Articles Trade & Economics

Inside the Kaisha:
Demystifying Japanese Business Behavior

By Noboru Yoshimura and Philip Anderson
Harvard College, 1997

Chapter 1

The Making of a Salaryman

Freshly graduated from a top Japanese university, a fledgling salaryman is about to begin an intensive socialization process that will model for him how he is expected to behave in the company he joins. This initiation is meant to mold him into his company's man--a Toyota man or a Fuji man or a Nomura man--for life. He learns to meet the expectations of a specific company, and many of the subtle lessons he absorbs are unique to that company. For this reason, when a Westerner discusses "principles of Japanese management" with an audience of salarymen, he encounters a host of company-specific exceptions to any particular concept. Does this mean that no two Japanese managers have a comparable experience of corporate life?

Our interviews confirm that no two companies impart exactly the same lessons or ways of interpreting situations to their new middle managers. Yet the making of a salaryman is a story full of similarities that overwhelm the differences cutting across companies. Most salarymen working for large corporations absorb similar lessons and are shaped in similar ways for two reasons. First, by the time they graduate from college, they are all successful survivors of a rigid and grueling socialization process. The innate attitudes characteristic of salarymen are deeply implanted before they start their careers. Second, despite local differences, large Japanese enterprises use very similar methods to impart their values to new employees.

Consequently, this chapter will tell you the story of how a salaryman is made by describing the experiences of a composite character we'll call "Hiro." Hiro is everyman; we have drawn snippets of his story from many individuals employed by different companies, whose tales overlap far more than they diverge. Hiro's progress through the Japanese educational system and into corporate life is meant to illustrate from an insider's perspective how a typical salaryman's mental world is shaped. Chapter 2 picks out some recurring aspects of this perspective that help explain the mechanisms that drive Hiro's behavior.

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