Corporate Culture Creates Long-Distance Dads

IKUTA, Japan —  It wasn’t divorce, a husband’s death or an independent streak that pushed Hisako Kawaguchi into six years as a single mother.

It was company orders.

Her husband, Haruo, was shifted by his pharmaceutical company to a provincial branch office, turning the couple and their three children into one of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese families split up by job transfers.

“I was so exhausted by the end of the week,” said Hisako Kawaguchi, who is a research librarian for the same company. “He would come home on the weekend and watch the kids while I went grocery shopping.”

Men frequently make such moves alone, mostly because the difficulties of selling a home in Japan’s quirky real estate market and the fear of disrupting a child’s all-important education. In the Kawaguchis’ case, she also would have had to give up her own job to make the move.

The couple, now back together in a suburb of Tokyo, were so incensed by the transfer that they sued the company--Teikoku Hormone--for 29.8 million yen ($230,000) for emotional pain of separation and traveling expenses. After two defeats, their appeal is before the Supreme Court.

While such lawsuits are rare, transfers are not.

Japanese companies over the past decade have been ordering white-collar workers in greater numbers to branch offices that are hours from home and family.

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The trend, which is increasing as juvenile delinquency is rising and Japanese youth seem more troubled, has some people alarmed that companies are breaking up families at the expense of children and society.

“It just causes problems,” said Noriko Okifuji, who has written a book about wives of transferees. “It affects the marital relations, and the relationship with the children gets damaged.”

Government estimates run from 250,000 solo transfers to double that. The Labor Ministry reported the number increased 25% from 1990 to 1994, and more recent research indicates it’s still on the rise.

The moves usually look voluntary, but workers know a stint at a branch office can be an important step up the corporate ladder. In a country where few workers have the option of changing companies, refusal to transfer could cost a promotion--or a job.

The situation reflects family roles in Japan, where men are often expected to give their all to the job while women manage home and children.

“Husbands don’t try to create their place in the family. They live their lives as company men,” Okifuji said. “So for wives, it’s easier to put up with their husbands’ absence.”

The Kawaguchis say it wasn’t so easy for them.

In 1985, Haruo moved to Nagoya, 170 miles west of Tokyo--about a four-hour trip door-to-door. He left his wife with a full-time job and three children, the youngest just 7 months old.

Hisako said she got up at 4 a.m. to prepare breakfasts and school lunches and do housekeeping. Then it was a rush to dress and feed the kids, get them to school and day care and make it to work by 8:40.

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The couple said the combination of absent father and harried mother took its toll. The eldest son became painfully shy and eventually refused to go to school. The youngest son has taken years to warm to his father.

And during an annual “wish upon a star” festival at day care, their daughter said she had one desire: That her mother would find time to draw pictures with her.

“It really hurt,” Hisako said.

Haruo said he had rejected a previous transfer. When the second order came in 1985, he said the company threatened to fire him if he didn’t go.

As is common, the company offered no job in Nagoya for Hisako--if they wanted to move together, she would have to quit.

The couple’s lawsuit argues companies don’t have the right to move employees against their will. The Kawaguchis, who still work for Teikoku, were reunited when Haruo was transferred back to the Tokyo area in 1991.

A spokesman for Teikoku Hormone said the company would not comment on the case while it was still in the courts.

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But companies say transfers--with or without families in tow--are a necessity. As companies have diversified and expanded overseas, branch offices and subsidiaries have proliferated. Bosses say they need to move trained employees around to spread their expertise and give them wider experience.

And with the Japanese work force aging, there are more workers at the stage in life when they are homeowners and have children in school, the two top reasons for making the move alone.

The courts apparently agree such moves are needed. The Tokyo High Court rejected the Kawaguchis’ suit in 1996, ruling that companies have the right to transfer employees--with or without their consent.

The Kawaguchis and other critics say the practice is a dark symptom of corporate Japan’s grip on employees’ lives.

“Companies are controlling us and our families and putting priority on the company and the economy,” Haruo Kawaguchi said. “I think that’s wrong.”