The Company (Fraying At The Edges)

Abstract

Unquestionably, the most significant social institution in Japan today is the company. The term ‘company’ should be understood here more broadly as the employer and workplace, whether a corporation, a private company or a government department, whether a factory, an office or a store. The model, naturally, is the big Japanese corporation with tens of thousands of employees and branches throughout Japan and around the world. But the system they have developed and the practices they engage in are emulated, consciously or unconsciously, by even the smallest units in certain ways.