Hiroshi Ono

Jul 15, 2024 | channelnewsasia.com | Hiroshi Ono

TOKYO: There is a significant shift occurring in the Japanese labour market. The model of work that supported Japan’s economic rise in the postwar period is meeting its demise. In that era, the ideal worker for Japanese companies was hired straight out of university, worked long hours, socialised extensively after work and committed oneself to a lifetime with the same employer. Today, the assumptions behind the ideal worker are outdated, and the model itself is no longer sustainable.

Jul 11, 2024 | asahi.com | Hiroshi Ono

OKAYAMA—Monorails are a common sight in the Setouchi region, hauling tangerines up and down orchard-covered slopes, but these contraptions may soon be put to work on Earth’s mightiest mountain range. The farm-use monorail system is being eyed for use in the construction of hydraulic power plants in the Himalayas. In Nepal, where nearly 80 percent of the land is mountainous, construction and farming on precipitous slopes still rely on human labor and livestock.

Jul 7, 2024 | eastasiaforum.org | Mary C. Brinton |Yuri Okina |Hiroshi Ono |Sourabh Gupta

It seems that Japan’s economy — and with it, its workers — are on the move. People are changing jobs and that’s at last produced a boost to productivity. After a quarter of a century of stagnant prices, GDP and wage growth, pay packets are slowly rising, as are nominal GDP, tax revenues and productivity. What’s driving the change is that Japan is running out of its biggest asset — its people and talent. Japan’s population peaked in 2010 at 128.1 million and is now an estimated 121.2 million.

Jul 7, 2024 | eastasiaforum.org | Mary C. Brinton |Yuri Okina |Hiroshi Ono |Yuhan Zhang

For many years, women’s labour force participation patterns in Japan and South Korea were distinct from those in other post-industrial economies. Both countries had a so-called M-shaped age curve for female labour force participation, with large numbers of women exiting the labour force upon marriage or childbearing and then returning to paid work once their children entered school. While this pattern has persisted in South Korea, it has undergone considerable change in Japan in the past 15 years.

Jul 6, 2024 | eastasiaforum.org | Yuri Okina |Hiroshi Ono |Yuhan Zhang |Sourabh Gupta

In Japan’s labour market, an increase in people changing jobs is occurring in the middle of a growing labour shortage, and changing traditional features of Japanese corporate culture such as lifetime employment and seniority-based remuneration. Under the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, labour market reform is a major theme in Japan’s growth strategy with increased government spending on the development of individual skills.