Japan
has had its longest post-war
recession and its effect has been seen on many
facets of life. The most remarkable impact has been
on the
Japanese corporate organization with which the
life of a Japanese was so inextricably linked.
According to a survey by a private think tank, Tokyo
Research Institute, during 1993, nearly half of the 1664
firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange have fired a
total of 88,423 workers. These include firms like Nippon
Telegraph and Telephone Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Toyota
Motor Corp., and Hitachi Ltd.
After
the
second World War,
Japanese workers currently in their late 40s or 50s,
once lauded as corporate warriors, worked ‘day and
night, body and soul’ to bring about the Japanese
success, which is nothing short of a miracle. However,
the end of the
cold war, the rise of other economies in Asia, and
the bursting of the
bubble economy have made Japan face a crisis for
which it was not prepared, and as such, its attempts to
come to grips with the changing economic circumstances
and have been piecemeal, messy and for the most part,
superficial. During this recession, words like
‘re-engineering’ and ‘restructuring’ have become common
in the corporate world. However, the form in which they
have been exhibited has been mostly in terms of
lost jobs so much so that corporate ‘restructuring’
has become a euphemism for ‘kata-tataki’ – the
dreaded tap on the shoulder by one’s superior that
precedes
early retirement. |
