-aged men). The Japan Racing Association reported that in 1989 a total of 784,887 women went to ten of Japan’s race-tracks, comprising 8.7 percent of all visitors (Asahi Evening News 1990). Sports or athletics formed another free-tune leisure domain in which many people participated. Most did so primarily as spectators, but others found varying degrees of self-identity complementary to those of their work lives. Being a fan of rugby, like Kuwata and Nagashima, or of sumo, like Kuwata (again) and Itai, or being a fan of a professional baseball team such as the Yomiuri (Tokyo) Giants, like Nagashima,4 provided these people with nonwork or non-company topics of discourse and areas of activity to which to devote themselves. Fishing was another pastime that absorbed much of the talk and time of the older men in particular. Fishing is done with nakama co-worker friends, with non-company friends, or alone. Part of the appeal of fishing was expressed to me by none other than the Company President and Mr Shintani, who spoke of the pleasures of fishing as in being able to leave the world of work behind and to forget about everything else. This latter comment by Mr Shintani was confirmed when I asked his wife if she ever went fishing with him. She replied that she no longer did so because she got bored waiting for Mr Shintani, who would think of nothing but fishing—and she did not like being forgotten! Other people working at Shintani Metals pursued a variety of private interests during their free time, some of which also constituted, with varying degrees of meaningfulness, contexts for the exploration and expression of individual identities. Ms Imai had a special interest in reggae music, collecting reggae cassettes and CDs, going to concerts and so on; Mr Murakami had in younger days been particularly fond of the “modern jazz” sounds of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and others; Mr Kawai and Mrs Takeuchi both took “social dance” lessons; Inoue was a motorcycling enthusiast; Mr Higashi woke every morning at five a.m. and jogged five kilometers, and in the past was interested in wireless CB radio operation; Mr Nishiyama was a bowling enthusiast for several years, and was still recognized for his ability by the others at the company. There are two significant features which characterize many of the “freetime” activities as pursued by the people working at Shintani Metals. First of all, many are primarily male pursuits. They are representative, on the one hand, of male privilege or prerogative within the family (being able to sleep all day, or to go out without worrying about household duties) and society (enjoying water-trades’ play). Men are not as likely as are women to be socially sanctioned for these kinds of activities. On the other hand, many such free-time activities may be seen to evince the paucity of male roles inside the house. With few appropriately male roles to perform within the household—especially once

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one’s children are no longer infants or have entered junior high school—many men are, as it were, left to themselves. Second, there were conspicuous economic aspects to several of the freetime activities pursued by the people at Shintani Metals. These were not, for the most part, activities that necessarily required large amounts of money to enjoy. The primary exception here was perhaps that of diving into the world of the water-trades (on which see Bornoff 1991; Louis 1992; Morley 1985); but, to the best of my knowledge, this is a form of leisure entertainment which in its more expensive embodiments was not frequently indulged in by the men at Shintani Metals. Pachinko and horse race betting, meanwhile, gained part of their appeal through the prospect—more readily realizable with pachinko—of financial return. The relationship between employment, remuneration and leisure was brought home to me during my interview with Mr Abe, who had been with the company for thirty-four years. While discussing his leisure activities, Mr Abe at one point remarked that “All the things you want to do require money.” When I added that, yes, whatever one wants to do, time and money are necessary, Mr Abe continued: But, even though you say [that doing things requires] time, now we finish at 7:30 at the latest, right? In the past, there were times when we worked until 11:00 or all night [tetsuya]. So if you think about that, now we’ve got time don’t we? But, on the other hand, while in the past even though we did get extra overtime pay, because there wasn’t time to play, the money just accumulated. Now it’s become the reverse: we don’t get any overtime pay and we’ve got an excess of time. Times sure have changed. Now people talk about “Rich Japan” [kanemochi Nippon] but if you go somewhere at times like Obon, there’s nothing but traffic jams and so forth. With that, can you really talk about “Rich Japan?” If you think about it, between the people above and us regular folks [wareware ippanjin], there’s too great a gap, isn’t there? There’s only a small percentage of people above. Among us salarymen, I don’t think that there’s anyone who believes in “Rich Japan” or whatever. There are many interesting elements to these remarks. Suffice it here to suggest that this is a discourse of class differences in terms of leisure and work time and money. Personal fulfillment and self-identity Sepp Linhart has noted that there has been a trend not only “toward more active leisure behavior but also toward more individualistic and multi-faceted leisure, contrasting sharply with 1960 when most people had similar leisure patterns” (1988:300; emphasis added). Edwin Reischauer, meanwhile, provides

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a significant insight into the importance of certain of such “individualistic” leisure activities when he writes that: most Japanese do have their own personal literary, artistic, or performing skill, and this is not only a means of emotional self-expression but also a treasured element of self-identity…. We [Americans] tend to dismiss such activities rather lightly as hobbies, but the Japanese value them as shumi, or “tastes,” which help establish their identity and commonly become of increasing importance to them as they grow old. (1988:165; emphases added; see also Mori 1996) In this final section on personal identity and fulfillment, I want to examine some of the non-work sources of individual self-identity and fulfillment manifest among the people-employed at Shintani Metals. While artistic skills are among the identity-creating activities practiced by people at Shintani Metals, the ways of creating self-identity to be discussed here are more divergent than the Reischauer quote by itself would imply. Shumi (tastes) can include more than preferences and performances in the worlds of the arts, and for present purposes will be taken to include more plebeian pursuits and interests as well. Religious beliefs and practices also appear or are selfreported to provide particular individuals with a distinct sense of personal self-identity. Reischauer notes that shumi become increasingly important as practitioners get older. Frager and Rohlen have likewise noted that “It is fair to generalize that attitudes closer to the seishin [inner spirit] perspective are characteristic of older people and there is a progressive increase in such attitudes that parallels increasing age” (1976:267). Rohlen (1978) has explored the relationship between “the promise of adulthood” and seishin “spiritualism” more fully elsewhere as well. The age-related increase in the cultivation or polishing of the human spirit emphasized by these authors should not, however, be taken to mean that private preferences, interests and practices that are important sources of self-identity cannot also be found among younger Japanese (see also Moeran 1984a; for other discussions related to the concept of seishin, see Befu 1980; Kondo 1987, 1990; and Rohlen 1974b). Many of these activities of personal identity and fulfillment were not talked of very openly among co-workers at the Shintani Metals factory. Certainly, they did not seem to be spoken of in the same excited terms of self-satisfaction and unique individual interest or ability with which people talked with me in private conversations and in interviews. This public reticence may in part be explained by a reluctance to expose oneself to the sanction that by emphasizing one’s individuality in a public, and therefore inappropriate, context one is acting individualistically (cf. Moeran 1984a). The social “presentation of self in everyday life” (Goffman 1959) involves the presentation of a publicly appropriate self, not necessarily the self as singularly, individually or privately

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conceived, and it can, in Japan, involve the concealment of the self as privately conceived and constructed (see Lebra 1992b). To rephrase Y Scott Matsumoto (1960:60), the collectivity orientations of interaction in group contexts tend to preclude discussions of the personal and private. The skeptic may suggest that these discourses of personal identity and fulfillment are precisely and only that, more said than done. Even as only idealized discourses of private selves, however, they bear witness to domains of self-identity that are not bounded by “the group,” work or the company. Conversely, many of these leisure focused discussions and descriptions suggest that we should not divide leisure and work into completely separate domains, contexts or situations, but that we may instead often see rather personal, intimate interrelationships between the leisure- and work-based experiences and identities of people.5 The range of fields of action within which, through which, the people working at Shintani Metals pursued private practices of self were diverse and the modes and attitudes of practice and participation were varied. Certain people were simultaneously involved in more than one such endeavor, and, further, it was at times difficult to differentiate the practices of “free-time activities” from those of a more fully private nature. Nonetheless, I do believe that the practices of self to be discussed below constitute significant avenues for the construction of private domains of meaning and self-identity. It should also be remembered that domains of public action, such as work or family involvement, also comprised major contexts of self-identity for many if not most of the Shintani Metals employees. Such public avenues for the pursuit of and venues for the construction and presentation of self, however, are not the only paths to self-identity available. As Lebra notes, self in Japan is: divided into the outwardly (socially) involved and the inwardly oriented realms. The two realms make complementary or compensatory oppositions or juxtapositions. It is the inner self that provides a fixed core for selfidentity and subjectivity, and forms a potential basis for autonomy from the ever-insatiable demands from the social world. (1992b:112) I will discuss four types of complementary or alternative practices of “inner” self-identity found among the people working at Shintani Metals: religion, arts, craft- or skill-related interests, and a miscellaneous “other” category. That participation in religious activities and that religious belief comprise important sources of deeply personal meaning should come as no surprise. In the Japanese case, however, discussions of corporate communities seem generally to have ignored even this as a significant, everyday source of identity for employees outside of work or the family. By failing to consider the importance of religion in the lives of these people, they are analytically reconstituted and reduced to being simply “employees.” The continuing

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importance of ancestor worship (Plath 1964b; R.Smith 1974), at least, should caution us that religion in Japan has an on-going and varied set of quotidian presences and consequences (Reader 1991; see also J.Roberts et al. 1986). For four of the people working at the Shintani Metals Company, religious beliefs and/or practices formed important private spaces of self-identity, of the private discovery, construction and expression of self. I first became aware of Mr Kamimura’s interest in religion at the Baseball Club’s New Year’s Party, when during the frenetic informal phase of the evening’s festivities we sat a bit apart from the other, younger revelers and talked for the first time. He told me that his real interest did not lie in his daytime work at the company but in a small “new religion” to which he felt he “was called.” Handing me his non-Shintani Metals business card, bearing the inscription “Heavenly Order” (Tenmei), he indicated that it and our conversation were to be kept secret from the others. Mr Kamimura was not simply a participant, I later learned, but a practitioner in this “new religion.” After at first more or less resisting becoming too involved, then going through a five-year training period, Mr Kamimura said that for the past five years he had been treating people troubled by various kinds of spirits, looking into their futures and so forth. This religious practice kept him busy since he claimed to see one or two people five nights per week. It was his spiritual work to which Mr Kamimura felt that he must dedicate himself more fully in the future, giving up his day-time job: Therefore really I have to quit this company, become earnest and go in that direction, but it’s difficult to make that move. In common terms I am, more or less, the founder (kyo-so) of a new “New Religion.” So, from now on that’s the direction that I have to build up. So, it’s in that direction that I must proceed, in that direction that I must part ways and go. So, really, I should really completely quit soon and just do the one thing. I don’t know but somehow it’s all been decided for me (sadamerareta). It’s that sort of feeling. Later, giving a more practical reason for not being able to leave his day-time job, Mr Kamimura said that the traveling related to his religious practice and that gathering religious paraphernalia were very expensive. However, no money comes in at all. So, I have to work to make money (kaseganakucha ikenai). So, I have to eat and if I don’t work I can’t eat so, for now, I’m working and receiving wages and they pretty much become living expenses. Ian Reader has recently observed that “besides the larger new religions of Japan there are countless other small-scale religious groups, usually gathered around one figure of power who caters to the needs of a small following” (1991:129), and that besides major charismatic leaders:

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there are also countless other religious practitioners ranging from diviners to spirit mediums and shamanic healers, all of whom incorporate several of the themes of ascetic practice, often as a result of some affliction or calling, leading to the ability to mediate in some way between human beings and the spiritual world. This often involves the manifestation of a facility to predict the future, communicate with the spirits of the dead, or perhaps identify the spiritual cause of a problem or illness and eradicate it in some way. (1991:129) While this is not the place to get into the religious aspects, as such, of Mr Kamimura’s activities, what I wish to draw attention to here is that he was not alone as a lay spiritualist, and that while the company context had monetary and other implications for his religious practice, in being such a spiritualist Mr Kamimura was not just an employee of a company, “Confucian” or other. Mr Kamimura, I was later to discover, was not the only person at the company involved in one of Japan’s many smaller religious-spiritualist groups. During a brief trip to Japan in the summer of 1991, Horiuchi told me about his involvement in one such group centered around an elderly woman leader. Once he broached the subject, Horiuchi talked excitedly for hours of the “Sensei” and of various other spiritual and supernatural matters. He said that he had been studying a form of geomancy (ho-igaku) with this Sensei, in which auspicious and inauspicious directions are determined, and that she could, as well, see human auras, communicate with human spirits and discern one’s previous lives (zensei). The importance of Horiuchi’s relationship with this Sensei was intensely personal. The Sensei was supposedly able to tell that Horiuchi had lost his mother, and offered to act as surrogate mother for him, offering to talk with him, to listen to him at any time. Talking to the Sensei, Horiuchi said, gave him a peace of mind that he had not known before meeting her. Horiuchi also said that his father had come to like and often to visit the Sensei as well. After beginning these visits, his father became much more helpful at home, doing some of the cooking and housework that, since his mother’s death, Horiuchi had been doing. The significance of his relationship with the Sensei was not, however, just religious or psycho-emotional in nature. The new company which Horiuchi entered subsequent to leaving Shintani Metals was owned by a man who was himself a follower of the Sensei. People working in smaller companies live in an intimate world of human feelings and relations, where an introduction from the right person can more easily lead to changes in careers and lives, than among people employed by larger, more secure companies, whose lives tend to be more structurally bound. Another of the people (formerly) working at Shintani Metals for whom religious belief and practice were central in pursuing and defining personal

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self was Ms Terauchi. This quiet young woman was a member of a Baptist church to which she had been introduced approximately three years prior to my fieldwork. Certainly one of the most unexpected experiences of my fieldwork was to talk up on the factory roof with Ms Terauchi about creationism for several days during the lunch break. I have previously introduced Ms Terauchi as someone whose personal beliefs led her not to participate in After-Hours socializing. In mid-September of 1990, Ms Terauchi left Shintani Metals to join a Christian theater group. Although somewhat concerned about the financial insecurity of not being employed in a regular job, but instead doing temporary part-time (arubaito) jobs while working for the theater group, she eventually did leave Shintani Metals to pursue this more personally fulfilling religiously founded theatrical endeavor. Ms Terauchi, as a person, is certainly better described as a young Christian woman employed at Company X than as an employee of Company X who also happens to be Christian. For the three people described above religion had become a central aspect of their lives, a central theme in discourses of themselves, a central resource in the construction of their private selves. For Mr Murakami, religion appeared to play a more peripheral, but still significant role in defining his private selfidentity. Mr Murakami had had an interest in Zen Buddhism since his university days, when he also studied William Blake. He still did zazen (seated meditation) each morning, and on occasional evenings, and he continued to read about Zen.6 When I asked if he had ever studied at a Zen temple, he replied: No, I haven’t. I don’t really like the religious groups (shu- kyo- no dantai) of the Zen Religion. No, like Suzuki Daisetsu, although I like Zen—Zen Religion, Zen priests and that sort of thing [I don’t like]. But really that’s no good, I guess. Really you have to find a good teacher (erai hito) and do it one-on-one. That’s what I really think, but somehow I’m not any good [at that]. Entering that sort of organization is something which my nature can’t do. Somehow it seems like that. While Zen may constitute a complementary context outside of work and the company for the definition of private self for Mr Murakami, his participation and psychological involvement in religion were neither as group oriented nor as deep as those of the three people introduced above. And it should be remembered that Mr Murakami had similarly avoided long-term membership in, especially large, work organizations, having made a career mostly of shortterm arubaito jobs (see Chapter 5). Just as I was rather surprised to find such religiously oriented people at this small factory, so I was also surprised to discover at least six other “workers” whose private lives included artistic interests and pursuits. For most of these six, art seemed to be a field of individual interest and individ-uating action which, like religious action, constituted a complementary context for the

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construction of self-identity. Like the religious activities above, these artistic fields of interest and endeavor were not complementary in an unconnected manner, but were instead interrelated with the long-term construction of lifecourse and self-identity for these individuals. The significance of artistic interests may be seen in the influence of artistic aspirations on educational decisions for several of the Shintani Metals employees. Kiyohara, of the Crafts section, decided to enter a vocational school to study drawing and painting, instead of attempting to enter a university. Ms Imai explained how she had made the decision to enroll in the art program at her university: To begin with, I was taking extra time to enter. One year. I had made a big mistake. At first, I took [the exam for] the English Literature Department. I didn’t make it, and then I thought that—if you have that extra year you think a lot—I couldn’t miss another year. The English Literature Department only does literature so, because my interests were in speaking and linguistics and so forth, I thought that I didn’t really have to be at a university for that. And, I didn’t really want to do literature, English language lit. So since that’s how I really felt, then I thought I wanted to take the exam for my own true interest. I passed and so studied art and painting. While this passage reveals Ms Imai’s conflicting interests in English and in art, as well as revealing some rather interesting dynamics involved in taking university exams, it also indicates Ms Imai’s final decision to enter university to pursue the study of her “true interest” in art. The role of artistic interests is also educationally revealed in the decisions of Mr Okakura and of Ms Imai to undertake private art lessons outside of the regular school system. During her year as a ro-nin, Ms Imai studied painting from a private tutor. After beginning to work at Shintani Metals (her second place of employment), she was for some time taking lessons from a private night school in schematic design drawing. Mr Okakura spent six years completing a (normally three-year) correspondence course in painting. Interest in art also influenced the employment-related decisions of several people. Ms Imai, for example, has been doing jewelry design-related work since graduating from college. Mr Doi and Kiyohara talked of past or future jobs allowing or based on artistic interests (in theater and painting, respectively). Shinoyama was a semi-professional photographer who had been involved in photography for over ten years. He began in a photography club: After that I was asked by an acquaintance in the publishing business to take photographs as a job. Since that time, I began taking pictures to put in their books. At first I did photography as an amateur, for fun. But from about three years ago I’ve come to take pictures as a job…. It’s a temporary parttime job (arubaito). I’m doing it as a side-business.

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It was Mr Okakura who was most completely involved in art. Forty-eight at the time I was at the Shintani Metals factory, Mr Okakura had been painting since he was eighteen years of age. When I asked if he was still painting, he replied, with typically modest understatement: Well, yes, I do paint occasionally. When I go on a trip, I often take a sketch book with me, and that sort of thing. I’d like to paint as much as possible, but there are times when it’s just not possible. The understatement of this was more fully revealed to me when I visited Mr Okakura’s home and was shown paintings and sketches that he had done. Some were displayed on the walls of the downstairs rooms, others he brought down from one of the rooms upstairs which he used as a studio. Mr Okakura’s artistic talents were not confined, however, to painting. He also took calligraphy lessons for quite some time, painting and writing his own year-end nengajo- greeting cards. He studied the tea ceremony for close to six years, and had an on-going interest in Kabuki—the latter acquired during his childhood from his mother when they lived in the downtown (shitamachi) area near Ueno. Mr Okakura also began making and repairing violins in the late 1980s, at the encouragement of and in association with a friend of his. He said that he used the money he made from violin repairs for his other individual pursuits such as calligraphy and painting. Talking about his various interests, Mr Okakura once compared his “selfish” hobbies with those of other men who, instead of spending time with their families as their wives’ would like them to, gamble, go to the horse races, go out drinking and so forth. As was mentioned in Chapter 5, it was his interest in art and craftsmanship which influenced Mr Okakura’s decision to change occupations, from making shoes to making and repairing jewelry. Though he never did more overtime work than necessary, he had more recently been taking advantage of the 1990s recession induced decline in overtime at the factory to continue to pursue his Private Time interests—now primarily focused on the Grafting, repairing and playing of violins. These were people for whom art has been, is now, or hopefully will be of significance in their Private Time pursuits, in expressing and creating their self-identities. What is of interest here is that for these people artistic interests provide activities and contexts other than just work and company for the construction of a sense of self-identity; and, at the same, the work- and company-related experiences of these individuals must be understood in interrelation with their private artistic interests, activities and identities. The relationship between skill- or craft-related interests and working at Shintani Metals has already been introduced in the discussions of paths of entry to and exit from the company (Chapters 5 to 7; see also Mouer 1995). Miyata, for example, whose hobbies included making hunting knives, noted that one of the reasons he came to Shintani Metals was to learn how to use the various tools

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involved in working by hand with metal. Horiuchi was not alone when he later speculated that it was Miyata’s dissatisfaction in not being able to spend more time learning such skills that led him to eventually quit the company. Ms Fujikawa was another who was attracted to working at the factory (with Kinsei Fine Metals) because of an interest in the skills involved, and which she used in one of her Private Time pastimes, making rings and other jewelry on her own. The overlap of work-related skills and Private Time pursuits is also revealed in the following retrospective statement by Mr Ikeda. He here revealed his enjoyment of making things with his hands, replicating in private pursuit the labor he performed as an employee of Shintani Metals. When I asked what his interests or hobbies outside of work were, Mr Ikeda replied: Now, I don’t have anything that you can really call a hobby. But, I’m talking about in the past now…but I really liked making things. It was what I really loved, it’s only this that I wanted to try doing—for example, making models and the like. I especially liked train models. In the past I would construct those sorts of things carefully, without sleeping. After my son was born, when he was still small, I used him as an excuse and made plastic models and train models and so forth with him. Now, I hardly ever do that sort of thing. Mr Honda, like Mr Ikeda one of the older, long-employed men at the factory, also enjoyed “working” with his hands, making things, in his Private Time pursuits (he also professed to like golf, although he began only three years ago and rarely ever had time to play).7 In an interesting twist to my question about what he thought were the drawbacks of working at the company (for Mr Honda, Kinsei Fine Metals), he replied: I entered because I wanted to, and so I’m satisfied with this company. But, after I reach retirement age at fifty-five, because I want to do things that I like, I want to quit. In other words, I want to do what I want to do. Even if it doesn’t make any money, I entered the company because I like fine metals, right, so I want to do things like make rings for my wife and kids. Not taking money for it or without being requested by other people, making things that I’m satisfied with. This is my dream. I don’t know if that’s possible after another five years or not, but… The main point that I want to draw attention to here is that the creative use outside the company of skills learned at work can be a source of personal satisfaction, a source for the creation and expression (even if in retrospective or prospective reflection) of personal interests and identities. Finally, I would like to mention two other men for whom Private Time interests seemed to take on particular personal significance. While many people at the company enjoyed sports of one sort or in one way or another, it was perhaps Yamaguchi for whom sports had greatest meaning. Yamaguchi was a serious mountain climbing enthusiast, having begun about three years before

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my entry into Shintani Metals. He was generally an extremely silent and serious person at work. If one engaged him in a conversation about the mountains of Japan or about mountain climbing, however, he became lively and talkative, authoritatively describing the degrees of difficulty of particular mountains, his favorite ranges and so forth. He trained on weekends, taking off Saturdays as well (once or twice per month, maximum, he said) if these were not company holidays. He was, further, a member of a mountain climbing club, and during 1990 was training and making preparations to go with a group of eight other members to Nepal. He had arranged his passport and visa, had spent most of his summer’s bonus on equipment, and had gotten approval from the company to take off the two months (September and October) necessary to fulfill this dream—though he had been prepared, he told me, to quit the company if his request were refused. Then his father, who had been in poor health, was hospitalized. Instead of leaving for the Himalayas, Yamaguchi stayed to care for his father, who died shortly thereafter. As is true among Japanese generally, traveling was a popular leisure activity among the men and women at Shintani Metals. However, traveling became especially significant as a source of and a context for the expression of individual identity for Kuwata. This young man, who had been working at the company for eight years after graduating from Tokyo Industrial High School, took a three and a half week vacation during July and August of 1990 to travel, by himself, to Europe. Although he had mentioned his plans to me while talking in a small izakaya restaurant the preceding February, it was not until late April that Kuwata talked with his foreman about his plans. Until then, Kuwata had expressed reservations about being financially able, or receiving the company’s okay, to take so much time off. These concerns were inspired in part by another man’s having recently quit Kuwata’s workgroup, and by the plans of Yamaguchi to go mountain climbing in Nepal. Conversely, Kuwata had also expressed a resolve, echoing that of Yamaguchi, to quit the company if denied his request for a leave of absence. After receiving the Factory Manager’s okay, Kuwata wrote a formal letter of absence in mid-July, notifying the company of his intention to take time off from work and to make use of sixteen of his accumulated days of paid vacation (yu-kyu-). Kuwata’s itinerary—leaving just after and returning just before paydays in July and August respectively, having the summer Obon holidays (at Shintani Metals, including a three-day weekend during the first week of August and an extra three weekdays during the third week of the month) fall within his vacation time, and making use of his accumulated vacation time—allowed him to return to the company and pick up close to a normal month’s wages. Upon his return, Kuwata seemed to be treated as, and to have somewhat taken on the air of, someone who had returned from an adventure of grand proportions. Kuwata’s journey to Europe remained a major topic of conversation

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for him for many months. One should, indeed, note the distinctiveness of Kuwata’s (and Yamaguchi’s planned) trip. Mr Shintani, for example, remarked that the seven consecutive days that he took off during the summer holidays that year constituted the longest single vacation of his thirty-five odd years at the company. Conversely, that the company was willing to allow Kuwata so much time off from work and that others at the company accepted his extended absence, were even envious of him, reveals some of the institutional and personal flexibility that is characteristic of smaller companies in Japan—through necessity and preference. Certainly the company was at least partially motivated to accept his absence because Kuwata was one of the younger men upon whom the company would have to depend as the current generation of older foremanlevel employees reach retirement age. At the same time, however, Kuwata’s suggestions that he would consider leaving Shintani Metals in favor of actualizing his vacation plans, reflected, rhetorically at least, the perception of many people in Japan in 1989 and 1990, and especially those employed in smaller companies, that other work was available elsewhere according to need or inclination. Kuwata’s adventure, like other people’s private practices, reveals a pursuit, a performance, of identity both contexted within and extending beyond company boundaries. CONCLUSION In their Private Time leisure activities, people relax, pursue pleasurable recreation and the (re)creation of private identities. One of the objectives of this chapter has been to demonstrate that, as seen in their private leisure pursuits, the men and women at Shintani Metals had lives and identities which in various ways transcended the company and work context. This does not, however, mean that the small company and blue-collar context of their employment was unrelated to their more private leisure time activities. As Rojek notes more generally, “one cannot separate leisure from the rest of life and claim that it has unique ‘laws,’ propensities and rhythms” (1995:1). In the Private Time leisure activities of the Shintani Metals employees may be found an interplay of factors related to lifecourse, company and self-identity. The small company and blue-collar contexts of their employment have various implications for many of the Private Time leisure pursuits of the Shintani Metals workers. There were, for example, several men and women whose interests included the use of skills and crafts related to their work. In some instances, it was difficult to determine which had (chronological or other) priority. In either case, there was also arguably a reflection of class culture in the manual nature of these skill/craft interests that should not be overlooked. Furthermore, the men and women working at Shintani Metals faced employment-related economic constraints in enjoying their private time. We

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have thus seen that certain of the men remained at home more often than they would have liked, while others restricted their expenditures accordingly or arranged their vacations so as to avoid major losses of pay. The passive “killing” of time at home, low-wage betting and playing pachinko, as well, take on distinctive significance for working class people earning lower wages. On the other hand, as people employed by a small company, the Shintani Metals employees were less constrained by real or ideological corporate demands on their personal time and commitments. As we have seen, for example, they were less constrained to be present at “After-Hours” events involving co-workers. Thus, the small company context, while not affecting religious belief as such, could allow those people at Shintani Metals greater flexibility in the pursuit of their Private Time religious practices. The small company context certainly also allowed decisions to be made more easily to devote oneself to one’s religious pursuits, persona and relationships, as was seen with several of these individuals’ intentions or actual decisions to leave the company. One is, quite simply, not forsaking or risking as much in leaving a small company as in quitting a larger enterprise. And, in a working class context, one is perhaps less likely to be culturally sanctioned for taking such privately oriented action. The relationships and activities of “Private Time” can be of great significance as complementary or alternative sources for or contexts of the construction and (re)creation of private lives and self-identities. The importance to several of the men and women of religion, artistic skills and crafts, and other interests, beliefs and practices should make it clear that if one’s goal is to understand these “workers” as people, in the roundness of their lives, one cannot ignore such Private Time contexts or pursuits of personal fulfillment and private self. At the same time, however, it should be clear that in various ways these people’s Private Time activities and interests are in fact related to their employment at Shintani Metals. We have seen in a number of cases, such as in the artistic interests of Ms Imai or Mr Okakura, that those Private Time interests or activities in a certain sense led to those individuals’ employment at Shintani Metals. And we have seen that religious or other interests and identities led several of the employees to leave the company. This trans-contextual continuity or complementarity of interests and the related construction of self-identities is important, for it shows that we cannot reduce these people just to their work or to their leisure time contexts of experience. We will return to this point in more detail in the concluding chapter since it returns us to the suggestion made in the introduction that class, lifecourse and self-identity be seen as multiply interrelated.

11 Conclusion Of contexts and connections

Shintani Metals is but one small manufacturing company located in Tokyo, Japan. Every work-day morning, the men and women employed at the factory arrive, exchange greetings and settle into the day. On some days the pace is not as fast as on others, but these men and women work hard and do their jobs well. They are working in this small factory to make their livings. For some, the work, and for some also the company and its owner/president, have central places in their lives and senses of personal identity. For others, the work is just a job and Shintani Metals is only the place where they happen to be currently employed. But, whatever their centrality, and whether on the job or off, work and company are not the only defining contexts or interests in these people’s lives and identities. These men and women also pursue, find and enjoy meaning in activities and relationships beyond the work context. When they can, and in their own various ways, these men and women also play hard. Company and workers, work and leisure—however important they may separately be, it is only in attempting to understand the connections among them that we begin to see at least some of the contours of the lives and identities of the people involved. In the remaining few pages, I want to turn to a brief consideration of some such connections and what they may mean for attempts to understand the lives and identities of people in Japan, and elsewhere. Over the last several years there have been a number of publications which have stressed the situatedness, shifting and multiplicity which may be seen as part of the Japanese sense of self (cf. Bachnik and Quinn 1994; Rosenberger 1992a). The Japanese, in such views, “are not essentialized individuals” (Rosenberger 1992b:13). Instead, “identity and context are inseparable” (Kondo 1990:29; see also Kondo 1992) and the Japanese self is viewed as constructed “through indexing of anchor points in a particular relationship situation” (Bachnik 1994:157; emphasis added). As explained in the introduction to this book, I support theoretical attempts to analyze the reflexive nature of cultural practice (Bourdieu 1977, 1984; Giddens 1979, 1984; Ortner 1984), and I also support arguments that notions of the self, like other cultural “constructions,” vary across cultures (see, for example, Erchak 1992; Morris 1994; Shweder and Bourne 1984). The recent 190

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literature on self in Japan has added much dynamism and complexity to our notions of the Japanese sense of self. However, in emphasizing the “multiplicity” and the “shifting” nature of the self, and in concentrating on “situation” and discourse, I am afraid that the recent writing on the Japanese self does not always adequately consider the significance of lifecourse and related trans-situational continuities which also characterize self(-identity). Along these lines, Giddens (1991b) refers to “the trajectory of the self.” He suggests that self-identity is an on-going, “reflexive project” which involves the self in “the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives” (ibid.: 5). According to Giddens, “Identity still presumes continuity across time and space, but self-identity is such continuity as interpreted reflexively by the agent” (ibid.: 53; italics added). Self-identity “forms a trajectory across the different institutional settings of modernity over the durée of what used to be called the ‘life cycle”’ (ibid.: 14). In considering the lives of the men and women working at Shintani Metals, this kind of conception is important since it allows us to recognize that lives, self-identities and selves are constructed (continue and change) across the long course of time, not just in or from one particular situation or interactive context to the next. Thus, for example, we may see connections and continuities of self and self-identity in the work and play of someone like Mr Okakura, who after pursuing a career as a shoe craftsman entered the Kinsei Fine Metals Company partly because of his interests in art. Mr Murakami, on the other hand, has constructed a work history in which he has frequently moved from one place and form of employment to another, in part because of his desire to avoid being “tied down”—which is similar to the reasons he gave for avoiding involvement in formal religious organizations despite his private religious interests and practice. To understand the continuing employment at Shintani Metals of Mr Kamimura, to understand him as a “worker,” it is also necessary that we see his actions in this regard as connected, and relative, to his private religious practice. He may not normally show and we may not otherwise see this underlying self-identity, but it in fact informs his work(ing). In more quotidian fashion, of course, to understand the actions at work or at play of the part-timers, of the older foremen, and of the younger working men and women, it is necessary to see their actions, behaviors, conversations, “narratives” and “discourses” within the on-going flow of the trajectories of their self-identities and lives. As such, I do not think that it is adequate only to talk about those dimensions of the self that may be seen as situated, multiple or shifting from one context to the next (cf. Lebra 1992b). How and why people become participants in certain situations is something that each person, in the negotiated construction of their self-identities and lifecourses/self-trajectories, comes to determine or accept. Likewise, the significance or meaningfulness of their presence and participation in those particular contexts is something which often can only be understood when longer term views of events and individuals are taken.

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Kuwayama thus writes that “the group-oriented, dependent, relational, and situational self of the Japanese people is inseparably related to their strong sense of an individual self, which gives them an unchanging identity and consistency across time and space” (1989:420). Takie Lebra has similarly suggested that in addition to a more “precarious, vulnerable, relative, unfixed” “interactional self” among the Japanese, there is also a more stable “inner self” that is more immune from social relativity and that is sought inwardly (1992b:111–12). Thus, if there is a multidimensionality or multiplexity to self(identity) in Japan, there is also a recognizable, self-referenced sense of inner self that is reflexively interrelated with the construction of experience across the course or trajectory of one’s life (course or path). In restoring a temporally embedded notion of self(-identity), we are necessarily already in the realm of “lifecourse,” in which the two are seen as reflexively intertwined. Just as we cannot really begin to understand Mr Murakami’s decision to work at Shintani Metals without understanding the sense of self-identity which leads him to avoid long-term bonds to formal organizations, so we cannot understand his having moved from an “uncountable” number of workplaces without understanding his personal sense of self-identity, and recognizing its long-term continuity across the “different institutional settings of modernity over the durée of what used to be called the ‘life cycle’” (Giddens 1991b:14). As was suggested especially in the chapters which dealt with entering and leaving Shintani Metals, the construction of lifecourse, the trajectories of self(identity) across the long course of experience, while significantly interrelated with individual self-identity, must also be seen within the broader enabling and constraining contexts of class (as materially and culturally constituted). The educational- and employment-related experiences of many if not all of the men and women reflect the objective material constraints, necessities and contingencies that their families or they themselves have faced. Being unable to pursue higher levels of education, being faced with employment in a company whose financial stability is in doubt or which has failed, and so forth, are class-related aspects of the contexts in which individual experience is constructed. Similarly, being faced with the opportunity to move to another company, and being able to do so without undue social sanction, may also be seen as class-related dimensions of the decisions involved in directing the trajectories of self across the course of life. All such class-related constraints and opportunities, reflected in various ways also in leisure relationships and activities, are embodied in the “structured diversity” of experience which I believe may be found among the working class men and women at Shintani Metals—and, I would suggest, is likely to be found in other working class contexts. This diversity or flexibility of experience and practice, furthermore, seems to me to be relatively distinct from what has often been portrayed to be the case among members of Japan’s salaried middle class and so suggests also a greater amount of individual and class-based

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diversity to Japanese society as a whole than has previously been described, suggested or ideologically asserted to be the case. Japanese people are not all the same, neither in the conditions of life with which they interact in making their livings and constructing their lives and identities, nor in the interpretive, evaluative cultural frameworks which they employ in doing so. There are, of course, (increasingly diverse) differences in ethnicity in Japan (see Kelly 1991; Lie 1996; Maher and Macdonald 1995; Weiner 1997). However, even for that majority of “Yamato” Japanese, there are relative, relational class-based distinctions which, like ethnicity, deserve more critical ethnographic attention than they have thus far received (see Lie 1996; Sugimoto 1997). Seen from a practice theory perspective, class reproduction is something which is reflexively implicated in individual action. The educational-, employment- and leisure-related decisions of each of the men and women at Shintani Metals reflect both the constraints and opportunities of their class situations, and each decision and action contributes to the reproduction of the institutions, relationships and attitudes which characterize their lives. The decisions of several of the men (and a few of the women) at Shintani Metals to pursue manufacturing work there, and elsewhere, were due in part to personal interests in working with machines or in making things, or were due to senses of self in which factory and not other kinds of work were felt to be suitable or appropriate. These kinds of interests, senses of identity and so forth, as suggested by Bourdieu (1984; see also Dunk 1991; MacLeod 1995; Willis 1977), must be seen as class contexted and as part of class reproduction. And so, though not in a wholly seamless fashion, we are back to self and selfidentity. As an anthropologist attempting to come to some understanding of the lives of the Shintani Metals Company’s employees, I have found it necessary to go both into and beyond the company context. As a small manufacturing firm, the company is itself a nexus of individual, social and economic influences, factors and fields. To confine an anthropological discussion to the boundaries of the company context is no more tenable than confining descriptions of communities within their borders. Similarly, to confine our understandings of people working at a given enterprise to the company or work context or to their being company employees or workers, or to fragment our understandings of them into discussions of differently contexted) selves, is to deny to them the possibilities of continuity and integrity of experience and identity across contexts and across time. The men and women working at Shintani Metals are blue-collar workers employed at a small company, but they are also, and first of all, individuals constructing self-identities and experience as best they can across the long course of their lives—at work and at play, and beyond—as members of the Japanese working class.

Notes

1 JAPANESE WORKING CLASS LIVES: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES 1 Mr Shintani should not be confused with either the Company President or the Factory Manager, who is the President’s son. See the Note on Japanese names. 2 Interestingly enough, a recent American novel about a Japanese businessman stationed in the United States is titled simply Salaryman (Pei 1992). 3 The two works by Chalmers (1989) and Friedman (1988) interestingly replicate a debate regarding the appropriateness of characterizing the Japanese economy as exhibiting a “dual structure.” This most simply refers to a pervasive differentiation between large enterprises (dai-kigyo-) and medium-small enterprises (chu-sho--kigyo-). The distinction between these is both legislatively and academically institutionalized and, regardless of its empirical reality, continues to be culturally significant (Kondo 1990:52–3; see also Kiyonari 1996a). Broadbridge was one of an earlier generation of scholars making prognostications that the dual structure should or would eventually disappear (1966:95; see also Watanabe 1965:308). This has not happened. Some scholars have expressed hesitations regarding the appropriateness of viewing the Japanese economy as dual-structured, preferring to emphasize the “industrial gradation” of firms (Clark 1979:64ff; see also Nakamura 1986:100; Patrick and Rohlen 1987:354). I accept this caution. However, while I recognize that there is not a simple large versus medium-small dualism, I also maintain that company size remains important (see also Ishida 1993; Kosaka 1994a; Lie 1996; Miwa 1996; Sugimoto 1997; C.Turner 1995; Whittaker 1997). 4 My attempts to find detailed ethnographic research in Japanese focusing on the people working in medium-small enterprises—describing, for example, their work experiences and lifestyles—have turned up mainly journalistic or autobiographic pieces such as those by Hagiwara (1982) and Koseki (1990), or that may be found in Kamata(1986). 5 I am somewhat tempted to include Matthews Hamabata’s (1990) ethnography in the main text here, but since his research concerned families owning larger do-zoku gaisha, I merely footnote this otherwise very interesting investigation of some of the private dimensions of entrepreneurial families. 6 These are problems, one may note, not just for the ethnography of work(ers) in Japan, but for the anthropology of work more generally, as represented by Applebaum (1981, 1984a, 1984b), Gamst (1977, 1980) and Wallman (1979). Interesting discussions of North American working class people which get beyond factory or office walls and which might serve as useful models for further research in Japan include Pilcher (1972), LeMasters (1975) and Dunk (1991).

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7 DiMaggio notes that “Bourdieu, in a discussion of France that could doubtless be generalized to other advanced capitalist societies, denies the existence of an autonomous working class culture, contending that there are only different relationships to the dominant culture” (1979:1464; emphasis added). I take this statement to be appropriate also for the Japanese case. 8 A classless, cultural concern with historical cohorts characterizes other work on lifecourse (see, for example, Spencer 1990). While not dealing with lifecourse as such, the failure of Langness and Frank (1981) to consider class contexts in the construction of individual lives and ethnographic life histories is telling. One interesting exception to this failure to locate lifecourse and life history in an interpretive space that accommodates class and class culture is Hill Gates’s (1987) interweaving of post-war Taiwanese history and a series of individual life histories. 9 Part of the problem here may well involve the use of dominant Western conceptualizations of the individual. Ortner, for example, notes that “the dominant theory of motivation in practice anthropology is derived from interest theory. The model is that of an essentially individualistic, and somewhat aggressive, actor, self-interested, rational, pragmatic, and perhaps with a maximizing orientation as well” (1984:151). While this criticism may be more appropriate for the structuration theory of Giddens than for Bourdieu’s theory of practice, it is certainly true that, questionable even in Western cultures, the interpretive employment of such individualistic notions of the social person is especially problematic in Asian cultures such as (but not uniquely limited to) Japan, where conceptualizations and ideologies emphasize the social interrelatedness of the person (not to be confused with self. See Hamaguchi 1985; Kumon 1982; Lebra 1976; Rosenberger 1992a.) 2 GETTING THERE AND GETTING IN 1 These include several interesting works by Americans with genealogical roots in Japan: Edwards (1989), Hamabata (1990), Kondo (1990); see also Bachnik (1978). The ambiguities, the frustrations and the rewards of being a Japanese-American in Japan have also recently been portrayed in two more purely biographical books by Minatoya (1992) and Mura (1991). Such writings, though showing certain interesting parallels in experience and sharing problems of perspective or exposition, offer a welcome relief from the dominant novelistic (lyer 1991; Leithauser 1985; Morley 1985), biographical (Booth 1985; Davidson 1993; Feiler 1991; Richie 1971), or more purely journalistic (Meyer 1988; Rauch 1992) descriptions of the personal encounters of Westerners with “Japan” and “the Japanese” (to list only a few of the more recent inscriptions of this literary genre—the texts of which deserve more thorough scholarly consideration [but see Johnson 1988] if not determined deconstruction, and may suggest that the subjective/reflexive “moment” in ethnography needs to be approached critically and with scholarly discipline). 2 On writing, authorship and so forth, see Clifford and Marcus (1986); Geertz (1988); Marcus and Fischer (1986). 3 I use nakama here in the more inclusive sense of in-group or reference-group member (see Chapter 9 for more on nakama). 4 Natto- consists of rather pungent and sticky fermented soy beans. 5 Christena Turner’s (1995) experiences of “getting there” and “getting in” in part reflect the importance of the political bases of her introductions and receptions in studying the unions at two small companies. 6 This is one reason why I have some reservations about any “anthropology of work” which remains restricted by the boundaries of company or factory (or other) walls, and

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about any ethnography which focuses too much on “contexted” or “situated” discourse and so forth.

3 SHINTANI METALS: COMPANY HISTORY 1 Unlike the larger firm investigated by Han (1991), the Shintani Metals Company has no written history and no documents such as company or union newsletters from which to compose such a history. 2 Throughout this and the next chapter, my interests in the Company President’s and other people’s comments lie in the narratives of self and lifecourse revealed and in the general progression of events. I am much less concerned with any particular discrepancies regarding historical accuracy, and have made no effort to correct these where they occur. 3 A tsukudaniya is a shop (ya) making or selling food boiled down in soy sauce (tsukudani). 4 All translations of Japanese texts and transcripts are my own. 5 Artisanal and entrepreneurial pursuits and goals among people working in smaller firms are not, of course, uniquely Japanese phenomena. R.Stites, for example, notes that workers in Taiwan, especially those in small enterprises, may be seen to be following a security-oriented strategy in which employment is interim to entrepreneurship (1985; see also DeGlopper 1979; Harrell 1985; Mark 1972; Niehoff 1987; Stites 1982). 6 See Ikko Shimizu’s (1996) novel Keiretsu for an interesting (semi-)fictional description of the pressures some (even fairly large) subcontractors may receive from contracting “parent” companies. 7 Historically, bankruptcy rates have been higher among medium-small enterprises than among larger enterprises (Anthony 1983). The rise in bankruptcies related to labor shortages were particularly prominent since bankruptcies otherwise remained low during 1989 (SMEA 1990a:13–14, 31). See also the discussion later in this chapter on bankruptcies among medium-small enterprises during the 1990s recession. 8 Two more such Ks—kyu-ka ga sukunai (little time off) and kakko- warui (unfash— ionable)—are noted by Whittaker (1997:160, fn. 23). 9 From around 1993, the titles and roles of these two men, father and son, have changed. The former Company President has retired to the position of So-danyaku (Advisor) and the former Factory Manager has become the new Company President. However, to avoid confusion, I refer to both men using their former status titles.

4 SHINTANI METALS: ORGANIZATION, EXPERIENCE AND RELATIONSHIPS 1 Kinsei Fine Metals was even more loosely organized. There were three people who worked in the front office, the rest doing production work in the second- and third-floor shoprooms. Mr Honda held the title, after moving into the Shintani Metals factory with lessened authority, of Factory Manager of Kinsei Fine Metals. 2 Using the formulas for figuring overtime: a) 30-day system: 20×¥200,000/30×8)×1.25=¥20,833 b) 25-day system: 20×(¥200,000/25×8)×1.25=¥25,000 3 One would not necessarily expect someone in Japan to boast of how good their pay was

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or of how much money they were making, and to a certain extent remarks regarding the wanting of wages must be seen in such light. This does not, however, deny the importance of unions for those employees of smaller firms who have been, are, or (as will be mentioned later) become union members (see Whittaker 1997:150–2). Christena Turner (1991, 1995) has recently described the construction of commitment and action in the unions of two small companies—the only research in English which ethnographically portrays unions and their members and activities among medium-small enterprises. Han’s (1991) recent dissertation also includes an extended discussion of the competing unions at the medium-sized (just over 300 employees) printing company he studied. Kankonso-sai is composed of the Chinese characters for: “coming of age” (kari), “wedding” (kon), “funeral” (so-), and “events/ceremonies” (sai). There are also part-time women workers who are members of enterprise unions, as is described in Christena Turner’s research (1991, 1995). This constant commenting on how tiring work is, how one’s body aches from doing particular tasks and so forth, gives added meaning to the phrase otsukare san/sama (loosely, “thanks for your effort,” but literally, “your [honorable] tiredness”), typically used upon the completion of a task or at the end of the work day.

5 PATHS TO SHINTANI: SCHOOL BOYS, WORKING MEN 1 See Roberson (1995a) for a discussion which focuses on the two major groups of the men. For other analyses of the roles of learning and labor in social and cultural class reproduction, see Bourdieu and Passeron (1990), Willis (1977), MacLeod (1995), and Layder et al. (1991). These European- and American-based discussions, while providing views of the production and reproduction of class stratification in everyday practice, cannot be transferred whole-cloth to the Japanese cultural context. 2 In Dorinne Kondo’s more recent research there is another pattern of migratory employment which, though involving successor sons (of non-farming households) from rural districts who work in Tokyo as apprentices for five or six years before returning to their families’ businesses, none the less again reveals the contextualizing character of family membership for career construction (1990:178). 3 The fact that only approximately 30 percent of Japanese high school graduates now become employed directly out of school does not mean that the remaining 70 percent go to college. In 1992, 34.5 percent of high school graduates advanced to university or

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junior colleges. Most of the remaining graduates entered some type figures for postgraduation paths taken among high school students (MOE 1993:622–3): 4 The following is a more complete breakdown by industry of employment among 1993 high school graduates (percent; MOE 1993:22): 5 The Industrial School Ordinance established: (1) the purpose of industrial education, (2) the kinds of industrial education, (3) the rules concerning industrial school founders, establishment and abolition, and maintenance of schools, and (4) the regulations concerning subjects of study, standards, and textbooks, teachers’ qualifications, titles, and status and salaries, remunerations of school personnel, organization and facilities of school, and tuition fees. (Kirn 1978:98) 6 Feiler, in his reflections on teaching in Japanese junior high schools in the 1980s, notes that even at this level teachers tend to keep their students’ expectations for the future in check: As a result, most children know by the end of junior high school what direction their lives will take. My students were surprisingly unromantic about their future plans…. When I asked them what they wanted to be in the future…most made prosaic choices like bank teller, bus driver, or beautician. (1991:236–7) 7 One may, however, take exception to Fan’s use of the phrase “life long source of income and status” since, as is finally becoming more widely recognized, “life-time” employment in Japan is less prevalent in medium-small enterprises, which constitute the majority of firms and employ the majority of workers. 8 For an international comparison (with Hong Kong and Shanghai) that suggests that the Japanese system is actually intermediate in the degree to which it structures the transition from school to work, see Fan (1991). 9 This term (senmon-gakko-) more literally means “specialized schools.” Van Pelt, discussing an even more inclusive type of non-formal school which he terms “miscellaneous” (kakushu gakko), notes that there are three subcategories of these: vocational training schools; non-formal schools involved in preparation for formal education (especially university entrance); and schools offering cultural enrichment or adult education (1975:9– 10). Major types of vocational training school include dressmaking schools, medical and health training schools, industrial and technical schools, and business and commercial schools (ibid.: 34–5). Van Pelt also notes that: The most popular courses of study for the males are:college preparatory, driving, abacus, foreign language, foreign national schools, surveying, chef, electricity, design, and computer. In contrast to the female enrollment, the male enrollment clearly shows a vocational orientation toward skills usable outside of the home in business and industry. (ibid.: 45) 6 PATHS TO SHINTANI: FACTORY GIRLS, WORKING WOMEN 1 Beginning with publications such as those by Cook and Hayashi (1980) and by Lebra, Paulson and Powers (1976), a fairly extensive English language literature has developed which discusses women and work in Japan: see Brinton (1988, 1989, 1992, 1993), Chalmers (1989), Carney and O’Kelly (1990), Holden (1983), Hunter (1993), Imamura

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(1996), Iwao (1993), Kawashima (1995), Koike (1983a), Kondo (1990), Lebra (1984, 1992a), Lo (1990), McLendon (1983), Roberts (1994), Sano (1983), Saso (1990), Shinotsuka (1994), Shirahase (1995) and Tanaka (1995). 2 The nature and significance of gender roles and ideologies in Japan have become much discussed and so I will not go into detail about this. See, for example, Imamura (1996) and Uno (1993). 3 Van Pelt points out that in the early 1970s miscellaneous schools (of all types) had more female (67.8 percent) than male (32.2 percent) students. Miscellaneous schools, he wrote, “perform a similar role to that of the junior colleges…and generally appeal to the woman’s need to improve herself in the homemaking skills or to get a short commercial training which will prepare her for a temporary job” (1975:51–2). This would still seem to hold true. It may be suggested, though, that with the increased importance of office automation equipment (“OA” used in Japanese), post-secondary vocational training in this has become even more popular and important for women choosing not to or unable to go to junior college or university. One might also suggest that such vocational training schools provide Japanese, and perhaps especially working class women and men, with some limited degree of “reversibility” (Brinton 1992) in their educational careers, although remaining outside of the formal educational system and not always with employment as the goal of study. Van Pelt notes, for example, that: Miscellaneous school training can be taken during any period of one’s life. With the exception of minimum levels, no age limits or sequence of education must be followed as in the formal educational pattern. Students enter when they feel the need for the educational programs the miscellaneous schools offer. This allows the student great flexibility to come and go, pick and choose to suit his [sic] purposes. (1975:112) 4 Takie Lebra (personal communication) has suggested that it is possible that women present themselves as more externally compelled or obligated to pursue certain paths of action than do men, who are discursively more likely to be self-oriented. The discursive reference to the direct roles of stakeholders in the construction of individual lifecourse may, in other words, be gender related and relative. I would suggest, however, that among the members of the working class in general there is more acceptance of or necessity for the self-directed construction of lifecourse and for self-oriented discourses on lifecourse. This does not mean that stakeholders are not also important—I have shown that in fact they are—nor that there are not genderrelated differences that transcend class. However, I would suggest that white-collar and upper class stakeholders have more at stake in guiding or maintaining control over (constraining) the lifecourse experiences of individuals—especially regarding educational, employment and marital transitions (on the latter, see Hamabata 1990). 7 PATHS FROM SHINTANI 1 It is interesting, as Cole (1971:113) points out, that the now commonly used Japanese term for “lifetime employment,” shushin koyo, is itself a translation of James Abegglen’s (1958) original English phrase. This reappropriation by Japanese scholars and lay-people of a social scientific term coined by a Western scholar may perhaps be seen as one instance of what Giddens (1984:284) calls the “double hermeneutic” of the social sciences. 2 In this small factory, none of the women assigned to the various workshops were responsible

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for pouring tea for their male supervisors, and so there were no rumors of an impending or tales of a past “rebellion of the tea servers” (see Pharr 1984) among the regular or parttime female employees working in the production shop-rooms. I also did not hear any of the young women working in the main office complain about having to serve tea or coffee to the three men with desks there (only Mr Matsukawa spent most of his normal workday in the office) or to the occasional guests that came to the factory. There may well have been some complaints, but not enough, as far as I know, to become major topics of conversation at or outside of work, and certainly not to the extent that any of the women that I talked with suggested that such service was a factor in (considering) quitting. 8 AFTER-HOURS: SPONSORED LEISURE EVENTS 1 Pachinko is a kind of vertical pinball of tremendous popularity (and profit) in Japan. For two brief essays, see Barthes (1982) and Richie (1992). 2 For those interested in more detailed descriptions of each of the events discussed here, please refer to Roberson (1993). See Roberson (1995b) for an overview of the discussion to be presented in the next three chapters here. 3 In the summer of 1991, while I was still a student at the University of Hawaii, I was visited in Honolulu by Mr Kawai who had come with his wife and daughter as members of his daughter’s company trip. When I visited Japan a bit later, Mr Kawai told me that he had enjoyed his Hawaiian holiday so much that he was attempting to persuade the Shinwakai members and the Shintani Metals Company to sponsor a future vacation to Hawaii—although as yet without any apparent success. 9 AFTER-HOURS: NAKAMA LEISURE EVENTS 1 I would like to add a caution here against what I refer to as situational reductionism, in which notions of “trans-situational persistence” (Lebra 1976:111) are either interpretively ignored or denied. We will return to this in the next chapter and the conclusion (see also Roberson 1995c). 2 Conversations conducted by both men and women at nakama events, and during the informal phases of many sponsored events, often revolved around at times rather ribald discussions of sex. That certain of the middle-aged part-time women workers also enjoyed such repartee and ribaldry should perhaps not have come quite as much of a surprise as it did to me, considering descriptions of sexually suggestive or oriented entertainment or discourse described in other ethnographies by Embree (1939, 1944), Lebra (1984) and Smith and Wiswell (1982). 3 The socially appropriate age by which men in Japan are expected to marry manifests more “spread” (Brinton 1992) than it does among Japanese women, who have until recently been expected to marry by the age of twenty-five. 4 At one point during a Farewell Party for one of their nakama friends, I heard Takayama asking Kuwata, “Who’s next? Who’s the next person quitting?” Kuwata replied, joking, “Well, there’s no one scheduled but…may be I’ll become the next one!” Takayama continued the repartee, complaining that “I’m really in a fix, there are so many Farewell Parties that my money’s all going to disappear!” The small company, blue-collar contexts of their employment and so also of their leisure relationships are reflected in various ways in this short exchange. 10 PRIVATE TIME 1 Sugimoto similarly notes that “On the whole, blue-collar workers begin each working day early and prefer to leave their working environment as early as possible” (1997:87).

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2 Masugata, in her interesting historical and comparative treatment of leisure in Japan as a “corporation society” (kigyo- shakai), provides the following comparison of leisure pastimes (1996:162): 3 Roland Barthes concluded of pachinko that: from time to time the machine, filled to capacity, releases its diarrhea of marbles; for a few yen, the player is symbolically spattered with money. Here we understand the seriousness of a game which counters the constipated parsimony of salaries, the constriction of capitalist wealth, with the voluptuous debacle of silver balls, which, all of a sudden, fill the player’s hand. (1982:29) This view contrasts markedly with remarks by others which focus on pachinko as a search for solitude and self-annihilation (see Seidensticker 1990:193; Richie 1992; see also Sugimoto 1997:226–7), and with Japanese views of pachinko (see Nakamura 1995). However one may interpret it, pachinko is big business in Japan. Nakamura notes that it

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6 7

Notes

is estimated that pachinko is a $17–20 billion (¥17–¥20 cho-) per year industry (ibid.: 29–30). The Giants, whom one either loves or hates, are of near legendary proportions in Japan (see Cromartie 1992; Whiting 1977, 1990). Nagashima’s interest in the Giants led him on one occasion to take the day off from work in order to buy tickets to one of the 1990 Japan Series games between the Giants and the Seibu Lions. Or such was the implication one day in early October when, while working next to Kuwata and Itai, I mentioned the scenes shown on the previous night’s sports news of the people lined up to buy tickets and Kuwata replied, “There’s no one from our company there, I’m sure. Hmm. But then, I haven’t seen Nagashima today.” “Yea, I haven’t seen him either,” added Itai. I have elsewhere (Roberson 1995c) looked more closely at the leisure (and other) constructions of “self” among the men and women at Shintani Metals in terms of the implications of this for the recent literature on the “multiplicity” and “situationality” of the “self” in Japan (see Bachnik and Quinn 1994; Rosenberger 1992a). Mr Murakami recommended that I read books by Suzuki Daisetsu and Ken Wilbur’s No Boundary and, in a recent letter, suggests also books by Chogyan Trungpa. This was more or less typical of other of the older men working at the factory as well. The class nature of the disjuncture between the claim to enjoy golf and the chance to actually play is noted by Tobin, who in a discussion of the role that Western goods play in the “negotiation and display of social class,” writes: Golf is the preeminent leisure activity of the already powerful and the upwardly mobile. Ambitious businessmen who cannot afford greens fees, much less membership in a club, nonetheless invest in irons, shoes, golfing attire, and lessons. Those who do not even own a set of clubs can try to impress by spending their coffee breaks taking shadow swings in the office hallway. (1992b:19)

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Name index

Abegglen, J.C. 4, 5 Allison, A. 6, 137, 144, 153–4, 160, 170, 175 Ando, H. 163 Anthony, D. 7, 8 Arai, S. 130 Ashkenazi, M. 43 Atsumi, R. 137, 147, 155–7, 162, 164, 165 Bachnik, J.M. 17, 87, 120, 190 Beck, J.C. 5, 123, 124, 125 Beck, M.N. 5, 123, 124, 125 Befu, H. 163–4, 165, 179 Ben-Ari, E. 137, 168 Bennett, J.W. 63 Bestor, T.C. 6, 14, 137, 160 Bornoff, N. 160, 178 Bourdieu, P. 12, 13, 14, 16, 84, 97,160, 162, 190,193 Bourne, E.J. 190 Bowman, M.J. 85, 87, 95 Brandt, V.S.R. 167 Brinton, M. 16, 99, 106–7, 109, 110, 113, 114, 116, 117 Broadbridge, S. 194 Calagione, J. 137 Carney, L.S. 107, 114, 116 Chalmers, N.J. 8, 67, 68, 70, 107, 114, 145 Cheng, M. 11, 122–3, 134 Clark, R.C. 4, 5, 6, 58, 62, 111, 134 Clifford, J. 20 Cohen, I.J. 16 Cole, R.E. 4, 5, 6, 59, 61, 62, 63, 122–3, 144, 154, 157–8, 163 Creighton, M. 4, 5 Cummings, W.K. 84

Deutschmann, C. 64 DeVos, G.A. 9, 15 Dore, R.P. 4, 5, 14, 59, 85, 91, 93, 96, 134, 144, 146–7, 152, 153, 154, 165 Dunk, T.W. 193 Eccleston, B. 8, 9, 41–2, 68, 69, 70, 114 Edwards, W. 116, 119, 149 Embree, J. 165, 169 Erchak, G.M. 190 Fallows, J. 161 Fan, P.H.C. 96, 97, 98 Field, N. 170 Fields, G. 170 Fowler, E. 7 Frager, R. 179 Friedman, D. 8, 36, 41, 68 Fruin, W.M. 6, 165 Fujimura-Fanselow, K. 110 Fujita, K. 8 Geertz, C. 6, 20, 28, 30 Giddens, A. 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 54, 190, 191, 192 Giovannini, M.J. 5 Goffman, E. 179 Hamabata, M.M. 29 Hamada, T. 130 Han, K.-K. 5, 6, 142, 144–5,148 Hanami, T. 4, 5, 63 Hareven, T.K. 10, 16 Hasegawa, E. 163 Hashimoto, K. 14, 15 Helvoort, E.van 4 Hendry.J. 116, 117 Hester, J.T. 6, 170

219

220

Name index

Hidaka, R. 170 Holden, K. 105–6, 112 Hollerman, L. 8 Holzberg, C.S. 5 Huizinga, J. 137, 153 Hunter, J. 12 Imamura, A. 117, 171, 173 Inoue, S. 137 Inoue, M. 9 Ishida, H. 14, 15, 69, 84, 87, 89, 95, 97, 123 Ito, B.D. 9, 114 Iwao, I. 63 Iwao, S. 117 Jackson, L. 160 Kamata, S. 4, 6 Kameda, A. 110 Kariya, T. 84, 92, 97–8, 99 Karp, I. 12 Kato, H. 86 Kato, T. 64–5 Kawashima, Y. 107, 113–14, 116 Kelly, W.W. 3, 193 Kilminster, R. 16 Kirn, S.-L. 95 Kitao-ji, H. 87 Kiyonari,T. 8, 36, 41, 49 Kleinberg, J. 10 Kobayashi, Y. 8 Koike, K. 7, 8, 9, 36, 49, 68, 69, 70, 90, 94, 105, 123, 137 Kondo, D. 10–11, 12, 14, 15, 28, 29, 33, 34, 60, 63, 80, 90, 114, 117, 119, 129, 142, 145, 152, 165, 166, 179, 190 Kosai, Y. 8 Kosaka, K. 14, 15, 89 Koseki, T. 10 Kuwayama, T. 192 Layder, D. 103–4 Lebra, J. 156 Lebra, T.S. 6, 33, 34, 106, 107, 116, 119, 165, 173–4, 180, 191, 192 Lie, J. 15, 84, 193 Linhart, S. 138, 159, 160, 162, 165, 171, 172, 173, 175–6, 178 Lo, J. 7, 12, 106, 109, 113, 119 Long, S.O. 16 Louis, L. 160, 178

Macdonald, G. 193 McLendon, J. 109, 113, 134 MacLeod, J. 97, 193 Maher, J.C. 193 Marcus, G. 20 Masaoka, K. 16 Masugata, T. 173, 176 Mathews, G. 171 Matsumoto, Y.S. 180 Miller, L. 6, 14 Miwa, Y. 7, 8, 41 Mock, J. 160 Moeran, B. 10, 149, 165, 170, 179 Moore, R.A. 163 Mori, B.L.R. 174, 179 Morimoto, T. 8 Morley, J.D. 160, 178 Morris, B. 190 Mouer, R. 77, 112, 125, 162, 164, 165, 185 Nakamura, H. 7, 8, 36, 41 Nakane, C. 5, 6, 58, 137, 153, 156, 161, 165 Naoi,A. 15, 84 Nishida, K. 5 Noguchi, RH. 4 Nussbaum, S.P. 137 Ogino, Y. 8 Okano, K. 84, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98–9, 100 O’Kelly,C.G. 107, 114, 116 Okimoto, D.I. 4 Olson, L. 9, 87 Ortner, S. 12, 190 Osako, M. 4 Painter, A.A. 5, 59, 113, 153 Passin, H. 95 Patrick, H. 8–9 Pelzel, J.C. 9, 36 Plath, D.W. 4, 6, 16, 138, 151, 167, 181 Quinn, C.J. Jr 17,120,190 Rabinow, P. 21 Reader, I. 181–2 Rebick, M.E. 67 Reischauer, E.G. 178–9 Roberson, J.E. 100 Roberts, G. 4, 6, 7, 12, 105, 106, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119

Name index Roberts, J.M. 181 Robertson, J. 17, 137 Rohlen, T.P. 4, 5, 8–9, 59, 61, 83, 85, 91, 96, 124, 125, 126–7, 134, 135, 142, 144–5, 147, 151, 153, 154, 161, 162, 179 Rojek, C. 137, 153, 188 Rosenbaum, IE. 84, 92, 97 Rosenberger, N.R. 120, 190 Roth, J.A. 6 Rybczynski, W. 137 Sahlins, M. 12 Sako, M. 85, 91, 93, 96 Sano, Y. 106 Sargent, M. 163 Saso, M. 107, 114 Sato, Y. 8 Schooler, C. 15 Seidensticker, E. 14 Seiyama, K. 89, 122–3 Sengoku, T. 4 Shimada, H. 5 Shinohara, M. 8 Shinotsuka, E. 106, 114 Shirahase, S. 106, 114, 117–8 Shirai, T. 4 Shweder, R.A. 190 Singleton, J. 10, 33, 34 Skov, L. 170 Smith, R.J. 181 Smith, S.R. 159, 160, 163, 164, 165 Steven, R. 9, 15, 64–5, 69, 80 Sugimoto, Y. 7, 15, 41, 69, 84, 87, 112, 125, 165, 172, 193 Takahashi, Y. 84

221

Takeuchi, M. 8 Takizawa, K. 8 Tamanoi, M.A. 165 Tanaka, S. 42 Tanaka, T. 49 Tanaka, Y. 160 Tatsumi, N. 8 Taylor, J. 150 Tobin, J. 9, 14, 165, 169, 170 Treat, J.W. 170 Tsuchiya, M. 4, 5, 6, 8 Tsukada, M. 84, 101–2 Turner, C.L. 9, 10, 53, 74, 114, 142, 165 Turner, V. 137–8 Uekusa, M. 8 Ushiogi, M. 85–6, 91 Van Pelt, J.L. 115 Vogel, E.F. 4, 6, 88, 116, 125, 137, 153, 156, 161, 165, 173 Vogel, S.H.I 17, 173 Wagatsuma, H. 9, 15 Watson, T.J. 5 Weiner, M. 193 White, M. 83 Whittaker, D.H. 7, 8, 36–7, 41, 42, 43, 46, 61, 62, 67, 77, 80, 86, 87, 129 Willis, P. 97, 193 Yamamura, K. 4 Yamamuro, B. 163 Yasuba, Y. 4 Yoneyama, T. 155, 156 Yoshida, K. 8

Subject index

absenteeism for recreational pursuits 166–7, 172 after-hours 175, 189 after-hours:nakama leisure events 138–9, 151, 155–70, 171; activities, types of 165–7; financial and time constraints 159, 169; flexibility 156; frequency 161–5; infrequency 169; membership fluidity 159; nature of nakama 155–8; non-obligatory attendance 165, 169; places 159–60; presence and participation 164, 165; romantic relations 167–8 after-hours:sponsored leisure events 3, 71–2, 137–54, 171; Baseball Club 143; benefits 145; company facilities, lack of 144–6; company size and corporate focus 152–4; company sponsored events 139–40; company-related dimensions 150–1; cost 145; emotional involvement, minimal 146; event-related dimensions 148–50; financial assistance 144–6, 147; information exchange 147; infrequency of events 146–7; non-obligatory attendance 147–8; non-obligatory welfare allocations 145; obligatory personal relationships (tsukiai) 147; Shinwakai sponsored events: day-trip 141–2; solidarity, lack of 146, 147; worker-related dimensions 151–2; workgroup sponsored events 140–1 age 29–30, 126; after hours leisure events 158, 161, 162–3, 170; female employees 105, 106, 108; promotions and wage increases 61; and re-employment 124, 126, 135; and unemployment rates 50; wages 66

alcohol consumption 163–4, 165 allowances 64–5, 114 alternative employment see job dissatisfaction apprenticeship 33–5 artistic interests and pursuits 183–5 atmosphere 59; relaxed 76 Attendance Allowance 64 authority 150, 151 bachelors 158–9 bankruptcies 43, 49, 196 Baseball Club 3, 143, 144, 146, 149, 150, 151, 158 benefits 63–9, 114, 119 benevolence 150–1 bonus payments 37–8, 51, 52, 67, 68–9; biannual 65, 75; female employees 114; special productions 75 business climate, shifts in 38 business networking 162 car drives 167 ceremonial events (kankonso-sai) 71, 72, 73 chu-sho--kigyo- see medium-small enterprises class 13–18, 28, 125, 192, 193;-based deference towards author 29; bias 7, 11, 122, 138; culture 135, 188; and dissatisfaction with wages 127; economic and cultural dimensions 97; female employees 119, in Japan 14–15; male employees 84; -related distinctions 162; -related self-identity 169; socialization and culturation 97 commitment 4, 5, 125; see also loyalty commonality of interests 157, 170

222

Subject index community affairs 172 company: facilities, lack of 144–6; familalism 128; identity 58, 144; paternalism 128; size 152–4; sponsored events 139–40; see also company history company history 31–55; late 1980’s: prosperity, problems of 39–47; 1990’s recession 47–54; start up to 1983: experience and enterprise 32–9 compatibility of characters 170 competition, lack of 76 consolatory donations 78, 79 consolatory payments 73 contract employers 97 contractor companies 42 conversational topics 80–1, 164–5 corporate:focus 152–4; hierarchy 152; success and growth 31–2, 36; welfarism 152 courtship/dating 80–1, 167–8 craftsmanship 9–10, 36, 39, 90–1, 96 criticisms, private 77–80 culture/cultural 13–16;‘capital’ 84; context 121; position 170; practice 190; pragmatism or realism 125; related distinctions 162; reproduction 134 dating see courtship days off 65; see also vacation days deadlines 74–7 debt of obligation 128 decision-making 60–1, 164 diversification 42 domestic situation see family downsizing 52, 55, 136 ‘dreams for the future’ 135 drinking events 27, 149 dual structure 41, 194 economic ‘capital’ 84 economic contexts 3, 121 economic position 170 Economic Survey of Japan (1993–4) 51 education 50, 193; academic achievement 96; academic record 98; academically based stratification 97; art colleges 110, 112; background 83, 85; experiences 192; female employees 110–11, 115, 117–18; leaving school, reasons for 88–9; system 4, 83–4; see also high; junior college; junior high; parental; universities; vocational

223

employees’ associations 70; see also Shinwakai employees’ trips see after-hours sponsored leisure events employment 193; agencies/offices 92, 132; magazines 92; in medium-small companies 7–8; -related economic constraints 188–9; -related experiences 192; status 50; trends 48–50 enterprise unions 5, 69–70 entrepreneurship 36–7, 196 ethnicity 193 exams 98 factory organization 56–74; industrial relations 57–69 family 163, 171, 172–5, 192; activities 173; allowance 65; background 83, 87, 96, 109, 115; consociates 127; death of parents 88; development stages 173; enterprises 99; events 138, 172; illness of members 88, 163; importance 135; position in 87–8; private time 174, 175; residence 87; sacrifices 130; size 88, 89; socialization processes 84 Farewell Parties 166 favoritism 159 female employees 105–20; attitude towards job and work 111–12; commitment 119; company size or prestige 113; domestic responsibilities 119; education 110–11, 115, 117–18; employment career deadend 109; employment status 106, 108; factory girls and ‘office ladies’ 109–13; family backgrounds 109, 115; family influence 117; financial and psychological incentives 116; full-time 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112; gender 113, 119; geographic proximity (commuting distance) 111, 116–17; high schools 110, 115; husbands’ occupations 116; junior college 110; marital experience 105, 108; marital prospects and prestige 109, 113; marital status 106, 116; mobility 106; occupational change 106; parental education 109–10, 115; parental occupation 109, 115; parental resistance to post-secondary educations 110; parents as ‘stakeholders’ 110; post-secondary education 113; previous employment 111, 115–18; status 107; study- or skill-related interests 112; type

224

Subject index

of employment 105; unions 114; universities 110; vocational training 110, 115; wages 114, 119; white-collar jobs 112, 113; workers’ organizations 114–15; working mothers and wives 113–18 field site, search for and location of 21–2 firing 53, 74 firm size:and class 15;and-mobility 122–4; and recreational facilities 144–5; research on large firms 4–7; research on small firms 7–11; and unions/ unionization 69; and wages 67–8; and women’s employment 106–7; and work hours 75; see also medium-small enterprises flexibility of smaller companies 41 folkcrafts 9–10 free-time activities 1–2, 3, 175–88; artistic interests and pursuits 183–5, 189; economic aspects 178; fishing 177; horse racing and betting 176–7, 178, 189; institutional and personal flexibility 188; killing time 175; lying around 175–6; pachinko 176, 178, 189; personal fulfillment and self-identity 178–88; religious activities 179, 180–3, 189, 191; skill- or craft-related interests 185–6, 188; sports or athletics 177, 186–7; tastes (shumi) 179; traveling 187–8; water-trades 178 Friendship Events 138 friendships 28, 156–8, 171 full-time employees 53, 63, 67, 74, 133; female 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112; reductions in 51 gender 28, 119; and after-hours events 158, 161, 170; bias 7, 113; and employment permanency 4; and family activities 173; and gender roles 17; identity 29; private time 173; related inflections 129; and unemployment rates 50 geographic proximity (commuting distance) 111, 116–17, 125 hierarchy 60, 79, 150, 152 high school graduates 84, 85, 91–100; academic 92–3; female employees 110, 115; industrial 93–100 holidays see vacations

hollowing out 41–3 human relations 58–9, 168 identity 29–30, 58, 60, 190, 193; free-time activities 177; personal 38, 171; social 28, 29; workgroup-focused 153 ideology 154 individual preferences 83 industrial relations 56–69; rewards-wages and benefits 63–9; roles-work sections and statuses 57–63; Shinwakai 69–74 Industrial School Ordinance 95 informal relationships 56, 60, 80, 150–1 information exchange 162 institutional networks 86 interviews 98, 100 investment 92; overseas 31, 41–2, 46 job application 98 job choice 98 job dissatisfaction and departure from company 121–36; age 124, 134–5; class 127; commitment and loyalty towards employers 125, 128; departure 121, 124–31, 134; family/personal obligations 130, 134, 135, 317; genderrelated aspects 134; geographic proximity 125; lifetimes of employment 121–2; mobility 122–3, 134, 135; new employment, pursual of and engagement in 126, 130, 131–3; pragmatism/realism 125, 126; reasons for leaving 125–6; separation rate 134; skills, inability to acquire 130; social/ personal relations 127–9, 134, 135; support, lack of 129–30; turnover rate 124; wages 126–7, 135; working conditions 129 job entrance 98 job offers, collection and display of 98 job referral system 98–9 junior college 85, 110 junior high school graduates 85–91 labor shortage 31, 41, 43–7, 136 Labor Standards Law 51 language use 62–3 leaving, contemplation of see job dissatisfaction leisure activities 3, 56, 60, 81, 172, 193;

Subject index Shinwakai 73, 141–2; see also afterhours, free-time activities length of employment 5, 66; see also lifetime lifecourse 13–18, 84, 121, 125, 173, 191–2; experiences 3, 56, 89; -related attributes 28; -related relationships 3; related variables 162 lifetime employment system 4, 121–2 location and integration of author within company 22–8; from scholar (gakusha) to labourer (ro-do-sha) 22–6; socializing 26–8 Long-Time Employment Parties 139–40 loyalty 60, 77–80, 125, 128; see also commitment ‘M-curve’ 105–6, 116 male employees 83–104; class 96–7; craftsmanship 90–1; education 83–4; family background 83, 84, 87; family illness/death 88; family size 88, 89; high school graduates 91–100; job referral system 98–9; junior high graduates 85–91; parental education 87–8, 94, 95; parental occupation 87, 93, 95; personal connections 86; poverty 88, 89; previous employment 83, 90, 102–3; recruitment 86, 92, 100; schools and teachers as ‘stakeholders’ 99; skill acquisition 94, 96; vocational school and university-graduates and drop cuts 100–3 management needs 61 management officials 122 Managerial Allowance 65 marital status 29–30, 130, 158, 163, 170 marriage 46, 134, 158 material constraints 192 meal allowance 65 medium-small enterprises (chusho-kigyo) 7–11; and class structure 15; definition 7; employment in 7–8; number of firms 7 Ministry of Education 95 Ministry of Labor 123 Ministry of Labor White Paper 1990 144 mobility 60, 84, 122, 123; between workgroups 57–8; female employees 106; inter- or intra-firm 134, 135, 136, 169

225

monetary remunerations 4, 56, 57, 71, 72, 140 nakama see after-hours National Subsidy to Industrial Education Act (1894) 95 New Year’s Parties 139, 150 1980’s, late: prosperity problems 39–47; hollowing out 41–3; labor shortage 43–7 1990’s recession 47–54; bankruptcies 49; employment trends 49–50; general characteristics 48; responses 50–2; restructuring and resistnace 52–4 occupational sector 122 ‘Office Ladies’ 109–13, 134 oil shocks 48 overseas investment 31, 41–2, 46 overtime 38, 44, 45, 51, 52, 75, 76; allowance 64; payments 64–5 parental education 87, 94, 95, 109–10, 115 parental occupation 87, 93–4, 95, 109, 115 part-time employees 46, 50, 63; female 105, 106, 108, 113–17; on lack of respect from superiors 127, 128; nakama events 158; private time 172; quitting 134; reductions in 51; and Shinwakai 71, 73 participant-observation 26, 28 paternalism 128, 145 pay see wage peak employment 40 permanent employment see lifetime personal:abilities 61; connections 86, 92, 99, 132; decisions 96–7; experience 38; fulfillment 178–88; goals, pursual of 134; interests 126, 130; links 28–9; networks 86; problems 127–8; relationships 58, 61, 80, 126, 127, 129; sacrifices 130 personality 159, 163, 164 poverty 88, 89 power-based relationships, hierarchical 60, 152 ‘practice theory’ 12, 13, 16, 190, 193 pragmatism 125, 126 previous employment 102–3; experience 90; female employees 111, 115–18; histories 83

226

Subject index

Private Self Events 138, 172 private time 138, 154, 162, 168, 171–89; family women and men 172–5; freetime activities 175–88 problems and perspectives 1–19; class, culture, lifecourse and self-identity 13–18; dominant literature 4–7; methodology and organization 18–19; secondary research:medium-small enterprises 7–11; shared shortcomings 11–12 promotion 4, 5, 60–1, 62, 132 quitting see job dissatisfaction rationalization efforts 53 realism 125, 126 recession 31 recruitment 4, 86; essays 100; examination 100; from schools 92 redundancies 53 religious activities 130, 179, 180–3 remunerations see monetary resistance 26–7, 52–4 respect and trust 26 responsibility, sense of 169 restructuring 52–4, 55 retirement age 134 retrospective 28–30 rewards—wages and benefits 63–9 romantic relations see courtship/dating salary see wage school recommendation 98, 99 self 169, 190; trajectory of 191–2 self-identity 3, 13–18, 191, 192; afterhours 138; class-related 169; free-time activities 178–88; job dissatisfaction and departure from company 121, 125, 130, 135; male employees 84, 103 seniority system of pay increases and promotion 4 sexual relationships see courtship/dating sexuality 154 Shinwakai (workers’ association) 3, 53, 56, 69–74, 78, 146, 150, 153; sponsored events:day-tripping 141–2 skill acquisition 94, 126, 130 skill- or craft-related interests 185–6 skills, variety of 77 Small and Medium Business Basic Law 1963/1973 7

social:‘capital’ 84; contexts 3; -cultural attitudes, class-based 135; hierarchy 79; historical context 30; identity 28, 29; mobility 84; position 170; presentation of self 179–80; relations 56, 127–9, 134, 135, 148, 151, 168, 170; see also social relations, informal sensitivity 79; stratification 14–15, 98 social relations, informal 77–81, 157–8; conversation, cavorting and courtship 80–1; personal loyalties, private criticisms 77–80 socialization 27 solidarity 144, 148, 153, 162, 170 Special Production Allowance 65 spiritualism 179 sponsored leisure events see after-hours ‘sponsors’, schools and teachers as 99 sports events 166–7, 186–7 ‘stakeholders’, schools and teachers as 99 start up to 1983: experience and enterprise 32–9 status 57–63, 106, 107, 108, 132, 150–1 stereotypes, dismantling of 12 stigmatization 136 ‘structuration theory’ 12 subjectvity 154 support from superiors 76–7 support, lack of 129–30 technological changes 38 temporary employees 50 tenure 61 3Ks of manufacturing: kiken (dangerous), kitanai (dirty) kitsui (demanding physically) 46, 136, 158–9, 168 Tokyo Industrial High 94–5, 96, 98–9 transfers 61 transportation allowance 65 tsukiai 156–7, 160, 164, 165 turnover rate 124 unions 4, 53–4, 55, 74, 114 universities 85,100–3, 110 vacation days, paid 65 vacations 38, 140 verbal informality 62 Vocational Education Law (1894) 95 vocational schools 84, 85, 93, 98, 100–3, 110, 115

Subject index wage 52, 63–9, 135, 169; adjustments 51; by age 66; by firm size 67–8; by length of employment 66; disparities 68; dissatisfaction with 125, 126–7; female employees 114, 119; increases 4, 5, 45, 61, 132; low 46; monthly 66 welcome Parties 166, 169 White Paper on Medium-Small Enterprises 1991 67 white-collar employees 126; after-hours 156–7, 162, 170; class bias 138; commitment and loyalty towards firms 125; female employees 112, 113; information exchange 147; mobility 123; nakama 164; and permanent employment 122; personal ties and obligations 135; private time 172

227

work: clothing 1; conditions 38, 125, 129, 135; hours, days 74–7; experience 56, 74–7; sections—roles 56, 57–63; week 168, 169; see also working hours worker identities 58 workers’ association see Shinwakai workers’ organizations 114–15 workers’ representatives 70 workforce composition 53 workgroup sponsored events 140–1 workgroups, organization of 57 working hours 1, 2, 38, 45, 46, 168; adjustment of 51; long 46; monthly 75; reduction in 52; yearly 75 Year’s End Parties 139, 140, 141, 147