I’d been told, long ago, that Japanese firms and employees usually looked upon employment as a nearly lifelong committment. In addition, when some managers had to fire a wave of staff in some period (not sure what decade this was supposed to be or if it was supposed to be continuos) that many of them became so depressed over this failure in obligation to their employees that a wave of manager suicides started. Any truth to either of these, either in the past few decades or more recently? Seems like if a firm is tanking suicide might have several causes (e.g., auditors start looking into large and frequent charges on company credit cards to Thailand).
There’s no question that Japanese people commit sucide sometimes when they screw up. Recently some guy involved in the bird flu scandal/episode did himself in. Managers in companies sometimes kick their own bucket when they are themselves to blame in failure or scandal.
As to your particular question, however, sounds entirely plausible, but I can’t recall any concrete cases either old or new. In any event, things in corporate society have changed quite a bit in the last two decades, so I think it would be quite rare for someone to commit suicide simply because he had to fire people. But I’m not sure.
Don’t know if this counts, but a Japanese guy named Isao Inokuma committed suicide because his construction firm was failing, and therefore by extension he was going to have to lay off or fire people.
I only know this because Inokuma was All-Japan, Olympic, and World judo champion back in the 60s. So I noticed the item on Google News.
Regards,
Shodan
I have worked for a Japanese company for nearly a decade. There have been several lay-offs in my tenure (some rather large), as well as a few scandals at the top. None of the top brass has commited suicide, although several VPs have resigned because of screw-ups.