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...

Author: James Roberson

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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.

xi

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


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


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


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


7

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.:


11

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.


13

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


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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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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


23

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

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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


25

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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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


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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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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


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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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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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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

Organization and relationships

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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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School boys, working men

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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Factory girls, working women

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 [

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