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Yakuza part-timers now outnumber full-time employees

We keep hearing that the number of keiyaku shain, or part-time workers, in Japan continues to grow while the number of seishain, or full-time salaried workers, continues to decline. Seishain, of course, formed the backbone of the ‘lifetime employment’ system that promised Japanese salaried workers a job for life, a salary that would continue to rise, and the safety and security of belonging to a home away from home. One of the defining features of the recent ‘economic recovery,’ however, has been the gradual reduction in the number of relatively expensive seishain workers and their replacement with the cheaper keiyaku shain.

In the Kansai region, the situation proved serious enough to warrant a visit from Hidenao Nakagawa, the secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Mr Nakagawa crashed the recent two-day Kansai Economic Forum, telling the region’s business leaders:

An elite business leader who doesn’t feel that Japan is a ‘beautiful country’ will simply tell the government to leave him alone. But, elite business leaders must think about their business within society as a whole.

If Nakagawa’s words seemed vague, they were clarified by Kansai Economic Federation Chairman Yoshihisa Akiyama, who said:

One of the weak points of the Kansai region is that the number of full-time, salaried employees continues to decline and it is extremely hard for many young and old workers to find full-time work.

There’s the thrust of the argument, without the silly bit about Mr Abe’s ‘beautiful country’ thrown in.

So, what does this have to do with the Yakuza? This morning a Kyodo piece in the Japan Times caught my eye, with the headline, “Part-time mobsters now outnumber career hoods.” There was even a wonderful chart to go along with the artcile; alas, the online version of the story did not include the chart, so I have photographed my newspaper to show it here.

This data is classic. First of all, we learn that it comes to us via the National Police Agency, which, “has been keeping such statistics since 1958.” This observer’s less cynical side assumes that it comes from high-ranking undercover agents who have infiltrated Japan’s crime syndicates in order to gather economic information. I could be wrong.

But what it does clearly show is that the Yakuza have been trendsetters. On the one hand, they seemed to have devoted themselves to downsizing (in terms of payroll) at least half a decade earlier than their cousins in the corporate world. At the same time, Yakuza have brought about flexible business operations, a rarity in Japanese business, by allowing workers to get more work done in less time, and be involved with other activities. I think there are plenty of other possible conclusions we could draw from the article, so I’ll leave it to you to read and and comment…

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