April 6, 2009 Issue Posted March 26, 2009, 5:00PM EST

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Song of the Salaryman

The global financial crisis has given Japan's salarymen—its famously loyal-for-life white-collar workers—plenty to worry about. With exports plummeting, as the yen rises, and a 12% drop in gross domestic product for fourth-quarter 2008, companies have closed plants, cut hours, laid off workers, and slashed pay. And nowhere has the corporate warriors' angst been more obvious than in this year's salariiman senryu contest—sponsored, as usual, by Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance.

A senryu resembles a haiku, but usually involves a play on words that adds a dark or comic tone. In previous years, the poems, submitted under pen names, have touched on the economy, but also on hit songs, a clueless boss, and Nintendo's (NTDOY) Brain Age game. This year, the overwhelming theme in the top 100 senryu—picked by Dai-Ichi from more than 20,000 entries and printed in newspapers so readers can choose a winner—is economic loss.

And loss of purpose. As companies cut back, it's tougher for salarymen to feel useful by lingering at the office. Panasonic (PC) has warned managers that underlings are not to stay past 5:30 p.m. FujiXerox has been turning off the lights at its Tokyo headquarters at 6 p.m.

Next year's competition, however, may reflect something else: Some salarymen are starting to embrace a life without late-night office work or client entertaining. "I used to get home no earlier than 10:30 or 11 p.m," says Masaaki Bando, a 52-year-old manager at FujiXerox who didn't enter the senryu contest. Now, he says, "I'm home by 7:30 p.m." He takes baths with his kids, helps with the housework—and is finally getting a chance to improve his English by listening to Barack Obama's Presidential campaign speeches.

It has been a while
Again we queue and
hunt for jobs
A class reunion
-Tenki

The yen is surging
I long for its benefits
But have no fortune
-Noshonagon

As work disappears
My vacation days
increase
There's no home
for me
-Freeloader

—By Kenji Hall in Tokyo, Edited by Deborah Stead

A Boon from the Housing Bust

As newspapers across the country fold, declare bankruptcy, or sell at fire-sale prices, one part of the industry is doing well: community and legal papers that print home foreclosure notices. Most states require such notices to be published, with the fee for doing so paid by those taking over the property. The announcements tend to show up in small papers, which charge less for classifieds than big dailies do.

Minneapolis-based Dolan Media (DM), which owns 58 papers, including the Arizona Capitol Times and Minnesota's Finance and Commerce, earned $14 million last year on sales of $189 million—in part because of a 25% rise in such notices. Another beneficiary: billionaire Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's partner in Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), who has a controlling interest in the Los Angeles-based Daily Journal Corp. (DJCO) Thanks largely to a 50% jump in public notices in 2008, profits at the company's 12 papers, including Sacramento's The Daily Recorder, rose 33%, to $7.1 million, on sales of $40 million. "It's kind of like being an undertaker in a plague year," Munger says. "I can't tell you how much I'd rather see this crisis go away."

—By Christopher Palmeri, Edited by Deborah Stead