Career analysis of today's japanese from different angles: dramatic change of the japanese society and workers' way of life

1. Objective and Background of the Research The Japanese society today has come to accept much of the notion that a person’s professional life is a continuous process of career formation. It is now not rare for firms to introduce the concept of career formation assistance in employment management of employees. On the other hand, many firms in recent years are reviewing the systems and practices of long-term continuous employment of workers, which have traditionally been a feature of Japanese firms. For these reasons, it has been pointed out that the importance is increasing for workers to voluntarily engage in developing their own occupational abilities for their professional career formation. One of the future challenges facing the Japanese society as regards individuals’ professional career formation, therefore, is not only to wait for firms to make further improvements in employment management, but also to implement some form of an abilities development mechanism that workers can utilize even outside of the firms they are working for. The objective of this research is to closely examine individual workers’ long-term career formation spanning over 35 years to clarify which social systems workers have used for their professional career formation and consider measures that are effective in workers’ career formation.