The ideology of life-time employment and its influence on contemporary Japanese society

The article discusses the main directions of influence of the system of lifetime employment on contemporary Japanese society. This system has evolved over several decades and has become a major form of labor management in large Japanese companies by the end of 1960s. However, the real scope of its impact was much broader, as not only the middle, but also small companies tried to use in a given volume of its basic elements in order to increase the work motivation of employees. Due to the fact, that the system of lifetime employment was based on the fundamental characteristics of the national culture and psychology, it is not only perceived by workers as a reasonable, fair, responsive to their ideas of what a company is and how it should be managed, but also became the foundation on which and around which were formed a system of values and way of life of several post-war generations of Japanese. Since the early 1990s, the economy and society began to change, call into question the very existence of the lifetime employment system. However, it proved to be quite flexible and thanks to a series of measures taken by Japanese companies, was able to adapt to the changes that have taken place over the past quarter of a century in the economy and society. These measures include reducing of hiring permanent workers, a change in wage system, designed to make it more adequate to the new conditions, relaxation of the rigid conditions of lifetime employment by introducing a “restricted permanent employee” status and a number of others. However, norms and stereotypes generated by the system were much less mobile and flexible, and it became the cause of a number of painful phenomena in Japanese society. Among them - the “second-rate” position of non-permanent workers (in terms of remuneration, the scope of social security, access to the system of in-house training, and social status as well), the preservation of gender inequality in employment and in family relations, the polarization of Japanese youth by income level and lifestyle, the fall in the marriage rate and birth rate, etc. Since the shifts in public opinion occur slowly enough, Japan is likely to take quite a long time to resolve the contradictions between the entrenched stereotypes and requirements of the time.

lifetime employment, society, norms and stereotypes, regular and non-regular employees, social status, education, family, youth

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