Hundreds of thousands of Japanese started their first day on the job yesterday in an annual ritual born from the nation’s fast-disappearing jobs-for-life work culture.
More than 500 recruits pumped their fists in the air and shouted Yacchae, Nissan (go for it, Nissan) at the automaker’s welcoming ceremony, while Japan Airlines’ new employees — clad in black suits and spotless white shirts — tossed paper airplanes inside a giant hangar.
Yesterday was the start of Japan’s fiscal year, a day when new employees — some awkwardly struggling to get comfortable in formal attire — fan out across Tokyo and other major cities to report for their first day of work.
Photo: Bloomberg
Missing the big day, known as shinsotsu ikkatsu saiyo in Japanese, can prove difficult for procrastinators, who often struggle to find jobs after leaving university. Companies visit campuses to get their hands on cream-of-the-crop students before they finish their studies.
Among them was Risa Tsunematsu, who admitted she is slightly wary about making the jump from university to the corridors of a big bank.
“I’m nervous. It’s a new start after university life,” the 22-year-old said.
Ryohei Wasada worried the new job would take up a lot of his time compared with university, which he described as the “summer holiday” of his life.
“Student life in Japan is really fun. There is no way that my working life will be more fun than that,” said the 22-year-old, who is joining the sales department of a kitchen and bathroom supply maker.
Over at the Bank of Japan, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda tried to ease the nerves of more than 150 aspiring central bankers.
“I’ve been a working adult for about 50 years, but my career at the Bank of Japan is just three years old, so I’m only a bit more senior than all of you,” the 71-year-old said.
About 910,000 people started new jobs nationwide yesterday, although not all are fresh university graduates, Kyodo News agency reported.
Japan’s working culture has long been dominated by the popular image of selfless employees devoting themselves to the company.
“It’s a very important practice that is seen as the right way to transition from education to work,” Tokyo University professor Yuki Honda said.
During Japan’s post-World War II expansion, “the demand for labor was huge, so corporate Japan wanted employees to join firms right after graduation,” she added.
However, as the once-soaring economy soured in recent decades, part-time and contract work has become much more common for a younger generation of workers.
Japan’s unemployment rate increased 0.1 percentage point to a seasonally adjusted 3.3 percent in February from the previous month, the first rise in three months, Kyodo News agency reported on Tuesday, citing the latest government data.
These days, many frustrated new hires leave their first job within a few years and some critics, including Honda Motor Co, say the hiring-all-at-once ritual puts unhealthy pressure on students to find employment before graduating.
Japanese tend to view it as “abnormal” not to transition right away from school to a job, Honda said.
However, Aiko Shigeta, a 21-year-old international affairs graduate at Temple University in Tokyo, thinks the hiring process creates a sense of unity.
“The majority of the students are guaranteed a job at the end,” she said. “In Europe and the United States, you are on your own and have to try to find a job yourself. Here in Japan it’s all a process.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy