Heavenly prospects for loyal workers

Press, 2 June 1982, Page 25

Heavenly prospects for loyal workers

Lifetime employment is the rule in big Japanese companies. Unswerving loyalty is rewarded with perks that range from subsidised flats to bouquets for wives on wedding anniversaries. Kyoto Ceramic, a fast-grow-ing company in the electronics line, has gone one better. It has provided a tomb in which employees can enjoy eternal togetherness. The tomb, set among lush

bamboos at a Zen temple near Kyoto, is inscribed thus: “We have given our best efforts to pursue the happiness, physical and spiritual, of all our employees. Let’s keep doing good and cleanse ourselves while in life, and even when we are no longer of this world let's get together some times, drink sake, and have a chat just as we have done in life. . Once a year, relatives and

employees hold a service at the tomb and give thanks for contributions made by their late colleagues (29 so far) to the expansion of Kyoto Ceramic into a frontrunner in its field, with 5806 employees. A progress report is intoned. Kyoto Ceramic says the mausoleum means a big saving to employees (land for graves is scarce and costly). But more important, it smooths the souls of people w'hose life was intimately

bound up with the company. “How sorry we feel when someone who has spent half of every day In the company is snatched by sudden death," an official said. “It is refreshing for employees to know this resting-place beside their colleagues is waiting for them.” It is company policy that the diligent employee who had to forgo family life for the sake of the firm should

at least have his wife’s company in death. Some Japanese wives will confide to you that the big companies make their husbands into leaden, robot-like corporate corpses. So perhaps the transition to the mausoleum is. a rather easy one, the main difference being they are no longer on the payroll.—From Robert Whymant, “Sunday Times,” in Tokyo.