"Neuromancer" by William Gibson: "He stepped out of the way to let a dark-suited sarariman by, spotting the Mitsubishi-Genentech tattooed across the back of the man’s right hand" (10).

Sarariman is the Japanese term for a white-collar worker. It is derived from the English word “salaryman,” which has a derogatory connotation, meaning someone who works long hours, is at the bottom of the corporate ladder, and whose only source of income is their salary. Sarariman was first used in post-WWII Japan to describe the white-collar men who reconstructed their country from the rubble. It is not seen as a derogatory word in Japan, for businessmen there take their corporations very seriously and usually stay through retirement.

The Salaryman

The Noble Sarariman

My life as a sarariman