Jade’s Guide to Salarymen

When you arrive in Japan, you will likely see swarms of people in suits. A black-and-navy suit invasion, with grey for those feeling a bit fancier. In Japan, the typical aim of most young men (and nowadays women too) is to work for a big company. In doing so, they become “salarymen”, as they say in Japanese.

To reach that point, they must go through the gruelling Japanese education system. Then, they have to shimmy their way through university in the hopes of being accepted at a well-known company.

The university degree that they receive is usually irrelevant. Many jobs are given on the basis of family contacts or how the youngsters perform in interviews. In some cases, they have to complete company entrance exams to enter and become salarymen.

Capture and training

The new salarymen are swept up by the company and asked which department they would like to work in. Depending on whether there are spaces available in that department, they may or may not be placed there. More often than not, they are sent wherever needed by the company and trained up on the job. Hence their university degree is generally rendered useless.

Making friends

The newly hired employees are all put through courses that include ample ice-breakers and team-building exercises. For example, I taught a one-week intensive English course to the new salarymen at a Japanese construction company. It lasted from 8am-8pm every day, with an hour for lunch and dinner. It was exhausting, but so much fun because only two or three people from the entire group were actually picked to enter the foreign relations department. So, the course was designed around team building, having fun and building confidence in English.

Completely unprepared and unqualified

Surprisingly, the company chooses its employees for the foreign department at random. These employees are then sent to the company’s branches abroad, irrespective of their English knowledge. One poor employee with a low level of English was terrified at the idea of moving to the branch in Singapore for work.

Anyway, throughout the entire team-building period, the new employees lived and worked together. The young men and women were separated into shared same-gender rooms for the week, with about four people per room.

Farewell

Once the training had finished, they had built good relationships with each other. And then, they were all separated and sent to their decided branches and departments across Japan. “So, what was the smegging point?” I wondered.

In the case of these recruits, they were all sent to different parts of Japan. They went to Shizuoka, Hokkaido, some lucky ones to Tokyo and some as far away as Singapore. All the students in my group expressed fears of loneliness, and, for most of them, it was their first time living away from their parents. What a harsh shock to the system.

Company dormitories

In the case of my very first Japanese boyfriend (who was transferred to Osaka after he completed university, and we consequently broke up), he was placed in a company dormitory. I had no idea what this was at first – I knew about university dormitories because we have them in the UK, but a COMPANY dorm?! What the smeg?! He informed me that he was being made to share a room with another coworker. In other company dorms, you might have to share with more people, or you might have a room to yourself. It just depends how lucky you are.

Such salarymen stress!

The problem of life as a young Japanese salaryman is that they are made to work long hours, and often do overtime too, and then have to go out drinking with their boss so they have very little free time to themselves. They must live and work with their coworkers, and they are not allowed to have any females visit the dorms (private room or not). And we wonder why Japan has an aging population and suffers from a lack of procreation…

Anything positive?

The only bonus I can see to Japanese company dormitories is the rent. They only have to pay 10,000¥ (approx. £70/$90) on average per month, and, for those who are extremely awkward, I guess that it is a good way to make (or force?) friendships.

Also be aware that not all companies have their own dormitories. In the case of the group of students from the construction company, they had to find their own apartments to live in (and probably received help from the company to do so), so it’s a case-by-case scenario.

The end result

It used to be standard practice that the Japanese joined a company and then stayed with that company for life, slowly hitting the dictated milestones necessary for receiving promotions and climbing the ranks.

This in itself can be a gruelling challenge depending on what the milestones are. For example, the employees at another company that I used to teach English to had to pass different exams to receive qualifications necessary to do their jobs well, and one of these requirements was a certain level in English (hence my appearance).

In a nutshell, they have several chances to attain the necessary level, and, if they can’t pass within three years of joining the company, they will never be able to progress past their current status – thus remaining on their current salary for the entire duration of their contract with that company.

It used to be the case that staying with the same company forever was the done thing, and if you had worked at more than one company, people questioned your loyalty or put your change in job down to a lack of ability to work properly.

Nowadays, thank smeg, this ideology is changing, and as long as you have a minimum of three years of work experience at one company, they won’t judge you too harshly if you try to change jobs – especially if you are young.

Being let go

Due to Japanese law, it is incredibly difficult to fire someone. Therefore, no matter how terrible a person may be (personality-wise or at their job in general), letting them go simply isn’t an option.

So! Rather than firing employees, managers will put them in an incredibly deprecating position until they feel so miserable at work that they quit themselves.

For example, one of my friends told me about a Japanese woman he knows who must have pissed off her boss in some way because she was suddenly moved to the paper-shredding department. Her entire job now revolves around shredding paper all day every day, and that’s all she does. I wonder how long she’ll last before she cracks…

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And that’s the end of Jade’s Guide to Japanese Salarymen!

Feel free to share any thoughts or experiences you may have below.

Sayonara!

Jade xxx