Narratives of the New Mobility

Abstract

“I think that this period is good because it is forcing Japanese young people to reexamine themselves and think about what kind of work they want to do.” – Principal at a low-ranking public high school Reliance on institutional social capital to get a full-time job straight out of school worked well for many of Japan’s youth throughout the postwar period. A school introduction to a job became a more common way of entering the labor market for graduates of every level of schooling during the post-WorldWar II period. Data from the Social Stratification and Mobility Survey introduced in Chapter 3 showed that a school introduction served the educational nonelite (high school graduates) well: Compared to their counterparts who found their first job through a different route, they were much more likely to land a full-time job in a large firm and to stay in that job for at least the first five years of their working life. In short, individuals who drew on their school’s social capital were more likely than others to be placed into a full-time job in a workplace that became their ba , the social location that identified them to the rest of Japanese society, often for a sustained period of time. University graduates’ job search was similar in timing to that of high school graduates, with large firms recruiting early in the fall to secure the most desirable seniors for immediate postgraduation employment in the following April. In the U.S. such fervent recruitment activity takes place at the most elite private four-year universities and the most elite law and business schools in the country. But in Japan, it has been necessary for the government to regulate the start of the recruiting year not just for university seniors but for high school seniors as well, because the hiring plans of large firms have been laid out so far in advance. Students’ battle for good jobs is waged early in their senior year. And as Chapter 3 elucidated, in the postwar Japanese labor market a man’s stable attachment to a firm has been an important vehicle for receiving on-the-job training at the employer’s expense and garnering steadily increasing earnings.