Japan, Teamwork, Shared Responsibility

Paying the Colleagues Who Cover

For childcare leave that begins on or after January 1, 2024, the Japanese government subsidizes employers that pay an allowance to the colleagues who take over the work of the employee on leave. A leaflet of the labor bureaus explains the subsidy. It generally pays three quarters of the allowance, with a limit of 100,000 yen a month for twelve months.

The leaflet calls these colleagues shūi no rōdōsha, the workers around the person on leave. A separate part of the same subsidy supports hiring a replacement.

Punishing the Whole Team

In 2022, the Japan Student Baseball Association banned Kanaashi Agricultural High School in Akita from outside games for three months, after bullying within its baseball club.

In draft disciplinary standards, the association itself named the problem of rentai sekinin, joint responsibility. Punishing a team for one member’s violation, it wrote, imposes a penalty on members who did nothing wrong and has been called unreasonable. A President Online article notes that in recent high school baseball, when there is no organized involvement by several members, punishment as a rule stays with the members concerned.

Paid Leave and Colleagues

From October to November 2010, the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training surveyed regular employees aged 20 to 59 about taking paid leave. It received 2,071 valid answers and published the results in April 2011.

Among the reasons for holding back from taking leave, 60.2 percent agreed with Yasumu to shokuba no hoka no hito ni meiwaku ni naru kara. Taking time off would cause trouble for others at work.

Duties at School

Japan’s national curriculum for elementary schools lists, under special activities, the understanding of the role of duty activities such as cleaning, and of the meaning of working.

A guide of Saitama Prefecture describes kyūshoku tōban, school lunch duty. The pupils on duty carry, serve and clear away the lunch. It advises teachers to rotate the tasks, so that pupils try various jobs and learn to work together. As pupils grow older, more of the work should be left to them.

Membership-Type Employment

Membāshippu-gata koyō, membership-type employment, is a term used by the labor scholar Hamaguchi Keiichirō, who set it against job-type employment. A journal of the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training describes the membership type: employees are hired without a fixed job or workplace, and the company decides their job and workplace as needed, under its authority over personnel.

Yui in Shirakawa-gō

In Shirakawa-gō, the thatched roofs of the gasshō-zukuri farmhouses are re-thatched completely through yui, a system of mutual aid. Everyone in the community takes part, from the old to the young. Shirakawa-gō was registered as a World Heritage site in 1995.

In some regions, an encyclopedia notes, unpaid help with rice planting or roof thatching is itself called giri.

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.