This is an article of a major Japanese newspaper. The article compares a welcome ceremony for its new employees held by Japan Airline (JAL) in 2010 with the same kind of ceremony held by the same company in 1986. The first color photo is the 2010's one in the article, and the second black and white photo is the 1986'sone. What do you think about them? All the fresh women wearing black suits in the first photo look the same, don't they? According to the article, they aren't required to wear black suits and white shirts. It's reported that before they attended the ceremony, they checked out the information about welcome ceremonies for new employees to make sure which outfit was the most suitable and common. It's been said that this is because they, young people, don't want to stick out. As a result, they inevitably chose the similar outfits and hairstyles, and ended up looking the same.
On the other hand, in the second photo, fresh women are wearing various kinds of suits. They don't look the same, and look relaxed. Speaking of 1986 when the second photo was taken, the Japanese economy was good, and a lot of companies tried to hire people who had individuality or had unique character. When I was working for the first company immediately after graduation, although the economy wasn't that good, I still felt that I was always required to think of unique ideas and change traditional things. In fact, when I was assigned to a male-dominated division, I was told that I was expected to change things by means of unique ideas from "a young woman". As for outfits, I would try to wear something different to impress myself to my clients and so on.
With the globalization of business, Japanese people should pay more attention to developing their individuality and expressing themselves. Despite that, as many companies have reduced new hires due to the sluggish economy, the companies ended up paying less attention to individuality. Incidentally, it's been said that companies, which have already adopted some Western management styles and business culture while keeping the advantage of Japanese traditional ones like group harmony, have been growing.
On top of that, in the past few years, there has been a tendency that people, especially young ones, place weight on reading the situation. This in itself is good. However, since they place too much weight on it, it seems to me that young people often eliminate different things from the majority although they don't intend to do that.
Anyway, to be honest, I've been wondering why a lot of young business women wear similar black suits. I know that these suits are not expensive since many shops offer them. Still, I don't understand why.
