Japan's New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (5 page)

In contrast to the salary man, the white-collar worker in the small company lacksthe security that comes with a large organization. His wages are generally lower than the salary man's, and the company is not able to provide so many fringe benefits. While he may have a personal relationship with his employer, he is more likely to have changed companies, either because the previous business failed or because he was dissatisfied with the benefits he received. While some small promising concerns attract talented men and are able to advance them more rapidly than the more routinized large organizations, generally the workers have less education and have attended less-well-known schools than the salary men. There is great variation in these small organizations—more than between the standardized and routinized large organizations. It is therefore more difficult to generalize about the white-collar worker in the small concern than about the salary man. Frequently, however, the white-collar worker in the smaller concern is essentially a lower-ranking and less secure salary man, and many comments in the present volume apply to large groups of these men as well as to salary men.

The worker in the large factory, while of lower class standing, has many of the characteristics of the salary man: he has security and regularity, and his family affairs are relatively isolated from company affairs except when he lives in a factory-sponsored apartment house.

To heighten the contrast, I have included small shopkeepers and successful businessmen. There are also middle-size businessmen in Mamachi who fall somewhere in between and are perhaps closer in style of life to the independent professionals than any other group described here.

bers, range from high-level managers to humble office clerks, from the powerful elite to servile office boys. But whatever the variation, they all tend to live an orderly life, made possible by long-term membership in a large and stable bureaucratic organization. A salary man receives his pay regularly and can predict within a close range his position and salary of five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years hence. He may not be able to name the department of the company in which he will work, but he can predict with such accuracy when he will become section head that he will be bitterly disappointed if he receives even a small promotion only a year later than he had originally expected. Business fluctuations affect the size of his bonus, but they are likely to have little effect on his salary because the company continues to meet its commitments to him even in time of economic difficulty. A typical salary man never receives an offer from another firm, but even if he were to receive an attractive offer from elsewhere, his long-term interests are best served by remaining in the same firm because his salary and benefits rise sharply with the number of years of service and he knows that he will be dismissed from his own company only for the grossest incompetence or misbehavior.

In addition, he knows that in the event of sickness, accident, or retirement, he unquestionably will receive welfare benefits. The

successful independent businessman can provide his own security against sickness and injury by his large income and savings; the independent professional must save carefully for such contingencies; the small shopkeeper has almost no hope of being able to cope with such emergencies. The salary man has security, not through his own savings or power, but through the company which, in effect, gives him a guaranteed income and insurance against various kinds of difficulties that he and his family might encounter.
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The salary man, then, has security, but his stipend is, after all, rather small in comparison with the successful businessman or even in comparison with the independent professional. Hence, he must carefully control his spending. Perhaps the greatest financial difficulty he will face is the period after retirement. His company will provide some retirement benefits, either in the form of a lump sum or pension, but generally these are small, barely enough for minimum subsistence. The salary man usually is required to retire as early as fifty-five or sixty years of age; afterward, to supplement his company's retirement benefits, he must turn to his savings, supplementary income, or his children, although sometimes his company will help him find a part-time job after retirement. A retired teacher, for example, may get a job as a part-time consultant to a book company. A man with rich relatives or friends may get a part-time job working for them. Some of the less successful may open a small shop. Many have no choice but to live with their children.

The daily life of the salary man is the essence of regularity. Although commuting trains generally run to Tokyo every five or seven minutes, the salary man knows precisely on what train he leaves in the morning. Theoretically, he is expected to work overtime with little or no extra compensation whenever his firm requests it, and

[10] In our sentence-completion tests given to other suburban areas of Tokyo, one of the questions concerned sickness. The answers show that the salary man was much less anxious about sickness than the small shopkeeper who has no such security. In case of sickness, 33 of the salaried respondents simply said they would go to the doctor, 4 said that they would be more careful, 7 said that this would give them an opportunity to rest up, and 5 said it would give worry to their family. Of 69 small businessmen, no respondent said he would simply go to a doctor; 23 said that they would be worried, extremely anxious; 9 said that their families would be depressed, and 12 others said that they would be worried about money. The remaining replies covered a wide range, but they generally reflected a much greater concern among the small businessmen about sickness and accidents than among the more secure salaried groups.

he is reluctant to take all the free time to which he is officially entitled. For example, he may be given ten days or two weeks annual vacation, but he ordinarily would not take this much time off. If he were to request his full vacation time, he would be regarded as selfish and disloyal by his co-workers and by his superiors.
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However, at the same time companies find it increasingly difficult to ask their salary men to work overtime. The salary men have become used to regular hours and regard overtime work without extra compensation as an encroachment on their freedom. They have no objection to working their eight or nine hours a day Monday through Friday and until mid-afternoon on Saturday. But they resent being made to work longer hours.

It is the salary man who makes the sharpest distinction between working time and free time. In contrast to the businessman who mixes business and leisure, to the small shopkeeper who has almost no leisure, and to the independent professional, whose leisure is determined by the absence of patients, the salary man, like his child in school, generally has set hours so that he knows he can plan certain hours of the day and certain days of the week for himself and his family.

In addition to regularity, security, and free time, the companies provide various side benefits which constitute the joy of living. The salary man attends parties, athletic meets, and even trips sponsored by the company. At least once or twice a year, the company treats its employees to an overnight trip to the country, and on other occasions employees take up voluntary collections for company trips.

The salary man usually cannot afford such luxuries as a car or expensive entertainment, but occasionally he can use the company expense account for such privileges. To an American, an expense account may give added comfort, but to the Japanese salary man it means enjoying pleasures he otherwise could not hope to afford. Even on a personal trip, he can often stay at an inn at a discount obtained through his company. Some government bureaus and large businesses or their unions own inns which can at times be used by

[11] Such practices make it difficult for Japan to enforce "maximum working hour" laws. Even if a firm officially sets a maximum number of hours, the worker would be afraid to complain if the firm in fact required him to work more hours.

employees. If a salary man wishes to entertain his family on a festive occasion, he may use company contacts to rent inexpensively a room in a
Kaikan,
a special building for just such purposes. (
Kaikan
are used for meetings and entertainment, much as American hotels are, but since Japanese homes are not considered adequate to entertain a group of any size,
Kaikan
are used more widely than hotels in America.) Depending on the nature of the company, the salary man can get goods or special services at a discount. A worker in a large electrical industry, for example, can get a big discount for his family and friends on electrical equipment. A man working for Japan Airlines may be entitled to as many as five free rides for himself or a family member per year. Although such benefits are not always available to the average salary man, the fact that the large organizations offer more benefits than smaller enterprises helps explain the enthusiasm which the salary man feels toward his organization and which he manifests by wearing a company badge, carrying a company brief case, and using a company emblem as a tie clasp.

Foreign observers have described Japanese firms as paternalistic since they look after so many aspects of the employee's life. Yet large firms, in at least one fundamental respect, are much less paternalistic than the traditional small enterprises. In the large firm, privileges are established by routine procedures or rules; they are less determined by a particular relationship to an employer, the whims of superiors, or the fluctuation in the company's financial condition. Rather, they tend to be awarded universally to all members of the organization on the basis of seniority and ability.

The salary man's contacts are largely restricted to his work associates and to his own immediate family. He lacks the prestige to have important community positions and the money for anything but the simplest entertainment. He spends many evenings at home with the family, and may go on Sunday with the family to the city, perhaps to visit a large park or a department store. For week-day recreation, he and his work associates stop off after work at their favorite bars, tea or coffee houses, or snack bars. Because he expects to be in the same organization all his life, his closest relationships are with work associates and he considers it of utmost importance to keep their friendship.

The salary man is essentially free when he returns home; home is a place to relax. In some cases the salary man, in contrast to other husbands, may even help his wife, albeit not as much as his American counterpart. He may know how to make his own tea and, in extreme cases, he may even know how to cook. He occasionally may help the children with their baths, fold up his own bedding, do a few shopping errands, and go for walks with the children.

However, the wife generally knows little and cares less about her husband's daily activities at the office. She has virtually no opportunity to go out with her husband to meet other men in the company and their wives. The husband's assignments in the company generally are limited, and the problems in which the husband is interested at work have little meaning to the wife. Even if a curious young wife expresses an interest in her husband's work, he has difficulty explaining his work in a way that she can understand and hence he gets little satisfaction in telling her about the details of his work. Because she is so completely separated from the husband's daily world and he knows so little about her community activities, the area of mutual interest tends to be the children and the relatives.

Although the salary man's wife does not understand precisely what her husband does, unless she has unusually high ambitions she is usually satisfied with her husband's position in a large company. From her point of view, the major advantages of her husband's job are the regular hours and wages. She can count on his being home certain hours and she can count on his income. It is possible for the wife to manage household expenses without worrying about how much the income will be next month, or where it will come from. In comparison to the shopkeeper's wife and even to the independent professional, she is happy that she does not have to subject herself to the indignities of long hours of hard work. She can take care of the children and devote herself to them as she wishes. In comparison with the wives on the farm or the shopkeepers' wives, she lives a life of freedom and luxury. She does not have the same desire as her American counterpart to go out and get a job on her own and she does not have the same kind of feelings about being "just a housewife." She is delighted that she can devote herself to her family with so few outside demands.

In planning the children's future it is the salary man and his family who are most dependent on entrance examinations. Unlike the independent professional or the businessman, who can take the children into his own work regardless of the educational institutions the children attended, and unlike the shopkeeper who has lower aspirations for his children, the salary man's children are dependent upon entrance examinations to universities and companies. Hence, they generally place more pressure on their children and spend more time and energy to prepare them for these examinations.

The salary man's family is likely to be limited to parents and children.
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Association with relatives has nothing to do with business and tends to be based more on mutual liking than on reciprocal obligations. In the businessman's family, there is often a business tie with relatives which keeps the children and the parents together. The son who takes over his father's professional practice is also likely to have close business ties with his parents. Children of shopkeepers help their parents when young, and occasionally one child may succeed to the shop. In the salary man's family, however, there is no such economic bond between parents and children. Because a son's life is more determined by his education and the organization to which he belongs than the size of his inheri-