Kawata Yasutoshi was never cut out for traditional Japanese corporate life. As a former guitarist in a heavy-metal band, he found working at a large electronics firm frustrating: particularly the rigid hierarchy, where youngsters did whatever their seniors said. A lot of the work was inefficient, and many hours slipped away either at his desk or at obligatory drinking sessions with his colleagues. Leaving proved tricky, too. When he decided to move to a global IT company a decade ago his superiors berated him, even calling him a “traitor”. Now in his late 40s, Mr Kawata has changed jobs again. “I was hungry for a challenge,” he says.
These days Mr Kawata is less of an outlier. In Japan the ideal worker was once employed fresh from graduation and expected to stick with one company for life—reaping the benefits of a seniority-based promotion system as he (usually not she) aged. But this rigid “salaryman” model is eroding. While job-hoppers remain less common in Japan compared with Western countries, they are on the rise.
The number of regular workers shifting to another full-time job reached 990,000 in 2024, an increase of more than 60% from a decade ago. In a 2024 survey by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 21% of young Japanese employees said they plan to stay with their current employer “until retirement”, down from 35% in 2014. The trend reflects Japan’s demographic reality too; workers have more bargaining power when they choose jobs as the working-age population shrinks. According to one survey, over half of Japanese companies face a shortage of regular workers. Japan’s once-mighty civil service has also faced an exodus of smart young employees looking for something more exciting.
Japan’s archetypical salaryman worker emerged in the post-war boom period (coinciding with Showa, the era of Emperor Hirohito’s reign). Their loyalty was demonstrated through long hours at the office and after-hours bonding. A famous advertisement for an energy drink in the 1980s asked, celebrating the dedication of corporate warriors, “Can you fight 24 hours?”
But younger generations have started to question this way of working. The share of men taking paternity leave has jumped from 2% of those eligible a decade ago to 30% in 2023. “The Showa-era workstyle is collapsing,” says Ono Hiroshi of Hitotsubashi University Business School. Matsunami Tatsuya, a millennial in Tokyo, thinks that “so many Japanese people don’t find joy in their work.” The salarymen he saw on trains when growing up looked more like lifeless zombies. Determined not to follow the same path, he launched his own recruitment agency, matching workers with startups that are tackling social issues.
At the office, tensions are brewing across generations. Young workers complain about hatarakanai ojisan, “older men who don’t work”, referring to veterans who contribute little but remain protected by Japan’s strict labour laws. In a survey in 2022 nearly half of employees in their 20s and 30s reported having such colleagues, citing them as a major cause of falling workplace morale. They also tend to clog upper-management positions, leaving younger workers little room to advance. “Windows 2000” is another phrase to mock such senior slackers—a play on their hefty ¥20m ($132,000) salaries. During the pandemic, Japan’s unemployment rate remained around 3% (by comparison, America’s rose from 4% to nearly 15%). Mr Ono likens Japan’s rigid labour market to a “stagnant bathtub”, where water cannot be drained or refreshed.
Calls for regulatory reform have grown. In 2019 the then head of Keidanren, Japan’s largest business federation, declared that the country’s lifetime-employment system was “no longer sustainable”. More recently, during the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership race last year, Koizumi Shinjiro, one of the leading candidates, pledged to loosen dismissal rules to promote labour fluidity—though his proposal sparked fierce debate, with conservative candidates warning against hasty changes.
But though policy is slow to adapt, attitudes are shifting among older workers too. A famous saying in Japan known as the 35-year-old limit theory warns that changing careers after that age is almost impossible. That theory is starting to crumble. According to Recruit, an employment agency, the number of job-hoppers in their 40s to 50s increased sixfold over the past decade. Wakatsuki Mitsuru, 44, recently left his job at a big Japanese firm after having spent more than two decades there. “I probably could have coasted along for another 20 years until retirement,” he says. “But I couldn’t help thinking: is that what I want?” Labour shortages also mean that companies that used to focus on hiring fresh graduates now increasingly welcome mid-level talent.
This shift has big economic implications. In Japan, a lack of labour fluidity has meant that wage rises depend on shunto, the annual spring wage negotiations. Another Recruit study finds that nearly two-fifths of job-hoppers now see their wages rise by more than 10%. That was true for less than one-third of them in 2021. While Japanese wages have remained low by rich-world standards, growing labour mobility “could improve the situation”, observes Koike Masato, an economist at Sompo Institute Plus, a think-tank in Tokyo. It could also inject dynamism into Japan’s ossified institutions. “When you have the same people staying in the same organisation, the mindset becomes increasingly inward,” says Mr Wakatsuki, reflecting on his previous workplace. Mr Kawata, the bandsman-turned-IT worker, agrees. “Japanese firms need wind from the outside to blow in.” ■