Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Lost in Transition
- 1 The Lost Generation
- 2 The Historical Roots of Japanese School-Work Institutions
- 3 The Importance of Ba, the Erosion of Ba
- 4 Unraveling School-Employer Relationships
- 5 Networks of Advantage and Disadvantage for New Graduates
- 6 Narratives of the New Mobility
- 7 The Future of the Lost Generation
- References
- Index
7 - The Future of the Lost Generation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Lost in Transition
- 1 The Lost Generation
- 2 The Historical Roots of Japanese School-Work Institutions
- 3 The Importance of Ba, the Erosion of Ba
- 4 Unraveling School-Employer Relationships
- 5 Networks of Advantage and Disadvantage for New Graduates
- 6 Narratives of the New Mobility
- 7 The Future of the Lost Generation
- References
- Index
Summary
“So far, one of the strong points of the Japanese system has been that the manufacturing labor force gets so well trained. But now the needs of industry are changing and the employment system is changing, so education needs to change, too.”
– High school teacher in Yokohama“The working conditions of part-time jobs have become worse and worse. People have to work almost as hard as full-time workers but even so, the pay is very low.”
– Teacher in the guidance department at a vocational high school, commenting on current working conditions for young people“The crisis of youth” (wakamono kiki). Proclaimed in boldface type, this is the phrase that ran across the cover of Japan’s weekly magazine Tōyō Keizai in early 2009. The cover story was accompanied by a photo of a grim-faced young Japanese man in a business suit. Other phrases on the magazine cover amplified the gloomy message: “Average monthly overtime hours are 150. The percentage of young people in their early twenties who are in irregular work is 43. More than 50 percent of workers are dissatisfied with their workplace.” The list goes on. Inside the magazine, statistics and stories of Japanese young people’s uneasy job situation fill the pages in discouraging detail. Comparative statistics for other OECD countries appear in colored graphs but do little to brighten the depiction of Japan.
In this book I have used numbers to illustrate the employment situation of the lost generation and have added the voices of Japanese high school teachers, officials at public employment security offices, employers, and young men themselves to articulate what is happening “on the ground.” These varied viewpoints collectively demonstrate how young people’s employment has been closely linked to the existence of a strongly segmented Japanese labor market that demarcates the boundary between jobs designated for new graduates and jobs designated for everyone else. Young graduates have alternatively benefited and chafed against the restrictions of having an entry-level labor market of their own, just as they have benefited and chafed against schools’ and employers’ assumption that they are naïve about the world of work and must be shepherded into it by watchful adults.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lost in TransitionYouth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan, pp. 166 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010