Current interest in Japanese business and industry has produced an outpouring of 'learning-from-Japan'prescriptions for meeting the Japanese challenge (e.g. Ouchi 1982, Pascale and Athos 1982, Vogel 1980; also a veritable flood of newspaper and magazine articles). But learning from Japan requires a good deal of learning about Japan, about Japanese history, tradition and culture, the economy-aspects of Japan that are hardly expressed in prescription contributions offered to either prac titioners or scholars. It is the purpose of this paper to selectively examine basic elements of Japan's industrial relations system in an historic and cultural context as well as contemporary arrangements. The discussion is limited to a composite depiction of essential aspects of human resources management in typical Japanese firms employing 500 or more workers. Overwhelmingly, this is the pool from which knowledge has been generated by both Japanese and foreign scholars studying this topic.
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