ABSTRACT
Related to this point, a Japanese economist, Okumura, employed the term ‘corporate capitalism’ (h™jin shihonshugi) in order to describe the particularity of the Japanese economy.1 According to Okumura, capitalism in Japan needs to be distinguished from capitalism in the US or Britain insofar as corporations in Japan monopolize positions as major shareholders of large companies with individual investors only comprising a small fraction of overall ownership. This means that companies belong to other companies and as such are free from the individual circumstances and arbitrary intentions of any major individual ‘human’ investor. Consequently, long-term strategies for rational management can be more easily employed in order to provide companies with a stable basis for management in Japan (Okumura 1992: 2-10). On the other hand, ‘corporate capitalism’ tends to be grounded in ‘company first-ism’ (kaisha hon’i shugi) in which both managerial personnel and other employees ‘loyally and enthusiastically’ work for a particular company in order to increase the profits of the company. In this system, employees are required to be fully committed to their work and trained not only technically, but also morally, according to the policies of a particular company. Dividends reaped from work are linked to promotion inside the company organization, so employees are motivated to work hard for their companies for both professional and personal rewards, and harsh competition between company workers often necessitates additional commitments from their family members. Corporate unions generally cooperate with this system, as they receive a share of the increasing profits reaped by the organization pursuing economic growth (Okumura 1992: 78-111).
