Abstract

Industrial Democracy in Japan

Japan initiates, and wins, the first great movement by servants of a world-wide enterprise toward the reemergence of guild control of modern industry. Resentful of autocratic management which ranked private greed above the corporate interest the professional staff of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Ltd. (NYK), Japan's proudest shipping corporation, united to expel a chief executive whose actions seemed unworthy of his post. But since transportation strikes endanger public interest by threatening the common welfare, a new technique was found with which to register the full force of disapproval without disrupting public service. By means of a "moral strike," involving no cessation of labor and no violence, the employees of the NYK succeeded in ousting their president and by the force of protest and good example reversed a hard-boiled and hostile directorate and won a complete triumph.