Salarymen
A salaryman (サラリーマン, sararīman) is an informal Japanese term for a salaried employee, particularly an employee of a company. Although historically associated especially with male office employees, the term does not denote a clearly defined occupational or social class.
The term emerged in the early twentieth century and became widely used during the Taishō and early Shōwa periods. Following Japan's post-war economic growth, the salaryman became a prominent social image and a symbol of the typical Japanese worker. In post-war representations, the figure became closely associated with a family model consisting of a salaried husband, a full-time housewife and their children.
From the late 1980s and 1990s, this once widely assumed model increasingly came into question as Japanese employment and family patterns changed. The growth of non-regular employment since the mid-1990s has further weakened the association between the salaryman and the typical Japanese worker.
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