The New Corporate Culture

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Meet today's company man. He takes vacations. He spends off-hours with friends, not his boss. He may even get home to tuck in his kids. Above all, he's now on his own. By Hideko Takayama

IT IS NOONTIME IN TOKYO'S GINZA commercial district. Like thousands of others, Hidetoshi Katsuki gets up from his desk and heads for the door. But something about the 42-year-old engineer doesn't quite square with the picture of a hapless salaryman under the lash of recession. Maybe it is Katsuki's glowing tan, or his muscular shoulders, or the devil-may-care look on his face. Or maybe it's the fact that he's wearing sneakers and a tank top. Within minutes Katsuki is out on the street, jogging casu­ally amid a sea of gray suits. And this is Katsuki's routine for only nine months of the year; after that he really loosens up. "I spent almost two months on vacation in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand last year," he says, grinning. "In December I went to Hawaii and ran in the Honolulu marathon."

Believe it or not, a surprising number of Japanese—those still with jobs, any­way—seem to be actually enjoying the re­cession. Pressed by their companies to work fewer hours, they are taking more time off and spending it with spouses or significant others or at home with the kids. Or they are fulfilling the dreams of freedom they have harbored since their schoolboy hell in cram schools. If their paychecks come to less, well, prices in Japan have dropped, too, and there are a lot more cheap imports to choose from.

Tens of thousands of Japanese, of course, are hurting badly, laid off by companies they once trusted, forced into worthless madogiwa (next-to-the-window) jobs or struggling in new careers as en­trepreneurs. And many are de­termined never to have faith in the system again. But whatever the individual experience, one thing is Likely: Japan's corporate culture will never be the same. "The myth of a corporate family culture is gradually fading," says Kazuhiko Tanaka, editor in chief of B-ing, Japan's most popular help-wanted magazine. "Corporations can no longer af­ford lifetime employment and the seniority system, whereas young workers do not consider company life the most impor­tant. For a long time, both man­agement and workers enjoyed a kind of mutual agreement under which security was exchanged for sub­ordination. That's changing now."

And how. The frustratingly long reces­sion has seemed to belie the success of the Japan Inc. model. It is taking the torque out of Japan's tightly wound, hard-driven cor­poratism. In a country where companies once commanded the loyalty due a feudal lord, job-hopping isn't even news anymore. A government survey released in January showed that 60 percent of Japanese adults would not rule out switching companies.

Within the corporations, too, an earth­quake is underway. Only a few years ago, seniority was still virtually the only meas­ure of pay scales, no matter how well one performed. This was the Japanese way of preserving a Confucian-like harmony in the social order. Today Confucius is back on the shelf, and many companies have adopt­ed a do-or-die merit system, or nen-po-sei (chart). Many can't make the grade: men in their 50s who've spent decades as kaisha ningen, or company men, quit or move to subsidiary companies at lower salaries. Some courageous ones are now leaving cor­porate life to start new careers on their own. Even at Matsushita Electric Industri­al Co., long a stalwart of traditional man­agement, employees older than 50 are being edged into "second careers."

Tough time: Companies and employees alike have little choice. "Japanese corpora­tions may face collapse if they continue the current employment system," warns Fumi-katsu Kimura, research director of Mitsubi­shi Research Institute. "During the high growth years, they took a large population of baby boomers. The bubble burst exactly when these people became senior corpo­rate members. Japan is encountering a tough time with the heavy burden of their high wages and retirement funds ahead... Meantime, members of the younger gener­ation have more flexible attitudes toward their jobs."

Just ask Kazunori Ukigawa, the presi­dent of Justsystem, Japan's top word-pro­cessor software company. For several years Ukigawa has happily opened new branch offices and research institutes for reasons that would seem odd to most Japa­nese executives. When his computer spe­cialists presented resignation letters be­cause they had to return home to take care of aging parents or because of marriage, Ukigawa simply said, "No need to quit. Let's open a new office." And he did just that. At his spacious, tastefully designed Tokyo office, Ukigawa, 46, smiles as he says, "Why waste good talent?"

No one's arguing. It's just that corporate execs rarely used to go out of their way to cultivate individual talent—it was too wagamama (selfish). The reason, says Gary Saxonhouse, an economist at the University of Michigan, is that "firms used to assume much more responsibility for training [huge numbers of] workers"—which is why workers owed them a life-and-death loyal­ty. Today "workers and managers them­selves will bear the risks of acquiring skills—and they will get the benefits." Japa­nese are flooding U.S. graduate schools as never before, and even midcareer men and women are beginning to attend skill-train­ing schools that are sprouting up all over.

Yet at the same time as individual ambi­tion has grown hungrier, younger people seem to have far more perspective on the joys of life outside the fast lane. A recent survey by the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, a private think tank, found that 68 percent of Japanese men in their 30s prefer to take it easy and enjoy life rather than being promoted to a responsible posi­tion (chart). Shukan Gendai, a weekly news magazine, recently called the phenomenon the "beginning of Japan's vacation revolu­tion." Examples abound. All the employees of Marui Department Store chains get a month of vacation every year. Sapporo Breweries grants workers employed for more than two years from three months to three years off for volunteer work or "self-cultivation" activities, like stints in Papua New Guinea as a volunteer teacher. And Toyota Motor Corp. plans to finance 10 new businesses headed by in-house entrepre­neurs, including a horseback riding club and a commercial fishing pond.

Japan's traditional "after work" culture is receding with the tide as well. Getting to­gether with colleagues after work over a glass of beer or cup of sake has long been a salaryman's daily routine. Once, an invita­tion from one's section chief was something that subordinates could not refuse. But the younger generation now prefers to spend evenings with friends. "Young men in my department seem to think that going out for drinks with me is their overtime work," laments a 49-year-old manager at a leading securities firm. "They tell me straight away that they've got other plans." B-ing's Tana-ka says that there are also fewer annual company outings, such as bonding trips to hot springs. "Why do I have to spend my weekend with my bosses and colleagues at a hot spring?" says a 28-year-old "office lady" with a trading company. "My col­leagues felt the same way, so our depart­ment decided to stop that tradition."

No one agrees more than Hidetoshi Katsuki, who likes to spend his after-work hours dining out with his friends. Katsuki himself is one of the 10 "nine-month salary-men" at the Nippon Road Co. in Tokyo— an employment system designed to wel­come outside minds, people who might bring new business ideas but need a lot of time off to think and be creative. That's why he quit his former company and joined Nippon Road. "I didn't mind it though I had to face a 15 percent income cut," Katsuki says. Money, after all, isn't everything. And for Japan, a nation ex­hausted from 50 years of overwork, a loos­er, freer corporate culture might provide just the right respite.

+ Life in the Slow Lane 'Stupid turtles': A community of corporate dropouts

KATSUHIRO TAKADA couldn't take it any­more. After laboring as a salesclerk for a de­partment store for several years, he'd come to loathe the requirements for getting ahead in Japan—long hours, stressful work, stifling confor­mity to the views of his superi­ors. So he quit. Takada's deci­sion to leap off the career ladder was bold. But even more unusual was the way he felt afterward. "I was floating in a Tokyo swimming pool, gazing at the blue sky and talk­ing to myself," he recalls. " 'I am out of a job—but it isn't too bad'." He had, he realized, "broken up the frame which everyone cuts out for their life." Do that, the 52-year-old Takada says, and "you can be free." Takada became a magazine editor, then, last year, joined a small band of like-minded, middle-aged corporate drop­outs. There are 30 free-spirit­ed men and women in the group, and they call them­selves donkame, or stupid tur­tles. They live in tasteful apartments in Hachioji, on the outskirts of Tokyo. All have abandoned the rat race to live a more relaxed life, like tur­tles. Their former jobs range from company manager to in­dustrial designer. The group's guiding principle is simple, says its leader, 48-year-old Nobumitsu Doi: "Try not to do things you don't want to do." Donkame members are loosely organized and largely free to follow their muse. Some grow vegetables on a neighbor­hood plot of land; others build fur­niture at a com­munity work­shop. Takada edits a donkame magazine. There are two de­mands: First, each member must earn at least $800 a month to help pay rent and utility bills. Second, to fund group activities, all members must sell takoyaki (dumplings made with octopus legs) two days a week. Before joining the don­kame, says Doi, each member came to ask himself the same question: is this the life I want? Doi ran the Ginza retail store of Japan's largest pearl company. But something was wrong. His customers were rich but unhappy. He chafed at the harsh demands made by his employer during sales drives. It was not the first time Doi had questioned his priori­ties. He was in San Francisco in 1989 when a major earth­quake shook the city. He was impressed by how the city's residents rallied to assist those in trouble. "Something struck me that day. I told myself that I would leave the corporate life." And why not? HlDEKO TAKAYAMA

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