Shame by Association

Crowds of howling marchers descended last week on the Tokyo headquarters of the giant Marubeni Corp. (1975 sales: $19 billion). Millions of dollars worth of contracts with local governments were canceled because of public outrage. The children of Marubeni's 8,000 employees have been jeered by schoolmates because their fathers work for "the bad, bad company."

The demoralizing form of social ostracism suffered by Marubeni employees and their families is part of what one Tokyo newspaper calls the "peanuts elegy." Marubeni was the company accused of handing out the "peanuts"--local slang for bribery packets--in Japan's Lockheed scandal (TIME, Feb. 16). Anybody connected with the disgraced corporation is subject to a kind of shame by association.

In Japan, where the corporation almost has the status of a huge family, most people stay with the same company from their first day of work until retirement. Sociologist Hiroshi Minami argues that there is a "fusion of identity" between a company and those who work for it--not only in their eyes but in those of social peers and neighbors.

As the furor over Marubeni's role in the Lockheed scandal has intensified, the social status of its employees has plummeted. Many workers complain that their families are being shunned or ridiculed because they work for Marubeni. One employee said that his child was nicknamed "Lockheed" by his schoolmates; another complained that his son's teacher displayed a picture of a Marubeni executive in the classroom, labeling it "dangerous villain." Some wives of Marubeni workers have taken to shopping at night to avoid the cold stares of neighbors. Perhaps most insulting of all, Tokyo's Crown Record Company is trying to profit from Marubeni's misfortune. Next month it will release a pop-rock single that parodies the Lockheed payoff. Title: Peanut Song.

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