Group Continuity Archives - understand-culture

Last Resort

In a judgment of October 29, 1979, in the Tōyō Sanso case, the Tokyo High Court set out four requirements for dismissing workers for economic reasons.

The employer must show a business need to reduce staff and a sufficient effort to avoid dismissals. The choice of who goes must be reasonable, and the employer must explain and consult with the workers or their union. A case summary of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare lists the efforts: limits on overtime, a stop to new hiring, cuts in allowances, and transfers and secondments.

Employment Adjustment Subsidy

A Japanese employer forced to scale back its business for economic reasons can send workers on temporary leave instead of dismissing them. The koyō chōsei joseikin, the employment adjustment subsidy, then subsidizes the employer for the equivalent of the leave allowance.

Under special measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, the cap was 15,000 yen per worker per day.

Seconded to Other Companies

On October 28, 2020, ANA Holdings announced that it would second employees, among them cabin crew, to other companies. About 100 people were to go to about 10 companies by December, and more than 400 by the following spring. The companies taking them included the electronics retailer Nojima and the supermarket chain Seijō Ishii.

Crossed-Cord Appointments

When Japan Airlines took over Japan Air System, according to the magazine Money Post, a department head from JAL had a deputy from JAS, and the section manager below came from JAL again. The magazine calls this complete tasukigake jinji, crossed-cord appointments.

When Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank was formed by a merger in 1971, the two banks took turns at the top and kept parallel personnel structures.

The Baseball Strike

In 2004, the Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave agreed to merge. The players’ union, led by its chairman Furuta Atsuya, opposed the merger. It asked for a one-year freeze and for new teams to be admitted.

On September 18 and 19, 2004, the players went on strike, and no games were played. It was the first strike in the history of Japanese professional baseball. On September 23, the league and the union reached an agreement, and a second strike was avoided. The merger went ahead.

Nissan Revival Plan

On October 18, 1999, Nissan, led by Carlos Ghosn, announced the Nissan Revival Plan. The plan called for cutting about 21,000 jobs worldwide and closing five plants in Japan, among them the Murayama plant.

Sources differ on which other plants were on the list.

Moving Together

A Japanese law of 1972 supports bōsai shūdan iten, group relocation for disaster prevention. The state helps finance moving homes out of areas at risk of disaster to safer ground, as a group.

The program was used widely after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. For the areas hit by that disaster, a table of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism for the end of March 2026 counts 12,512 relocations: 8,336 to private plots and 4,176 to disaster public housing.

Adopted Son-in-Law

Suzuki Osamu of Suzuki Motor was born Matsuda Osamu. He became the muko yōshi, the adopted son-in-law, of Suzuki Shunzō, the company’s second president.

Shunzō himself had been chosen by the founder, Suzuki Michio, as the husband of his eldest daughter. The presidency passed to sons-in-law, not to sons.

The Vocabulary of Togetherness

Ichiren takushō (一蓮托生): one lotus. In Buddhism, being reborn on the same lotus flower in paradise. Today, sharing actions and fate to the end, whatever the result, as in shinu mo ikiru mo zen’in ichiren takushō da, live or die, we all share one fate.

Onaji kama no meshi o kū (同じ釜の飯を食う): to eat rice from the same pot. Comrades who ate from the same pot feel close to one another. It is also used for people who worked in the same workplace.

Flexible Transfers

Japanese companies have hired young people in one batch at graduation, as regular employees without fixed duties. A presentation of the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training describes how the companies then meet changes in their need for staff: through in-house training and flexible transfers between jobs.

In the regular personnel transfers, teiki jinji idō, employees’ duties and places of work change.