The Land od the Rising Yen

are
pressed into a respectful bow when father appears. Obedience and
self-effacement are taught from the child’s first week on earth.
    The marriage game, too, is
overwhelmingly important. Of course, more and more young people marry in the
European way: they choose their own partners. This, however, is still much more
the exception than the rule. Marriage may be, indeed, the third birth given to
some lucky youth: another chance to rise. An eligible, able, good-looking young
man, working for a large, even a giant, company may be discreetly informed that
he has been chosen as a possible candidate for marrying the Big Boss’s daughter.
That means that he is one in a field of six or eight. He knows that he is being
watched closely, mercilessly and incessantly. His past, his background, his
family, his parents’ history, his school-life, his former male and female
companions will be minutely scrutinized, weighed up and analysed — in a manner
which would be tolerated in no other free country. All this, by the way, has
nothing to do with the police; in Japan the obtrusive secret police is a
strictly private enterprise. If the candidate does not drink or gamble, does
not start affairs with bar maids and typists, does not commit any faux pas, then he may reach the semi-finals, the finals and in the end, one of the
runners will win. He has to be outstanding and lucky. His final success
will depend on many factors, except one: the choice or preference of his
would-be bride.
    If he is not to marry the Big Boss’s
daughter, there are many minor bosses in the company. In any case, he will be
well advised to marry someone connected with his firm. His life belongs to the
company. He will be looked after and promoted, he will receive innumerable
benefits (more of this later) but he must be loyal and devoted. He must not
even take all the holidays due to him. He has — as soon as he reaches a position
of responsibility and often even long before that — to give up his holidays
voluntarily, except for a day or two here, or a week there. Majime ningen is
the name for the serious-minded person and one’s ambition must be to be
regarded as such if one really wants to get on well. (Well, I repeat,
because once engaged, one will get on after a fashion in any case.) The
serious-minded chap goes to the office early, leaves it late, goes out on
company business with various clients after office hours and if he happens to
be free of clients, he still does not go home to his wife and family, but
spends his free time with his colleagues and immediate superiors. Eventually he
marries a girl from the company, lives for the company and dies in, perhaps
for, the company.
    One more peculiar duty: he will have
to go to the airfield or the railway station on many occasions, whenever the
Big Boss or the Small Boss leaves. Every day at Tokyo station you see large
groups — twenty or thirty people — bidding emotional farewell to a man who is
going on a routine weekly visit to Osaka, three hours away, to return next day.
People bow deeply and run a few steps after the train. Shedding of tears is
optional.
    In the United States it is still
possible to work for a boss for twenty-five years, to be paid off on a Friday
and to be told that one’s services won’t be required on Monday. Such treatment
of an employee is unimaginable in Japan. Entering into an employer-employee
relationship is like a marriage in Europe, except that it is much more solemn
and much more lasting. The job is sacred; and it is meant for life. The bond is
indissoluble.
    Loyalty is the supreme virtue. The
company requires undivided loyalty and gets it. Yes, it gets it, because the
relationship is mutual and unlike Western firms the company also gives its
devoted — if not unselfish — loyalty to the employees. They are housed (if
unmarried), receive comparatively small salaries but stupendous expense
accounts, often travel free to work and home — in higher positions their cars
will be huge and chauffeur-driven — get subsidized lunches, sporting
facilities, holidays, long trips abroad (without their wives) and vast bonuses
twice a year. The higher executive gets a house — often rent free — which
becomes his own on retirement. His membership to costly and exclusive clubs
will be paid for him; he can patronize ruinously expensive geisha-houses and
restaurants. Japanese employees are married off, entertained in their free
time, looked after in many other ways, treated