How Japan Does It

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relationship between worker and company is intimately connected with the country's system of lifetime employment, which covers 35% of the country's labor force, nearly all of whom are employees of Japan's largest and most powerful companies. In Japan a worker typically joins a firm directly out of trade school or university and expects to stay there until he retires. Says Akio Morita, chairman of Sony: "In Japan, once we hire people we cannot lay them off."

Retirement at such lifetime firms normally comes at the early age of 55, but does not automatically swell the ranks of the nation's unemployed. Not only do corporations give their retiring workers lump-sum retirement payments, but upwards of 75% of the workers are rehired immediately, at lower salaries, by smaller companies that in many cases have been supplying parts or subcontracting services to the larger firms all along. For those who do not find jobs, and for the unemployed elderly, the government and many private employers have launched extensive retraining programs to give the jobless workers new skills.

Since those workers covered by lifetime employment know that they have a guaranteed job, and that their future is tied up with that firm, they are willing to be more flexible at work than employees in many Western countries. New machinery is not a threat to a worker's job but a useful tool that may help improve company profits. As Fujio Mitarai, head of Canon U.S.A., told TIME'S Robert Grieves: "In order to automate production, we had to divert workers into altogether new fields. We moved them from cameras to copiers to calculators, but we kept everyone employed in the process."

For many Japanese employees, and especially those of the nation's larger companies, life at the plant stresses the virtues of self-discipline and diligence. They seem to embody the Datsun slogan: "We are driven." At many firms, work begins with a chorus or two of the company song so that employees can get in the properly productive frame of mind. At Nissan Motor, every shift begins with a warm-up period of calisthenics on the shop floor.

At other Japanese firms, such as Japan Airlines and Mitsui Trust Bank, new employees eagerly submit to unusual initiations. One Tokyo retailing firm dispatched its group of newcomers for a midwinter swim on the northern island of Hokkaido to tone up their selfdiscipline. Matsushita workers, by contrast, are sent to a Zen Buddhist temple for three-day retreats. In most Japanese companies the new workers, their parents and other relatives attend a ceremony at which the president welcomes the newcomers to the firm.

The working environment of Japanese plants is not fancy. Though they are kept immaculately clean, the buildings are spare and functional, and the machinery is always the most up-to-date. Occasionally workers will try to add some local color. At Nissan's body assembly plant in Zama, near Yokohama, workers have pasted pictures of movie stars like Sayuri Yoshinaga and Kaori Momoi on the new robots that make the cars.

Japanese companies also provide extensive social services for their employees. New workers are often housed in company-built dormitories. The employees remain in this housing for as long as five years, vacating in many cases to get married and move into their own homes, which the company helps