From ‘Entering into a Firm’ to ‘Entering into a Profession’: An Anthropological Approach to Changing Personhood in Japan
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12147 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12147
54:3 September 2016 0007–1080 pp. 552–573
From ‘Entering into a Firm’ to ‘Entering
into a Profession’: An Anthropological
Approach to Changing Personhood in
Japan
Huiyan Fu
Abstract
Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article uses discourse analysis
to examine the social dynamics involved in the construction of personhood in
Japan. While the gap between powerful discourse and lived reality is a well-
documented phenomenon, there is little systematic empirical researchon how to
integrate individual and social levels of analysis in this process. By contrasting
discourse from above and from below, the article illuminates power asymmetry
and the resulting tension between discursivefreedom and social exclusion among
disadvantaged groups.
1. Introduction
‘It is the role of these intermediary institutions (such as the mass media) which
explains how it is thata society can suddenly become fixated on a certain issue when
that issue is in fact long-standing in nature and only one among many’(Goodman
2002: 7).
Haken’s Dignity (Haken no Hinkaku), a very popular Japanese TV drama
series with an average viewing figure of over 20 per cent, was broadcast
between January and March 2007 when I was conducting ethnographic
fieldwork in Tokyo. The Japanese term ‘haken’isanabbreviationfor
‘dispatched employment or workers’, referring to a relatively new category of
non-regular workers in temporaryagency work (TAW).TAW is distinguished
from traditional types of temporary employment, due to its institutionalized
triangular structure where workers are typically employed and dispatched by
stang agencies while workingat the facilities, and under the authority,of user
Huiyan Fu is at Regent’s University London.
C
2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
From ‘Entering into a Firm’ to ‘Entering into a Profession’ 553
firms. The highly acclaimed TV show made ‘haken’ a buzzword of the year
and triggered intense media interest and political debate surrounding such
controversial issues as ‘widening gaps’ (kakusa) and ‘working poor’ (w¯
akingu
pua).
The suddenly discovered haken phenomenon emerged amid a series
of neoliberalism-informed economic reforms in post-bubble Japan, which
were geared towards the development of external labour markets with
increased use of informalized or casualized employment relations. In
tandem with the reforms, there was a clear shift in political discourses
on personhood; languages such as ‘flexibility’, ‘individuality’, ‘diversity’
and ‘self-development’ were used to redefine what it meant to be an ideal
person. Professionally qualified, self-activating individuals with marketable,
specialized skills were exalted as ‘ready fighting power’ (sokusenryoku)
befitting Japan’s changing economic conditions. Those who were trained to
have a range of general skills suitable to a specific firm under the postwar
‘firm-as-family’ management model were ousted from popularity. The new
trend was perhaps most forcefully pushed forward by the TAW industry,
Japan Stang Services Association (JASSA), which launched a campaign to
change the notion of ‘entering into a firm’ (sh¯
usha) to that of ‘entering into a
profession’ (sh¯
ushoku); the latter,enabled by haken, was regarded as providing
better opportunities to develop an appropriate career (JASSA 2008).
It should be noted here that the core-peripheral, dual employmentstructure
was a long-existing feature of Japan’s postwar economic growth (Chalmers
1989; Gill 2001; Gordon 1985). ‘Part-timers’ (p¯
ato), the largest group of
non-regular labour, were long used as an indispensable buer against the
negative eects of economic fluctuations and as a means of propping up
the all-important ‘lifetime employment’ (sh¯
ushin koy¯
o) essential to the ‘firm-
as-family’ management. Compared to part-timers, haken accounted for a
relatively small proportion of the total employment in Japan, between2 and 3
per cent according to ocial statistics.A further pertinent fact was that regular
workers, benefitting from superior wages, bonuses and other perquisites of
their status, wouldpresumably have more socioeconomic advantages in terms
of self-activating capabilities and professional improvement. Historical and
contemporary developments in this regard have posed two interconnected
research puzzles:
1) Why was haken given particular discursive emphasis and symbolic
prominence?
2) Perhaps more importantly, how did the discourse surrounding haken
reflect social changes in the Japanese context?
Drawing from existing literature and participatory fieldwork, the article
sets out to address the puzzles by combining macro- and micro-level analysis,
with a view to drawing heuristic comparisons between the production and
consumption of powerful discourses. Powerful discourses have typically
ideological, normative and instrumental functions and playan important role
C
2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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