Yeah, it can be nigh-impossible to get vacation time in Japan. Add to that the loyalty to their employer (I call it stockholm syndrome) and many won't even ask. My girlfriend is lucky if she gets 2-3 weekend days free a month, let alone any vacation days. On top of that it's not unusual to have to leave home before 5 AM only to not get home again until after 8 PM. For 2-3 days in a row. And she's not especially well-paid either. My and her mother keep prodding her to quit, but of course her position in the company is essential and she'd never want to "betray" her employer. No matter what explanation I try, she doesn't understand how it's her employer who's exploiting her...
I think Stockholm syndrome is an apt description of this condition. Maybe it happens because breaking the vicious cycle requires a person stuck in such predicament to acknowledge that their time, and to an extent their person, is a resource in the sad, neo-liberal sense.
Usually people have more heroic visions of their person and possibly this is where the honor and pride narratives stem from, such as "I pulled a 10th all-niter in a row ant helped the company make 0.1% more in profits" or "I can't betray my employer".
Another factor is that with a work schedule like that there is simply no time for a person to look for and apply for other positions, so suddenly quitting is a much harder decision to make without a fallback plan.
It's just generically incredibly difficult to switch jobs mid-career in Japan. The vast majority of hiring is done w.r.t new grads, who are then groomed (read: brainwashed) into drinking the company coolaid.
There are four options I can think of:
1. You are a bonafide superstar and manage to switch into a solid company (my boss when I was in Japan managed to do this).
2. You become a contract worker.
3. You go to a smaller (less prestigious, usually lower pay, less stable) company.
4. You go to a "foreign national" company (European/American companies' Tokyo office)
Exactly, switching jobs is generally not an option.
Sadly for many japanese, they see suicide as an easier out than trying to find a new job. Long hours and no vacation also clearly lead to depression. I'd rather see my gf drop down to a part-time job (baito) than give up completely.
The truth is that there are no laws or contracts preventing companies from laying off its workers en masse, yet the individual deludes himself into thinking that there is some concrete social contract exists. The thing is, when the economy was growing at 5% a year, companies could uphold this (ephemeral) social contract by employing people for a lifetime and guaranteeing a great pension.
I personally know CEOs of smaller companies in Japan who vowed to not lay off a single person during the tough times of 2008-2010. The C-suite guys took zero salary for at least 2008, and all other employees took a temporary 30% pay cut. However, this is not the norm. While outright firings may be more rare, things go on underneath the surface. Fulltime employment slots replaced with contract workers in factories, significant amounts of employment moving overseas to SE Asia, etc.
Layoffs aren't as common as the US, but that's actually not necessarily a good thing. Hiring of new grads has gone down significantly (the last graduating class with decent job prospects was the class of 2008), while the older workers (even those who underperform) are kept on board. Like kalleboo says, Japan is about "family". They are kind towards members of their family, and strikingly cold to those who are not. Those who are part of the company are "family", and are protected. New grads who cannot find work are not part of the family, and don't receive the same empathy. Even those who can find work, even at the best and brightest companies, are faced with a situation where their lifetime earnings will be significantly lower than those of the boomers. (on the order of $2.5MM vs $3~4MM lifetime)
There are no good figures about the employment rate of college graduates, but if you discount students who have gone onto become 'part time / contract' workers, the employment rate may be around 60%. (The problem is that all the stats are wildly skewed - for instance, employment rates that include 'underemployed' new grads, or only counting graduates from mid-tier colleges and above) No one really knows how bad the true youth unemployment situation is in Japan.
College students are very risk averse, particularly in the turmoil following the financial crisis. I recall that a poll among college students back in 2011 declared that they wanted to become public workers above all other options (public workers cannot be fired, afaik).
Japan's leaders are very talented at keeping a sinking ship afloat. But they can't avoid the inevitable. Like the country's debt problem, there will come a moment when things catastrophically implode.
For many many years it has been. People'd get picked up fresh from college and they'd be part of the companies "family". Nowadays, especially after the financial crisis... not so much. Companies now only hire part-timers so they can fire them at will. Youth unemployment is skyrocketing as in many other countries.
The other problem is the this seems endemic in Japanese culture. I would expect that her next employer might look unfavorably on her 'betraying' her previous employer (though I don't have experience to know for sure).
What next employer? How does one even go about finding a new job while working hours like that? Unless she gets fired, I don't expect she'd even have the time to conduct a job search if she wanted to.
You basically have no choice but to use your "paid vacation" days to conduct a job search.
If you're based in Tokyo, switching jobs is much easier because (a) there are a lot of companies in general there, (b) the culture of the companies are a little more westernized than the rest of the country, and (c) you have the option of going to a foreign national company.
I've also Tokyo seems more westernized in both culture and business, I guess due to offices having a lot of competition from foreign headquarters?
Sadly, my girlfriend lives in Kagoshima, at the ass-end of backwardness. Convincing her parents that I'm not going to murder their daughter is going to be hard enough! (Japanese news media's treatment of foreigners is rivaled only by Fox News I think). As a white, european male, it's been enlightening being at this end of racism.
I do think that's a factor. Also, in general Tokyo has a lot of cultural influence from the west, (having a decent number of foreign professionals there probably helps) and its inhabitants exhibit more western tendencies as a result. I think it's primarily at the individual level, rather than the corporate level though.
Kagoshima is so close to Okinawa, that I imagine there is some cultural undertones that have permeated from the controversies regarding the US Army's isolated (but still brutal) incidences of poor behavior. (iirc they were the subject of the relocation of the Futenma base as well?)
Kyuushuu people are pretty oldschool from what I understand. At least you're caucasian though, you would be truly doomed if you were non-Japanese & non-White. At least they treat you as if you're going to murder their daughter, rather than treating you as an untouchable :(
You only have one life. Why would anyone want to spend the vast majority of it doing work for someone else? The rare case is that they are passionate and care about the work. Anything else, and I just don't understand it.
Yeah, I realized I didn't write what I really wanted to say, which was, why would you stay at a job you hate? Or even a job that you barely tolerate? Or a job that you are apathetic about? One life, and most of your time is going to be spent at that job. It should be something you like at the very least.
but is there a genuine tournament-style approach to promotion and rewards.
For example - if she does work like a demon for 10 years, gets the promotions, will she be in tenure, exceptionally well paid etc. If so it may be a rational decision.
When I lived in Japan, I stayed with the head of Korean Air for Japan and with a mid-level engineer at Mazda.
The Mazda engineer left the house at 6 AM and got back at 7 PM or so.
The executive left the house at 10 AM and got back at 5 PM.
When I asked the executive about it, he told me that he had to come late and leave early so his entire staff could leave at a reasonable hour. It cascades - it never looks good if your superior is at work when you're not, so you make sure you get in before him and leave after him. The lower you are, the longer you're at work.
Out of curiosity, do Japanese companies not use multi-shift schedules? A former employer of mine ran three shifts, particularly for hardware testing, and I don't see how such a schedule could work with that sentiment.
Not for white collar jobs AFAIK. The salaryman is expected to come before his boss and go home after - work may extend to drinking after work to build team identity/loyalty.
This company kind of sucks. They dangle the typical japanese seniority pyramid in front of hires, but my girlfriend has been at this for 10 years now and it's not leading anywhere nice.
