4 - Varieties in Work and Labor

Summary

The Numerical Dominance of Small Businesses

Small Businesses as Majority Culture

Popular overseas soto images of Japanese society are colored by the notion that it is a country of mega-corporations. These perceptions have been engendered by Japanese products and associated with such household names as Toyota, Mitsubishi, and NEC. However, the uchi reality is that, though powerful and influential, large corporations constitute a very small minority of businesses in Japan, both in terms of the number of establishments and the size of their workforce. An overwhelming majority of Japanese enterprises are small or medium in size, and it is these which employ the bulk of the workforce. While small may or may not be beautiful, “it certainly is bountiful, and thereby deserving of its fair share of attention.” Small and medium-sized companies are the mainstay of the Japanese economy.

In the Japanese business world they are known as chūshō kigyō, medium- and small-sized firms. For brevity, one may lump both types together and call them small businesses. The Small Business Standard Law defines chūshō kigyō as those companies which employ not more than three hundred persons or whose capital does not exceed 100 million yen.

As Table 4.1 shows, nearly nine out of ten employees work in businesses with fewer than three hundred workers. Furthermore, more than half of private sector workers are employed by establishments with fewer than thirty workers. Large corporations with three hundred or more workers employ one-ninth of the labor force in the private sector.