Shoshaman: A Tale of Corporate Japan

by Shinya Arai and Arai Shinya

Book Overview

Acknowledging no god but the corporate good, the shoshamen--high-powered professionals within Japan's integrated trading companies--serve as the unrelenting cogs of an economic machine. Or do they?

Shoshaman takes us inside the world of Japan Inc. to explore the daily lives of the people who inhabit it. Written by a senior executive in a major sogo shosha, this absorbing novel reveals, as no textbook can, the strategies required to win...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520071425
• ISBN13: 9780520071421
• Release Date: April 1991
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Shows subtle Japanese behavior

Shosha Man shows the subtle ways the Japanese culture works. So much of the culture is reading between the lines, and this book really shows the honne and tatemae (the inner and outer self) of the Japanese salaryman. It lets the reader feel the unsaid between boss, employee, coworkers, and lovers, and shows how the different status levels come into play. I recommend this book for anyone who knows some of Japanese culture and wants to explore deeper.

A depiction of the struggle between Entrepreneur & Salaryman

I read this 'Japanese corporate novel' nine years ago, and it has sat on my shelves since that time...I've not thrown it away because I was so smitten by it. The translation - despite the threat of dull subject matter - it lively and fresh. And despite the changes in the Japanese situation over the last decade (remember when we thought Japanese global economic domination was an inevitability?), the applicability of the novel remains fully in force today. It gets to the heart of every Japanese 'salaryman' & their internal struggle with their acceptance of that lifestyle vs. their deeply internalized entrepreneurial yearnings.The breakthrough achieved by the book's protagonist, Nakasato, and the misery that befalls his one-time officemate Ojima, might seem mundane on the surface, but surely strike the average Japanese worker like a tremendous blow to the chest.Really top-notch stuff and far better than any dry non-fiction, treatise in delivering insight into the Japanese business mind.