A salaryman (サラリーマン) is a male office worker at a Japanese company. He usually wears a plain dark suit. He earns a fixed monthly salary, not an hourly wage or a fee for each project. You could meet such a person on any commuter train. But the word also carries a whole set of ideas about loyalty, long hours and a life built around one company.
An English word built in Japan
"Salaryman" is a Japanese invention, not an import. It is wasei-eigo, or "English made in Japan." Japanese took two real English words, salary and man, and put them together in a way no English speaker would. Then the new word took on a clear meaning of its own in Japanese. The term caught on in the early 1900s. More and more people left farms and family shops for jobs at large companies. They gave up an uncertain income for a fixed monthly pay cheque. By the boom years after the Second World War, the word stood for a whole way of life, not just a way of getting paid.
The company as a second family
For decades, the classic salaryman deal looked roughly like this. On one side stood almost total loyalty to one company for a whole career. It meant long and often unpaid overtime and after-work drinks with the team that were only half optional. On the other side stood steady pay, slow but fairly certain promotion and a job that was rarely at real risk. Today this system of lifetime employment at a single company is much rarer than it once was. Many more women now hold the same office jobs that the word first described. Still, the suit, the crowded morning train and an identity built around a job title shape how many people picture work in Japan.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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終身雇用 (shūshin koyō): "lifetime employment," the old system of staying at one company from graduation to retirement.
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名刺 (meishi): a business card. In Japanese business life, people exchange cards with both hands and a small bow at the start of almost every first meeting.