In 2019, at a cafe in Tokyo, a younger friend of mine who is also a relative informed me that in a few weeks' time he was going to take four months off work to help his wife to look after their 6-month-old daughter. I remember staring at him for a full five seconds before picking my jaw up from the floor. "How did you square it with your company?" I spluttered.
My friend was a typical Japanese salaryman, whose place of employment was ANA Holdings, a Japanese airline whose business model relied on a reputation for impeccable service. A man who regularly put in 70-hour workweeks and still thought he wasn't doing enough for the company.
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