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Tenkin and Career Management in a Changing Japan

Noriko Fujita

Tenkin, or corporate transfers in the Japanese contexts, is a mandated practice. Workers have little discretion. If workers are dual-career couples with small children, how do they manage it? Tenkin and Career Management in a Changing Japan answers this question through qualitative interviews with human resource department managers in large firms and married, white-collar workers, and participant observation in social events. The research uncovered that the culturally normative, gendered nature of tenkin is produced and reproduced by Japanese firms’ capitalists’ logic and gendered family assumptions, while some firms attempted to advance diversification and inclusion, and the dual-career couples are also becoming the actors of tenkin through negotiation. The author discusses these dual-career couples’ agency (Ortner 2006) and argues that for structural change to happen in Japan, the essential concept of care should count in the discussion of career management for all workers.

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Lexington Books
Pages: 172 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-1-7936-0437-8 • Hardback • September 2024 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, Social Science / Sociology / Marriage & Family, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies

Noriko Fujita is assistant professor in the College of Humanities, Tamagawa University.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Tenkin as the Subject

Chapter 1: The Practice Taken for Granted

Chapter 2: Development and Changes in the Practice?

Chapter 3: Young Workers and Salariiman

Chapter 4: Dual-career Couples Living Apart

Chapter 5: Dual-career Couples Collaborating

Conclusion: Career Management in Contemporary Japan

Appendix A: The Firms Interviewed by the Author

Appendix B: The Individuals Interviewed by the Author

Bibliography

About the Author

"This is the first thorough study of one of the key practices in the Japanese corporate world. Large companies move their employees through regular, required job transfers, and Fujita, with rich ethnographic interviewing and shrewd analysis, shows its profound effects, especially on women’s efforts to balance work demands and life aspirations. A major contribution to Japan studies and business anthropology."


— William Kelly, Yale University


“The rigor of Japan’s system of ‘lifetime employment’ has been compared to military service, in which work hours, duties, and location may be unlimited. Even today, employers may refer to workers as sokusenryoku, forces ready for immediate deployment. Japan today is facing a labor shortage for which increased female labor force participation has been the politically acceptable remedy. But younger couples living in dual-income households see employment structured by the gendered division of social labor as problematic and show willingness to oppose seemingly arbitrary and discriminatory practices, such as tenkin. In this insightful, empathic book, Fujita takes readers inside Japan’s changing labor market through an analysis of tenkin, showing how workers address conflicts between desires for family life and perceived obligations to firms and colleagues. In the process, we learn how the tacit contract of unlimited employment in exchange for unlimited devotion and obedience that has characterized Japan for decades is being renegotiated to fit contemporary feelings and needs.”


— Scott North, Osaka University


Tenkin and Career Management in a Changing Japan

Cover Image
Hardback
Summary
Summary
  • Tenkin, or corporate transfers in the Japanese contexts, is a mandated practice. Workers have little discretion. If workers are dual-career couples with small children, how do they manage it? Tenkin and Career Management in a Changing Japan answers this question through qualitative interviews with human resource department managers in large firms and married, white-collar workers, and participant observation in social events. The research uncovered that the culturally normative, gendered nature of tenkin is produced and reproduced by Japanese firms’ capitalists’ logic and gendered family assumptions, while some firms attempted to advance diversification and inclusion, and the dual-career couples are also becoming the actors of tenkin through negotiation. The author discusses these dual-career couples’ agency (Ortner 2006) and argues that for structural change to happen in Japan, the essential concept of care should count in the discussion of career management for all workers.

Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 172 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
    978-1-7936-0437-8 • Hardback • September 2024 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
    Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, Social Science / Sociology / Marriage & Family, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies
Author
Author
  • Noriko Fujita is assistant professor in the College of Humanities, Tamagawa University.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgments

    Introduction: Tenkin as the Subject

    Chapter 1: The Practice Taken for Granted

    Chapter 2: Development and Changes in the Practice?

    Chapter 3: Young Workers and Salariiman

    Chapter 4: Dual-career Couples Living Apart

    Chapter 5: Dual-career Couples Collaborating

    Conclusion: Career Management in Contemporary Japan

    Appendix A: The Firms Interviewed by the Author

    Appendix B: The Individuals Interviewed by the Author

    Bibliography

    About the Author

Reviews
Reviews
  • "This is the first thorough study of one of the key practices in the Japanese corporate world. Large companies move their employees through regular, required job transfers, and Fujita, with rich ethnographic interviewing and shrewd analysis, shows its profound effects, especially on women’s efforts to balance work demands and life aspirations. A major contribution to Japan studies and business anthropology."


    — William Kelly, Yale University


    “The rigor of Japan’s system of ‘lifetime employment’ has been compared to military service, in which work hours, duties, and location may be unlimited. Even today, employers may refer to workers as sokusenryoku, forces ready for immediate deployment. Japan today is facing a labor shortage for which increased female labor force participation has been the politically acceptable remedy. But younger couples living in dual-income households see employment structured by the gendered division of social labor as problematic and show willingness to oppose seemingly arbitrary and discriminatory practices, such as tenkin. In this insightful, empathic book, Fujita takes readers inside Japan’s changing labor market through an analysis of tenkin, showing how workers address conflicts between desires for family life and perceived obligations to firms and colleagues. In the process, we learn how the tacit contract of unlimited employment in exchange for unlimited devotion and obedience that has characterized Japan for decades is being renegotiated to fit contemporary feelings and needs.”


    — Scott North, Osaka University


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