By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Feb 7 2003 (IPS)

After 25 years of hard work at a cement manufacturing company in Japan, 49-year-old Ken Oishi quit his job in September and is now studying computer graphics.

"This is the worst period of my life," says Oishi, who finishes his course this August and hopes to get a new job in that field afterwards. "But with my company facing lower profits, I had to take the new step."

Oishi has two children and lives in a rented apartment in Saitama, a suburb of the capital Tokyo. Right now, the household is dependent on his wife’s part-time job and a small allowance from her parents.

"It’s very hard for me to see my wife taking on the financial responsibilities of the home. It is a blow to my male pride,” he confesses. ”There have been times when I thought of killing myself in shame.”

But he does not have much choice, like many other middle-aged Japanese men who find themselves in the same predicament in the wake of corporate bankruptcies and record unemployment figures in recent years.

Japan reported a slight, 0.4 percent slowdown in corporate bankruptcies to 19,087 in 2002, but unemployment is growing rapidly. The latest unemployment figure stands at 5.4 percent in this country of 128 million people.

The number of jobless people rose by 80,000 in 2001 to 3.65 million last year, according to the health, welfare and labour ministry. Of these, 960,000 were the heads of households, up from the 30,000 household heads who were jobless in 2001.

Likewise, the number of men who are employed is also going down, official figures show. Though they make up majority of the workforce, the number of employed men in Japan declined by 380,000 to reach a total of 37.41 million people in 2002 from the year before.

The ministry also reports widespread mental fatigue and even suicide among men who have lost their jobs.Of 31,000 suicides in 2002, almost half were in their forties and fifties. Males comprised 95 percent of the number.

"The erosion of life-time employment, once the backbone of Japanese labour and economy, is causing anxiety and fear in Japanese society and will affect the country in many ways," says Jun Nishikawa, who teaches economics at Waseda University.

He predicts that the number of jobless could reach 6 percent in two years as companies continue to restructure and undercut the practice of lifelong employment.

Anxiety over Japan’s continued poor economic performance – the Gross Domestic Product is expected to decline 1.4 percent in fiscal 2003, according to Daiwa Research Institute – has already seen a sharp decline in support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s reform platform.

A poll conducted by the ‘Asahi’ newspaper at the end of January showed that 35 percent of respondents did not support Koizumu’s Cabinet, an increase from 32 percent in December. The economy and jobs topped the list of their concerns.

Because of its concern about the job situation, the Japan Trade Union Confederation or Rengo, the country’s largest trade union, has thrown its support for the ruling, conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – moving away from its traditional socialist platform, the Democratic Party of Japan.

"To safeguard jobs, we’ll do anything we can," says Rengo chairman Kiyoshi Sasomori at the LDP convention last month, the first time a Rengo head has attended an LDP convention.

Placing priority on job security in these difficult ties, Rengo has set wage increases to less than 1 percent in its March negotiations with corporate managers.

Meantime, the dim job situation has prompted the LDP to explore new ways of encouraging new jobs – promoting privatisation and extending special funds to boost a niche markets such as the nursing market and information technology.

Others are working on acquiring new skills, to move up to better paying jobs or switching jobs.

Ishiyama says however, new businesses also mean a competitive job market, including for male workers, one where there is movement further away from traditional life-time employment and seniority.

Tokihiro Yamauchi, manager of a small auto parts factory in Nagoya, explains: "We are looking for workers who have different skills, which is what is needed to survive today. The era when people just did what they were asked to do is over."

Middle-aged Oishi, for instance, is one of 270,000 people enrolled in new vocational programmes numbering more than 22,000 courses, to meet the new demands of the job market.

Even doctors are adapting to the changes. Dr Dai Takagi is pursuing a masters’ degree in business administration at a private university, and forked out almost 30,000 dollars for the two-year course, in order to help him manage his hospital better.

The Labour Ministry reports that 40 percent of graduates of one-year programmes now find new jobs or other positions in their companies.

”It’s far better to help people find jobs rather than provide keep them on the dole," says Makoto Magasaki, an official at the study and training benefits section of the labour ministry.

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