THis BOOK is about employment systems, their relationship with national corporate governance regimes and how pressure for change to the latter causes shifts in work practices and organisational structures. Specifically, it is about the Japanese employment system, the way in which large Japanese corporations align their organisational structures and HR practices and how these might change following a takeover by a company whose own practices are embedded in an “institutionally distant” employment system and corporate governance framework. Prior to the late 1990s there were very few examples of large-scale takeovers of Japanese companies by foreign firms. Although foreign firms had operated in Japan for decades, their employment practices were seen to be quite distinct from those at traditional Japanese firms. 1 Since the late 1990s, however, foreign takeovers have been a growing phenomenon and have attracted considerable attention. There has been a great deal of speculation as to what impact these takeovers will have on economic life in Japan, in particular its employment system. As is illustrated in the quotation from Yashiro above, there are many that consider the maintenance of the traditions and the underlying philosophy of the Japanese employment system to be fundamental to the continuity of civilised life itself.