Re-reading the Salaryman in Japan by Romit Dasgupta

Author:Romit Dasgupta [Dasgupta, Romit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Sociology, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9780415683289
Google: gWE2PhdiJGoC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T03:40:18+00:00

(Kimura, Round 1: 17)

This extended to the management of his own organization too. With the exception of the president of the company whom he admitted admiring, and the manager of his own section, he considered everyone else to be ‘inept’ (Kimura, Round 1: 20). Indeed, when I followed up this statement by asking if there was anyone he ‘respected as a person’, he responded with, ‘the person I respect as a human being is myself’ (20).

Such a statement would have been unthinkable from Matsumoto-san. Hence, at one level it would be tempting to locate the two at opposite ends of the spectrum to corporate masculinity. One reading of their narratives would be to locate Matsumoto-san as an embodiment of the sober, respectable pre-1990s, ‘Japan Inc.’ style of salaryman masculinity, and Kimura-san as signifying an emergent, more individualistic, post-Bubble corporate masculinity. Yet despite the striking differences in the personalities and circumstances of Matsumoto-san and Kimura-san, both of their narratives bring out the ways in which individual salarymen were negotiating with the cross-currents surrounding expectations of work, masculinity, and by extension, being a salaryman during these watershed years of the late 1990s.

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