ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the comparative labour across Japanese salarymen’s careers of distinguishing themselves from their colleagues. It is contextualized in Japan’s socio-historical geography, which generates cultural naturalizations of homogeneity that inform the hierarchical quality of Japanese social life generally, but which are embodied, with especial potency, within the formal organizations where Japanese salarymen work. Ethnographically, the chapter follows the careers of two salarymen working in overseas settings of two respected Japanese corporations, respectively, in Thailand and France. At these margins of their corporation’s operations, opportunities arise for distinguishing themselves from colleagues of similar rank and, therefore, for demonstrating their comparative value to superiors. While always acting in alignment with their corporation’s expectations of appropriate behaviour, the comparative career work of salarymen abroad turns on their ability to direct distinctive ‘foreign’ knowledge in their favour. As actors in a liminal space, however, if incorrectly mobilized, that same work may also be perceived as a threat to the homogenizing authority of the corporation itself and, so, negatively impact a career.
