How the japanese learn to work 2nd edition - part 1 pot

How the Japanese Learn to WorkEducation and training has long been cited as a key component of Japaneseindustrial and commercial success.. A recognition of the importance ofvocational tr

How the Japanese Learn to Work

Education and training has long been cited as a key component of Japaneseindustrial and commercial success A recognition of the importance ofvocational training, the high standards expected in school and college andthe respect for education in Japanese society has produced an extremelyable and well-qualified work-force

In this new and extensively revised edition Ronald Dore and Mari Sakoprovide a comprehensive overview of the Japanese system of education andtraining There are chapters on the general education system for children,the types of institutional vocational training and the importance of layingthe groundwork for further training The section on training in the workplace

is of particular importance in understanding Japanese success Also includedare chapters on the qualification and vocational skill testing systems and thepolicy superstructure—the role of the individual, firms and the state

How the Japanese Learn to Work is a valuable contribution to our

understanding of why one of the world’s most motivated work-forces hasbeen able to achieve so much There are valuable insights for both policymakers and businesses, not least of which is the Japanese desire to keep onlearning right through their working lives

Ronald Dore is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science Mari Sako

is Professor of International Business at Said Business School, University ofOxford

The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series

Editorial Board

J.A.A.Stockwin, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies,

University of Oxford and Director, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies Teigo Yoshida, formerly Professor of the University of Tokyo,

and now Professor, Obirin University, Tokyo

Frank Langdon, Professor, Institute of International Relations,

University of British Columbia, Canada

Alan Rix, Professor of Japanese, The University of Queensland

Junji Banno, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo

Leonard Schoppa, University of Virginia

Titles in the series:

The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, Peter Dale

The Emperor’s Adviser: Saionji Kinmochi and Pre-war Japanese Politics, Lesley Connors

A History of Japanese Economic Thought, Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System, Junji Banno, translated by J.A.A.Stockwin Industrial Relations in Japan: the Peripheral Workforce, Norma Chalmers

Banking Policy in Japan: American Efforts at Reform During the Occupation, William M.Tsutsui Educational Reform in Japan, Leonard Schoppa

How the Japanese Learn to Work, Ronald Dore and Mari Sako

Japanese Economic Development: Theory and Practice, Penelope Francks

Japan and Protection: The Growth of Protectionist Sentiment and the Japanese Response, Syed

Javed Marwood

The Soil, by Nagastsuka Takashi: a Portrait of Rural Life in Meiji Japan, translated and with an

introduction by Ann Waswo

Biotechnology in Japan, Malcolm Brock

Britain’s Educational Reform: a Comparison with Japan, Michael Howarth

Language and the Modern State: the Reform of Written Japanese, Nanette Twine

Industrial Harmony in Modern Japan: the Invention of a Tradition, W.Dean Kinzley

Japanese Science Fiction: a View of a Changing Society, Robert Matthew

The Japanese Numbers Game: the Use and Understanding of Numbers in Modern Japan, Thomas

Crump

Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan, Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing

Technology and Industrial Development in pre-War Japan, Yukiko Fukasaku

Japan’s Early Parliaments 1890–1905, Andrew Fraser, R.H.P.Mason and Philip Mitchell

Japan’s Foreign Aid Challenge, Alan Rix

Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, Stephen S.Large

Japan: Beyond the End of History, David Williams

Ceremony and Ritual in Japan: Religious Practices in an Industrialized Society, Jan van Bremen and

D.P.Martinez

Understanding Japanese Society: Second Edition, Joy Hendry

The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity, Susan J.Napier Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, Glenn D.Hook

Growing a Japanese Science City: Communication in Scientific Research, James W.Dearing Architecture and Authority in Japan, William H.Coaldrake

Women’s Gidayu and the Japanese Theatre Tradition, A.Kimi Coaldrake

Democracy in Post-war Japan, Rikki Kersten

Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan, Hélène Bowen Raddeker

Japan, Race and Equality, Naoko Shimazu

Japan, Internationalism and the UN, Ronald Dore

How the Japanese Learn to Work

Second edition

Ronald Dore and Mari Sako

London and New York

First published 1989

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

Revised edition © Crown copyright 1998 Revised by permission of the

Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily

reflect the views or policy of the Department for Education &

Employment or any other government department.

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-415-14881-2 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-15345-X (pbk)

ISBN 0-203-01575-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-21022-0 (Glassbook Format)

3 Vocational streams in the mainline formal education system 42

4 Post-secondary, non-university vocational education and

Appendix: Ministry of Education budget for vocational

List of figures and tables

2.1 Employers’ attitudes to graduates of high schools:

2.2 Destinations of upper secondary school graduates,

2.7 University graduate and high school graduate

earnings compared (bonuses included): by age group,

all manufacturing firms with more than ten workers 38

3.1 Distribution of vocational courses and pupils (per cent) 42

4.1 Post-secondary, non-university vocational schools

5.1 Expenditure on education and training by size of firm

5.2 Curriculum of the NEC two-year training school for

5.3 Dengyosha Pump Company: proposals for

5.4 Provenance of correspondence courses recognized as

5.6 The emphases of training programmes: differences by

6.2 Skills tested by the Ministry of Labour skill testing

7.1 Distribution of expenditures on education under

A.1 Ministry of Education budget for vocational education,

List of figures and tables vii

General editor’s preface

Japan as the new century approaches is going through a turbulent period, inwhich some of her most entrenched political and economic institutions andpractices are being increasingly questioned The financial crisis whichoccurred in the latter half of 1997 affected most of the so-called ‘tigereconomies’ of East and South-East Asia, and did not spare Japan The collapse

of several important Japanese financial institutions signalled both that thesystem was in crisis but also that the government was no longer willing, orable, to rescue ailing institutions The sense of crisis quickly dulled the lustre

of the ‘Asian model’ in the eyes of the world’s media, but also concentratedminds within Japan on the task of reforming the system The extent to whichthe system needed reforming remained a matter of sharp dispute, but aconsensus was emerging that many entrenched practices which derived fromthe immediate post-war period of the ‘economic miracle’ needed to beradically rethought At the end of March 1998, the extent and timescale ofthe desired revolution remained in doubt Elements of the old regime seemed

to be falling apart, but the shape of the new was still but dimly discernible.Reading the world’s press in the aftermath of the financial crisis one couldwell derive the impression that East Asia (including Japan) was heading forcollapse and that the world could safely direct its attention elsewhere, notably

to the dynamic and successful market economies of North America andEurope Such an impression, however, was greatly exaggerated Japan andits surrounding region remained a zone of intense economic production andinteraction, resourceful and dynamic Though there was a financial crisis,the economy remained massive in size and diversity, retaining great economicpower both regionally and globally Radical reform was needed, but historicalexperience suggested that the capacity of Japan to reform itself—even though

it might take some while—ought not to be underestimated If the worldthought that the East Asian region could safely be ignored, it was likely to be

in for a rude shock in a short span of years

The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series seeks to foster aninformed and balanced, but not uncritical, understanding of Japan One aim

of the series is to show the depth and variety of Japanese institutions, practicesand ideas Another is, by using comparisons, to see what lessons, positive ornegative, can be drawn for other countries The tendency in commentary onJapan to resort to outdated, ill-informed or sensational stereotypes stillremains, and needs to be combated

Education is a field where the Japanese experience has attracted muchinterest since the 1980s, with several Western countries looking to Japan formodels at the same time as pressure for reform has been growing within theJapanese education system itself In this revised edition of their book firstpublished in 1989, Professors Dore and Sako investigate vocational trainingand its place in Japanese education and industry Perhaps the most importantlesson they draw is that in Japan vocational training is taken extremelyseriously and that enormous efforts are made to ensure that even those at thelower levels of the ability range are educated and trained to the highestpracticable level, so that the emergence of a semi-literate, semi-numerate,barely employable underclass is effectively prevented The sheer richness ofthe vocational training environment, both in a wide range of educationalestablishments and in the workplace, is ably demonstrated in this book, as isthe culture of education and employment which underpins the vocationaltraining exercise as a whole

J.A.A.StockwinDirectorNissan Institute ofJapanese StudiesUniversity of Oxford

General editor’s Preface ix

as the techniques themselves, and that the whole Japanese system ofvocational education and training was worthy of careful examination.

A century ago, the study tours went in the other direction In the early1870s a delegation of senior Japanese statesmen spent nearly a year touring,and studying, the United States and Britain They visited centres ofgovernment, of commerce and, in Britain especially, of industry The recentlyrepublished record of that visit (Kume 1978) with its detailed sketches anddescriptions of industrial processes, contained numerous reflections on what

it was that made Britain and America so prosperous while Japan remained

so poor It was not so much, the delegation concluded, in industriousnessthat the difference lay, nor in natural resources It lay rather in the application

of science to production, in planning, organization and disciplined skill.The delegation’s return confirmed the conviction of Japan’s leaders thatthe road to a secure and respected place in the international system lay in anational endeavour to ‘catch up’ in the accumulation of industrial skills asmuch as in the accumulation of industrial capital, that Japan was at thebeginning of a long apprenticeship One of the first tasks of their ambassador

to reach satisfactory levels’ rather than ‘We’re doing pretty well’ A recurringneed for special training programmes is taken for granted They do not have

to be justified on the grounds that ‘these boffins keep coming up withsomething new and we jolly well need to keep up’, but are perfectly acceptableeven when they are presented as getting people up to long-established levels

of satisfactory competence

And what has certainly not changed is the assumption, which grew quitenaturally out of that century-long preoccupation with Japan’s backwardness,that the state has a vital role to play in raising the nation’s standards ofvocational competence

In the standard theory of liberal democracy, the state’s involvement invocational training is justified only on the grounds of market failure Traininghas a lot of external economies which you cannot, except through taxationand collective public action, get the beneficiaries to pay for—the benefitsnurses get from having doctors to work with, the benefits employers getfrom having sick employees cured, the benefits we all get from havingcompetent soldiers to defend us, etc Hence, although we can still rely tosome extent on the market to provide individuals with what they want—i.e.opportunities to develop the talents they need to sell in the market in order toget the income they desire—the market needs a lot of supplementation bythe state

Of course, that argument from individual interests has never, anywhere,been a complete account of the reasons why liberal democracies haveinterested themselves in vocational training National considerations—tostrengthen ‘national champion’ firms against their foreign rivals, to raise thenation’s strategic power—have been powerful concerns in Britain ever sincealarm at Germany’s industrial strength began to grow at the turn of the century.But still, in so far as one can measure the balance in such matters,

to make the country strong enough, in the first instance, to persuade foreigners

to amend the ‘unequal treaties’ which they forced on Japan in the 1850s, aquarter-century struggle still well remembered today, and the subject, notsurprisingly, of a multi-billion yen movie in 1986

Japan’s international position today, and her ranking in the various peckingorders of international competition, are beyond all except the wilder dreams

of the Japanese of the 1880s—or of the 1950s, for that matter But still, oldassumptions and old motivation patterns persist After a century striving to

be accepted as an equal, the inertia of the striving reflex sets new goals—tobecome first among equals Hence the journalistic popularity of newspaperpolls about Japan’s standing—is she ahead, behind or level with the US incell fusion techniques, in laser semiconductors? How does Japan comparewith Germany in the development of new operatic forms?

Hence the assumptions about the role of the state in vocational trainingwhich have shaped Japan’s current VET institutions over the last centuryremain largely unchanged, even if a lot of their manifestations today smackmore of bureaucratic nannying than of leadership in a concerted drive forsuccess This circumstance will be reflected in many of the succeedingchapters—in what is said about the guiding philosophy of the generaleducation system, and especially apropos of the state’s role in setting standards

of vocational competence which will be described in Chapter 6

The other thing about Japanese society which powerfully shapes the system

to be described—another product of history and culture—is the kind of moral

feelings the Japanese have about needing to be good at their jobs Whetherbecause of the efforts of state agencies to preach the national need forcompetence over the last century or for some other reason, the Japanese dotend to feel that competence is a moral duty and not just a means of earningmoney by giving satisfaction, that sloppiness is a sin and not just something

to avoid because it puts you in danger of getting the sack

That also counts for something It is a factor in the response which privatefirms show to government initiatives, and in the initiatives they take withoutprompting It is a factor in the response of the individual workers to enterprise