Temps in Prime Time

Haruko Ohmae has the sort of job skills that should get her hired immediately. She can program a computer, chop sushi, speak Russian, operate heavy equipment and (most important) pour tea. But Haruko doesn’t have a full-time job. She’s a part-timer—and the main character in the new hit Japanese TV show Haken no Hinkaku, which roughly translates as “the dignity of temp workers.” Japan may once have enshrined lifetime corporate employment, but today nearly a third of its workforce is made up of part-timers like Haruko, as companies that cut payrolls during the recession years have been slow to add full-time jobs.

While the shift has helped Japanese corporations post record profits, others worry about a generation of workers mired in a low-wage temp ghetto—34% of male and 55% of female part-timers make less than $11,000 a year. All of this feeds the success of Haken, which satirizes the changing nature of the Japanese workplace. The confident and capable Haruko, played by the 33-year-old actress Ryoko Shinohara, makes more than the average part-timer but still has to put condescending co-workers in their place—onscreen justice for Japan’s downtrodden real-life temps. “It feels good to see Haruko tell full-timers things that you cannot say face to face,” says fan Kaoru Ishizaki, a former temp herself.