Reworking Japan: Changing Men at Work and Play under Neoliberalism

by Nana Okura Gagné

Reworking Japan examines how the past several decades of neoliberal economic restructuring and reforms have challenged Japan's corporate ideologies, gendered relations, and subjectivities of individual employees. With Japan's remarkable economic growth since the 1950s, the lifestyles and life courses of "salarymen" came to embody the "New Middle Class" family ideal. However, the nearly three decades of economic stagnation and reforms since the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s has intensified corporate retrenchment under the banner of neoliberal restructuring and brought new challenges to employees and their previously protected livelihoods. In a sweeping appraisal of recent history, Gagné demonstrates how economic restructuring has reshaped Japanese corporations, workers, and ideals, as well as how Japanese companies and employees have resisted and actively responded to such changes.

Gagné explores Japan's fraught and problematic transition from the postwar ideology of "companyism" to the emergent ideology of neoliberalism and the subsequent large-scale economic restructuring. By juxtaposing Japan's economic transformation with an ethnography of work and play, and individual life histories, Gagné goes beyond the abstract to explore the human dimension of the neoliberal reforms that have impacted the nation's corporate governance, socioeconomic class, workers' subjectivities, and family relations. Reworking Japan, with its firsthand analysis of how the supposedly hegemonic neoliberal regime does not completely transform existing cultural frames and social relations, will shake up preconceived ideas about Japanese men and the social effects of neoliberalism.

285 pages, Hardcover

Published January 15, 2021

Reviews

[Gus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly great work of anthropology. It demystifies and humanizes the almost mythical figure of the Japanese salaryman.

Part 1 is about the emergence of capitalism in Japan, with the salaryman as its central subject, and later on, about the neoliberal reforms that followed. It's not the most exciting read, given the academic writing (and also if you've had a crash course in Japanese history), so feel free to skip this part.

The rest of the chapters are centered around the stories of real people, which is what makes this book great.

Part 2 focuses on the "after-work". Perhaps the most known aspect of Japanese corporatism is its culture of leisure: after-drinks with the boss and colleagues, possibly at the (in)famous host clubs. It's a fascinating look at the realities of these encounters but, most importantly, at the social function that they serve, especially with the increasing dehumanization and atomization caused by neoliberal reforms.

Part 3 is purely about the impact of neoliberal policies in Japan, aka "restructuring". It covers it from three angles: those that escaped salarymanhood, those that thrived in it, and, those which the system failed. Every individual's story is interesting. This explains why the chapter carries the title, Multiplicities of Men.

If you're not reading this for academic purposes, I recommend skipping the introduction entirely. It's tedious dialectical/marxist theory. It made me doubt whether I should continue reading this. I'm glad I pushed through. The book is worth it for the stories alone. Nonetheless, the analysis and contextualization from the author is good, too.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sweet irony: someone for whom work means pushing papers, and who gets paid not for work, but for just being there, someone who gets to hire servants on the taxpayer's bill (they call them assistants, interns, and so on) is telling the stupid working people whom they should hate, while working hard to pay the taxes so the Gagnae clan would have a good life.