ABSTRACT
Japan rapidly industrialized after the end of the Second World War. Whereas in 1950, for example, the number of people working in the primary industries accounted for 48.5 percent of the country’s total labor force, by 1987 this figure had dropped to 8.3 percent. Viewed another way, the industrialization process might even be called the ‘corporatization’ of Japan, because the number of persons working in corporations increased from less than 40 percent of the total labor force in 1950 to 75 percent in 1986.1
As Japanese society thus became more ‘corporatized’, the social relationships formed within corporations came to be directly reflected as is in society-in-general. In that sense, a kigyoistic society is a corporate society, and Japanese society-at-large can be called an accumulation of a great many large and small corporate societies, each held together by a strong cohesive quality.
