A01=Shinya Arai
ambition
asian
Author_Shinya Arai
business
businessmen
career
Category=FBA
corporate culture
corporate japan
corporate world
corporation
economics
entrepreneurial spirit
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
ethics
fiction
japan
japanese
literary criticism
managerial ranks
media
money and power
novel
power
power and wealth
professionals
shoshamen
sogo shosha
success
trading
translated
Product details
- ISBN 9780520071421
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 18 Apr 1991
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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 the race to the top. It also makes painfully clear the ethical and psychological choices that such a race demands. The cast of characters is as varied as the corporate world itself, from the devoted Ojima, who has been passed over by the company, to the spirited Masako, who strikes out on her own. The hero, Nakasato Michio, finds that the road to success is long and perilous, as he tries to satisfy his ambitions while remaining faithful to his values. First published as Kigyoka sarariman in 1986 and made into a prize-winning television miniseries in 1988, the book has been acclaimed in Japan for the verisimilitude of its characters and situations.
It offers a clear understanding of what it is like--in human terms--to survive and perhaps succeed within the confines of the Japanese corporation.
Arai Shinya is Executive Vice President of Summit Inc. and a Director of the Sumitomo Corporation. His fiction, published under the pen name of Azuchi Satoshi, includes Downstream Industry (Shosetsu ryutsu sangyo; 1981), retitled in paperback as Supermarket (Shosetsu supamaketto; 1983). Chieko Mulhern is Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the translator of Pagoda, Skull, and Samurai: Three Stories by Koda Rohan (1985) and the author of a historical novel, Amethyst Ring (Aoi suisho; 1985).
