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The story
On October 12, 2026, Keio University emeritus professor Takenaka Heizo pushed back on X against criticism of his earlier remark that “regular (full-time) employment should be abolished,” and also laid out his reasoning in detail in a YouTube video. According to Takenaka, what he’s actually calling for isn’t the abolition of the regular-employment system itself, but the elimination of the “dual structure” between regular and non-regular employment. This sparked discussion on 5ch’s News Flash+ board, centered on two main points: whether the employment reforms Takenaka spearheaded during the Koizumi administration actually succeeded in making the labor market more fluid, and what concrete steps could actually dissolve the dual structure.
On October 12, 2026, Keio University emeritus professor Takenaka Heizo posted on X to rebut criticism of his remark that “regular employment should be abolished.” He also used a YouTube video to lay out in detail his view that the “dual structure” between regular and non-regular employment needs to go.
[Video] About 20 years since leaving the Cabinet — what Takenaka Heizo looks like now
■ “What I actually said wasn’t ‘abolish regular employment’ —”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
No, as far as I know, he's been saying the exact same thing all along.
Takenaka's goal was to make labor more fluid, push people out of old industries and into new ones, and reinvigorate the economy.
But abolishing regular employment was never going to happen, so all that actually resulted was non-regular jobs for the Lost Generation — the labor market never got any more fluid.
If Takenaka's goal had actually been achieved 20 years ago, Japan would be a completely different country today.
He's consistently pushed only for easier firing, never easier hiring, so of course there's no actual movement of workers.
What Takenaka's saying lines up with the "Annual Reform Recommendations" the U.S. government used to hand Japan every year, until the Hatoyama administration finally scrapped the practice. Honestly he looks like some lobbyist on the U.S. government's payroll.
No way the generation that lost all future stability supported it, lol. It was the old geezers of that era who backed it. If the LDP tried this today they'd be booted from power.
The baby-boomer-junior generation — the dumbest postwar cohort after Gen Z — and the Lost Generation are totally different groups, you know.
Does that mean workers themselves disappear?
If it gets easy to fire people, it gets easy to hire them too.
Use people cheap in their 20s-30s, then fire them in their 40s once wages start rising. Then just hire another cheap young replacement.
"Fall to the bottom of society in your 40s, after that it's your own fault — if you can't feed yourself, just go euthanize yourself." What a lovely society.
Honestly, middle-aged-and-up regular employees are basically a liability as labor. Paying them high salaries is exactly why the burden gets dumped onto non-regular workers.
See, this doesn't work. Lifetime employment really was the better system, huh? This is what happens after incompetent young people spent years screaming "boomer trash, boomer trash."
Yeah, exactly. There's no way to abolish only non-regular employment, lol.
Make everyone a regular employee and non-regular employment disappears.
Lifetime employment was never going to be sustainable to begin with, lol.
Don't give up — if you never give up, dreams come true.
It's not actually impossible.
"Abolish non-regular employment too" → huh?
So what kind of employment system are we left with?
Work freely, hire freely?
How's that any different from non-regular employment?
I can't follow this idiot's logic!
He means make everyone non-regular — the whole "job-based employment" thing.
But current regular employees hate that idea, so they want to keep the regular/non-regular dual structure intact, lol.
Isn't it a world where nobody works and everyone lives off universal basic income? I don't get how you'd survive in a society where you have money but no one willing to work for it, though. Guess AI handles everything?
Heizo: "Everyone, go register with Pasona." (Takenaka chairs Pasona Group, a major Japanese staffing/temp-agency firm — the joke is he's just drumming up business for himself.)
If the people who rose to the top through fair evaluation of their skills were actually competent, Japan wouldn't have fallen this far. I think you're just overrating your own abilities. Today's Japan is one where self-proclaimed "elites" are just mass-produced pseudo-elites, while the real elites get buried.
Sounds like the gracious words of the president of a certain major IT contractor, Company F: "Performance declined because employees don't work hard enough — management made no mistakes. It's all the fault of the staff on the ground."
If you've got skills and experience, you can switch jobs all you like. Are you actually putting in the effort to become someone who can hit the ground running? What professional qualifications do you even hold?
So that's basically "don't abolish non-regular employment," isn't it? That's the opposite of what this old man is saying.
Takenaka's saying the dual structure is the problem. But for us current regular employees, without that dual structure we'd have to live in fear of layoffs, so we don't want it gone. We've got families to support too.
Regular employees get stability, so average annual pay is 5 million yen. Non-regular employees get instability, so it should be 7.5 million yen on average. Why not just pass a law requiring companies to pay non-regular workers 150% of what regular employees get?
Probably won't work unless you also regulate how big a cut staffing agencies can skim off the top.
Bonuses and severance are a huge difference though. If a company cuts loose a temp worker right before their contract term is up, they should be legally required to pay out 15 years' worth of severance.
Wasn't it the rule that temp workers have to be let go after 3 years?
Sounds like a pig cheering on the butcher.
That's exactly why you're stuck as non-regular.
Low productivity is management's responsibility, not the workers'.
That's not it. Non-regular employment has been entrenched for so long now that all the incompetent people are already shoved into non-regular jobs. The people who actually passed the hiring exams for regular positions are, whatever you say, genuinely capable — so companies have no reason to strip away their generous protections.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Takenaka Heizo served as Minister of Economic and Fiscal Policy, among other posts, during the Koizumi administration, and is well known as the architect of the labor-market deregulation drive, including the revisions to the Worker Dispatch Law. His recent remarks don’t call for abolishing the regular-employment system itself, but rather for eliminating the “dual structure” — the gap in treatment between regular and non-regular workers. However, the headline alone made it easy to read as “abolish regular employment,” which led to the misunderstanding. Opinion on the thread split mainly along two lines. The first is whether the structural reforms of 20 years ago actually succeeded in making the labor market more fluid (i.e., easier hiring) — or whether they only made firing easier and expanded non-regular employment. The second is how to actually dissolve the dual structure: should everyone become a regular employee, or should everyone be brought down to non-regular-level treatment — and views differed on how feasible either proposal really is. One comment’s claim that this “lines up with the U.S. government’s Annual Reform Recommendations” is one interpretation raised in the thread, and it should be noted that this has not been established as fact.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Takenaka Heizo Rebuts “Abolish Regular Employment” Criticism: “If Abolishing Regular Employment Means Abolishing Non-Regular Too”.”
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