High productivity, lifetime employment and cooperative workers have played an important part in Japanese success. But there are also old-fashioned managements (especially in offices), less than eager workers, overstaffed enterprises (particularly in services and public enterprises), hidden unemployment, and corporate bureaucratization. Women are discriminated against, underpaid and underused. Woronoff, a business journalist who has lived in Tokyo a long time, even criticizes robotization and the Japanese educational system. In a book that appeared first in Japanese, he asks whether Japan will long be able to afford this kind of waste.
