2026-08-24
21 分钟The Economist
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Jason Palmer.
Today on the show, the struggles of Gen X workers in Japan's labor market
and how the fates of civilizations have turned on sieges.
But first,
I'm sitting in a cafe with Torigo Atsushi, a 50-year-old man in Tokyo.
Mr. Torigo tells me about the time he graduated.
Moeka Iida is an East Asia reporter for The Economist.
It was a time of bad economic conditions, he says.
All he could find was low-paying jobs.
Mr. Torigo has spent most of his career working in the stock rooms of a luxury fashion firm.
His income has barely gone up over the years and recently it actually fell.
His employer suddenly cut bonuses and revised its payment scheme.
But then, to his surprise, he came across recruitment ads by the firm
offering higher base salaries for younger recruits.
His predicament is emblematic of something broader in the country.
He belongs to the country's so-called employment ice age generation.
So what does that mean?
Why is it called that?