正文
This may seem surprising in Japan, a country where the economy is currently humming along, and the unemployment rate is below 3 percent. But the shrinking economic opportunities stem from a larger trend that is global in nature: the rise of unsteady employment. Since the postwar years, Japan had a tradition of “regular employment,” as labor experts commonly call it, in which men started their careers at jobs that gave them good benefits, dependable raises, and the understanding that if they worked hard, they could keep their jobs until retirement. Now, according to Jeff Kingston, a professor at Temple University’s Japan campus and the author of several books about Japan, around 40 percent of the Japanese workforce is “irregular,” meaning they don’t work for companies where they have stable jobs for their whole careers, and instead piece together temporary and part-time jobs with low salaries and no benefits. (Such temporary workers are counted as employed in government statistics.) Only about 20 percent of irregular workers are able to switch over to regular jobs at some point in their careers. According to Kingston, between 1995 and 2008, Japan’s number of regular workers decreased by 3.8 million while the number of irregular workers increased by 7.6 million.
在日本这个目前经济运转良好、失业率低于3%的国家，
这可能很让人吃惊，但经济机会萎缩的源头是一种更大的趋势，其本质是全球性的：不稳定就业的兴起。从战后的年月以来，日本都保持了一种一般被劳工专家称为“固定就业”的传统：男性在职业生涯一开始就从事福利高、加薪稳定的工作，并且明白只要他们努力工作，就可以一份工作干到退休。而如今，根据天普大学日本校区教授、数部日本相关书籍作者杰夫·金斯顿的说法，
日本
有约40%的劳工都是“非固定”的，即不是在提供稳定终生工作的公司就职，而是用低薪、没有福利的兼职和临时工作拼凑职业。按照政府的统计方法，这样的临时工人是算在就业人群里的。在非固定劳工中，只有大约20%最终能转到固定岗位上。根据金斯顿的说法，从1995年到2008年，日本的固定劳工数量减少了380万，而非
固定
劳工数量增加了760万。
Irregular workers in Japan are sometimes referred to as “freeters,” which is a combination of the word freelance and the German word arbeiter, which means “worker.” According to Kingston, the rise of irregular workers in Japan began in the 1990s, when the government revised labor laws to enable the wider use of temporary and contract workers hired by intermediary firms. Then, as globalization put more pressure on companies to cut costs, they increasingly relied on a temporary workforce, a trend that intensified during the Great Recession. “This is a major new development in Japan’s employment paradigm, as new graduates find it increasingly difficult to get a foothold on the career ladder as regular employees,” Kingston and Machiko Osawa, a professor at Japan Women's University, write in “Risk and Consequences: The Changing Japanese Employment Paradigm,” an essay in Japan: The Precarious Future.
在日本，非
固定
劳工有时也被称为freeter/フリーター/飞特族，这是由英文的freelance/自由职业者和德语的Arbeiter/劳工两词组合而成。据金斯顿表示，非
固定
劳工在日本的兴起始于90年代，当时政府修订了劳工法律，使人们能够广泛通过中介公司雇佣临时工和合同工。随后，全球化趋势开始迫使公司们削减成本，而他们则越来越依赖临时劳动力，而这种趋势在经济大萧条期间进一步恶化。在
《日本：摇摇欲坠的未来》收录的一篇小论文《日本就业模式转型的
风险和后果
》中，金斯顿和日本女子大学教授大泽真知子这样写道：“这是日本就业模式的一个重大转折，应届毕业生们越来越难登上
固定职员
的职业阶梯。”
In a culture that places such an emphasis on men being breadwinners, this has serious implications for marriage and childbearing. Men who don’t have regular jobs are not considered desirable marriage partners; even if a couple wants to get married, and both have irregular jobs, their parents will likely oppose it, according to Ryosuke Nishida, a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology who has written about unemployment among young workers. About 30 percent of irregular workers in their early 30s are married, compared to 56 percent of full-time corporate employees, according to Kingston. “Japan has this idea that the man is supposed to get a regular job,” said Nishida. “If you graduate and you don't find a job as a regular employee, people look at you as a failure.” There’s even a tongue-in-cheek Japanese board game, Nishida told me, called “The Hellish Game of Life,” in which people who don’t land a regular job struggle for the rest of the game.
日本的文化中，男人挣钱养家是极为重要的，而这对婚姻和生育有着实实在在的影响。男人如果没有
固定
工作，就不会被看成令人满意的婚姻对象。东京工业大学教授西田亮介在年轻劳工失业问题上有所著述，他表示即便两个人想结婚，而两个人都是非
固定
劳工，那么双方的家长就很有可能反对。据金斯顿表示，在30岁出头的非
固定
劳工中，有大约30%是已婚的，而全职公司雇员中这一比例为56%。西田说：“日本有这么一种理念：男人就该有一份
固定
工作。如果你毕业了但找不到
固定
雇员的岗位，人们就会认为你是个失败者。”西田告诉我，日本甚至有一种恶搞的棋盘游戏，叫做“超级悲惨人生游戏”（
冬天毛注：人生ゲーム 極辛
），参与游戏的人如果找不到
固定
工作，整局游戏都会举步维艰。
Women seeking full-time work frequently find themselves in irregular jobs too, which also has implications for raising a family, since the hours are unpredictable and the pay is low. But it is more of an obstacle for marriage if a man doesn’t have a good job—roughly 70 percent of women quit working after they have their first child, and depend on their husband’s salary for some time.
谋求全职工作的女性也往往不得不将就于非
固定
工作，这对于养家是有所影响的，因为工作时间不稳定，报酬也低。然而，如果一个男人没有一份好工作，对于婚姻来说是更大的障碍——大约有70%的女性都在生下第一个孩子后辞职，并依靠丈夫的薪水度日一段时间。
Women in Japan’s big cities say they’re getting tired of the lack of available men. While in Tokyo, I visited an event put on by Zwei, a matchmaking company. Dozens of women clustered in a small studio to take a cooking class featuring food from Miyazaki Prefecture, in southern Japan. The event was part of an initiative that Zwei was putting on to make them interested in life—and men—outside of Tokyo. Zwei’s business model is based on matching women in Japan’s big cities with men in other areas of the country, where men are more likely to have good jobs and be considered viable partners. “Men in this city are not very masculine and they don't want to get married,” Kouta Takada, a Zwei staff member, told me. A recent survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that nearly 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women aren’t in a relationship.
日本大城市的女性表示她们已经厌倦了没多少男人可选的现状。在东京时，我参与了一家婚恋介绍公司Zwei举办的活动。几十个女人聚集在一间小工作室里上烹饪课，学习日本南部宫崎县的料理。这次活动是Zwei公司一份倡议计划中的一个环节，主旨是让她们对东京之外的生活（还有男人）产生兴趣。Zwei的业务模式是将日本大城市的女性和其他地区的男性配对，在那些地区，男性拥有好工作的可能性更大，也更容易被看做靠谱的对象。Zwei的一名员工高田幸太（音）对我说：“本市的男人都不太有男子气，不想结婚。”最近的一份针对18-34岁日本人的调查发现，70%的未婚男性和60%的未婚女性都没有交往对象。
