“Make Duty your Command”

Toyota's ceremony in Aichi prefecture - (c) 愛知テレビ

These are the warm words that welcome us to the company. Today (02/04), we officially join the company. A day of celebration!

There are over 200 of us sitting here in a vast hall, jittery. Everyone is strictly wearing a two-dollar suit with a white shirt and black tie. We all left our nylon and synthetic leather briefcases behind, locked in a room. Towering above us are the Japanese and company flags, large and proud.

I am sitting at the back and loosely listening to the HR boss telling us how to keep in check our posture – your spine is healthy and strong when you practice healthy posture. He then orchestrates us to make us rise, bow and sit in unison as the President makes his entrance into the room.

My first day in the company unfolds in a similar fashion; an other thousand bowings, smiling your heart out, and uttering artificial phrases of the type “Please treat me well” or “I will cause trouble, but please take good care of me”.

Luckily I feel spaced out by the end of the morning and can go through the day unharmed. Tired, by 5.30pm we all long to go home but first need to make our way to the cafeteria, where we are met by sushi, Asahi super-dry and our departments’ managers. They call this gathering a ‘friendly reunion’ (懇親会) and optional, but no one dares to decline, so small talk and tipsy Japanese salarymen quickly ensue. Whether its in a karaoke bar after work, or after a Golf session on a Saturday, these nomikai (drinking parties) with your colleagues are one of the most practiced national sports here.

Carpe Diem.

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More on the unique Jap recruiting system in the Asahi Shinbun: “Companies currently "blanket hire" students while they are still in their penultimate year of university. Those who fail to secure a job offer (40.1%) in the fixed recruitment period--shortened this year from five months to three by Japan's biggest business lobby, the Keidanren--may go through the same process again in their final year.

[…] Under this system, companies do not assign regular workers to specific jobs, but rather confer "membership" on them in exchange for absolute loyalty and diligence.

[…] Candidates who are not selected to be regular employees after the recruitment system mostly end up as "irregular" employees, who encompass part-time, temporary contract and dispatch workers, and overlaps with the so-called "freeters," or people between 18 and 34 who are not employed full time.”