Japan's Young Slackers.(youths prefer part-time employment)(Statistical Data Included)

Tadashi Kato works hard for his money. Well, sort of. On fair-weather afternoons he peddles knockoff Nike T shirts (smuggled into Japan from Bangladesh) along Tokyo's swankiest shopping drag, Omotesando, netting about $100 on a good day. By Kato's standards that's good money; it sure beats the $7 an hour he earned busing tables in a cheap pasta joint and restocking shelves at 7-Eleven--two of many part-time gigs he took to bankroll meandering treks through Europe and Asia. Now, says the 24-year-old, it's time to get serious. "I will prove that street sellers can make it big in Japan," he exclaims, brimming with entrepreneurial zeal. "As long as I don't have a boss, I'm happy."

Kato is a child of Japan's "Heisei Recession," a downturn that began shortly after its namesake, the Heisei emperor, Akihito, ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1989. Kato and his generational cohorts are coming of age at a time when Japan's economy has run out of steam. Gone are the days when most young men expected to climb the corporate ladder at Sony, Mitsubishi or another industrial giant, while their sisters took "office lady" positions until marriage. Nowadays Japan Inc. simply isn't creating middle-class opportunities like it used to, and while young Japanese might fantasize about jobs-for-life, most end up with something much different: paid-by-the-hour temporary work.

Japan has a name for its swelling legion of part-timers. They're called freeters (derived from the English word free and the German word for worker, Arbeiter)-- a term that describes not just an employment category but a lifestyle. By reputation, freeters are a bit like America's Gen-X slackers: they work only when they need cash, hang out, travel whenever possible and celebrate their rejection of their parents' old work-aholic lifestyle. Japan's new workers froth cappuccinos, pump gas, pack boxes and run cash registers. "I couldn't be a salaryman," says Yoshinari Nozaki, a 30-year-old design-school dropout. "Getting up early even in winter, crushing yourself into a commuter train, working late and drinking with your superiors to ingratiate yourself. Where's the freedom in that?"

To older Japanese, these live-for-the-moment rebels are a bunch of spoiled moochers. But that's too simple: the freeters embody a generation that's been marginalized by a decadelong economic tailspin. Japan's unique form of capitalism, based as it is on huge industrial groups called keiretsu, is beginning to fade. For several years now, Japan Inc. has quietly exported its production and downsized through attrition--a process that denies opportunities to new workers. There has been job growth, but it's been in Japan's expanding service sector, where giants like Starbucks and casual-wear sensation Uniqlo's are perpetually hiring part-timers. Most of Uniqlo's 18,000 employees earn hourly wages starting from $8. "With the lifetime employment and seniority systems collapsing," noted a recent Nikkei commentary, "the meaning of 'work' is in flux."

For the first time in Japan's postwar experience, many college graduates can't land meaningful jobs, and a third of those who do quit in less than three years. Moreover, part-timers now constitute the fastest-growing segment in Japan's labor market. According to the Recruit Corp., Japan's largest job-placement publishing house, 3.4 million freeters 19 to 30 now do part-time work. On average, says Recruit, they've been freeters for three years, changed jobs 4.3 times and now earn about $1,000 a month. Six in 10 of them still live at home.

Ten years ago such behavior was virtually unheard of. From the early 1960s until the demise of Japan's "bubble economy" in 1992, career jobs awaited not just college grads but kids out of high school as well. Major corporations recruited aggressively at top universities, where male students willing to trim their hair and don three-piece "interview suits" had their pick of careers inside Japan Inc. All the while, major manufacturers sought fresh high-school grads to staff factories and sales offices. The good times ended when companies reined in hiring, and universities began to feel shushoku hyogaki, or the "job-seekers' ice age." It's been a long freeze. In 2000 only eight in 10 college grads landed jobs of any sort after matriculation.

Anyone entering the job market these days must be both creative and aggressive. Magazines like From A: Part-Time Work Navigator and Travail offer a mix of how-to articles on waiting tables or working retail. The publications are chock-full of help-wanted listings of unskilled, short-term positions. Typically, the ads emphasize a job's ease, flexibility and fun--not old-fashioned draws like status or career promise. Reads one: "For this job you are free to choose your own clothing and hairstyle. You can get up late in the morning. You don't have to ride crowded trains. Even if you have no experience, you get a good rate of pay. Yes, all these selfish wishes can come true!" The position advertised: $11-an-hour telemarketing.