>the insanity of a crisis of overproduction. The Japanese
>are not starving and, with all their foreign asset
>holdings, have a few more cards to play in the
>international economy. So why should they worry
>that their balance sheets look grim by US accounting
>standards?
The Washington Post, January 3, 2000, Monday, Final Edition
Japan Inc. Workers Get Harsh Dose of Economic Reality; High Jobless Rate
Gives Rise To Homeless Camps, Suicides
Doug Struck; Kathryn Tolbert, Washington Post Foreign Service
The line of blue-plastic huts along the banks of the Sumida River, built by
the homeless here whose numbers have nearly doubled in four years, is one
sign of Japan's painful economic restructuring.
The human side of this upheaval in the Japanese workplace also is evident
in the soaring suicide rate, in the new corps of jobless who spend their
days on park benches so their families think they work, and in the despair
of new graduates collecting rejection slips.
Japan is perhaps uniquely ill-suited for the wrenching dislocation that
other economies have experienced, including the "downsizing" of America's
industrial base. The nation's post-World War II boom was built on an ideal
of loyalty to one company, rewarded by lifetime employment.
Now middle-aged men are thrust out of work in a culture where changing jobs
is difficult, where unemployment still carries a stigma, where age
discrimination is legal, and there is little social safety net.
The country was shocked last March when one distressed longtime employee of
the tire manufacturer Bridgestone Corp. committed suicide after holding his
company president hostage. That was the most public of what were nearly
33,000 suicides, by far the highest number since World War II, and three
times the number of automobile fatalities.
Police, who keep careful track of this phenomenon, said the largest
increase was in suicides caused by economic worries, including job loss and
forced early retirement.
Nobuhito Kimiwada, who helps run a legal help-line for distraught workers,
said: "We talk about restructuring, but we ought to have a goal. One goal
is to get more profit for stockholders. In the American system, there is a
huge discrepancy between the rich and non-rich, at the expense of the
workers. Is that what our goal should be? I seriously hope not."
Japan's unemployment rate has been on a decade-long upward march. At 4.5
percent it seems low by American standards, but in Japan it is only a notch
below last summer's 4.9 percent historic high. The unemployment rate among
men 24 or younger is officially 10.7 percent, but analysts say it is likely
much higher.
The jobless also include many middle-aged men who will be unable to find
jobs matching their skills or former salary. These are casualties of
company cutbacks, such as the 51,000 Nissan Motor Co., Nippon Telephone &
Telegraph Corp. Mitsubishi Corp. announced recently.
"People are not fired--it's not American-style layoffs," said Akira
Takanashi, chairman of the government-sponsored Japan Institute of Labor.
Instead, more than half of large companies have "early retirement" programs
that encourage--or, in any cases, force--employees to quit as early as age
49.
Those who do not take the hint can be treated heartlessly. Stories abound
of employees shunned, with no work, no responsibility and no real contact
with the other employees until they quit.
(clip)
Louis Proyect
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