Tenkin and Career Management in a Changing Japan

Drawing on the rich, qualitative-interview-based data from Japanese firms and dual-career workers, the author discusses Tenkin, cultural and gendered corporate transfers, workers’ agency, and argues the need to incorporate the concept of care in career management.

Tenkin, or corporate transfers in the Japanese contexts, is a mandated practice. Workers have little discretion. If workers are dual-career couples with small children, how do they manage it? Tenkin and Career Management in a Changing Japan answers this question through qualitative interviews with human resource department managers in large firms and married, white-collar workers, and participant observation in social events. The research uncovered that the culturally normative, gendered nature of tenkin is produced and reproduced by Japanese firms’ capitalists’ logic and gendered family assumptions, while some firms attempted to advance diversification and inclusion, and the dual-career couples are also becoming the actors of tenkin through negotiation. The author discusses these dual-career couples’ agency (Ortner 2006) and argues that for structural change to happen in Japan, the essential concept of care should count in the discussion of career management for all workers.