I don't buy that. It may not be as facetious as in the US, but it's still facetious. Most manufacturing companies, and all the large ones, have replaced a large

I don't buy that. It may not be as facetious as in the US, but it's still facetious. Most manufacturing companies, and all the large ones, have replaced a large fraction of their fulltime blue collar workforce with temp workers whose contracts last for 2-3 years. The mothership will _subcontract_ out work to subsidiary companies (for example, software development work) so that they can maintain their lockstep pay/promotion schedules in the mothership, but pay the subsidiary employees less [1]. Companies in Japan are just as profit motivated as their US peers. True corporate empathy ended a very very long time ago, if it ever existed (probably existed a few hundred years ago) It's just a matter of what kind of marketing is acceptable and believable to the general public. Also keep in mind that Son Masayoshi is a master PR user. Nowhere else have I seen someone use PR towards the general public to lobby for things like wireless spectrum auctions and solar energy government subsidies. [1] most of the time, unless it's a special case company full of researcher types.