ABSTRACT
Since the collapse of the Bubble Economy in the early 1990s the idea of the complete abandonment of the lifetime employment system has been mooted from various perspectives on an increasing number of occasions. Indeed, if one were to take some popular books at face value, one might be forgiven for thinking that the system exists now in name only as a convenient fiction and has, in actuality, already collapsed. One of these, entitled Sararīman Hōkai (‘Fall of the salaryman’), goes so far as to claim that the ‘age of lifetime employment has ended’ (Utsumi, 2000). Another, referring to the oft repeated and rather dreary Japanese colloquial expression that attempts to enforce conformity to normative standards, ‘The nail that sticks up will be hammered down,’ is titled Denai Kugi wa Suterareru (‘The nail that doesn't stick up may be thrown away’) (Terao, 1998).
