The concept of lifetime employment is a striking example of the Japanese habit of developing new, but tradition-based, customs to suit the needs of the moment and discarding them when they no longer serve a purpose. Although the idea of a promise of permanent employment strikes foreigners as either an excellent example of social justice or a ludicrous imposition on businesses, it is poorly understood in the West. The idea is of recent origin and was a practical means of facilitating the various surges of industrialization and industrial change in Japan throughout the twentieth century. In Japanese fashion, however, the concept had roots in the past and was developed as a complement to a whole set of Japanese concepts (such as the emphasis on group membership and family) that enabled its rapid rise to the status of a widely accepted facet of the social order. But since the downward slide of the nation's economy began in the early 1990s this "custom"--which only applied to a portion of Japanese workers--has come under attack and is gradually being dismantled since it now works counter to the interests of those who instituted it and to the interests of the nation as a whole.
Since the Japanese "bubble economy of overvalued equities and real estate" collapsed and sent the nation into "the slump that just will not quit" the Western press has adopted an almost gloating tone toward the economic system before which "the entire world stood in awe" until the late 1980s (Porter & Takeuchi, 1999, p. 66). In 1992 the Economist lectured the Japanese on the need for "a restructuring that is long overdue" and cited "the totem of lifetime employment" as the point where this "restructuring" (a euphemism for mass layoffs) must start ("Wielding," 1992, p. 70). In Management Today in 1993 the subheading of an article warned that while products evolve quickly in Japan "society is rigid and resistant to change" (Kilburn, 1993, p. 44). At that tim...