An Emerging Non-Regular Labour Force in Japan ─ The Dignity of Dispatched Workers

Like many industrialised nations, the current employment trend in Japan centres on the diversification of the labour market with an increased use of temporary labour. Among a wide range of non-regular labour arrangements, haken, or 'dispatched workers' are a newly legalised category of non-regular workers who are typically employed by the employment agency while working at the facilities of and being under the authority of the client firm. In recent years, their numbers have expanded exponentially under the state’s deregulation policy and assumed considerable symbolic significance in public debate, especially with regard to the nation’s ‘widening gaps’.

Contrasting sharply with the Japanese post-war salarymen/women model haken generate internal cultural debate where ‘traditional’ and ‘global’, or ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ values are juxtaposed, contradicted, and negotiated. The debate between and among various interest groups and powerful actors in turn provides important clues to the constantly changing relationship of the individual to the state, to firms, to entrepreneurial opportunities, and to the wider world. Drawing on a range of ethnographic data and documented materials, the book seeks to bring a better understanding of personhood in Japan’s shifting landscape of employment.

Huiyan Fu's book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese business, organisational behaviour, employment relations and Japanese anthropology.