This is the first thorough study of one of the key practices in the Japanese corporate world. Large companies move their employees through regular, required job transfers, and Fujita, with rich ethnographic interviewing and shrewd analysis, shows its profound effects, especially on women’s efforts to balance work demands and life aspirations. A major contribution to Japan studies and business anthropology.

William Kelly, Yale University

“The rigor of Japan’s system of ‘lifetime employment’ has been compared to military service, in which work hours, duties, and location may be unlimited. Even today, employers may refer to workers as sokusenryoku, forces ready for immediate deployment. Japan today is facing a labor shortage for which increased female labor force participation has been the politically acceptable remedy. But younger couples living in dual-income households see employment structured by the gendered division of social labor as problematic and show willingness to oppose seemingly arbitrary and discriminatory practices, such as tenkin. In this insightful, empathic book, Fujita takes readers inside Japan’s changing labor market through an analysis of tenkin, showing how workers address conflicts between desires for family life and perceived obligations to firms and colleagues. In the process, we learn how the tacit contract of unlimited employment in exchange for unlimited devotion and obedience that has characterized Japan for decades is being renegotiated to fit contemporary feelings and needs.”

Scott North, Osaka University