In Japanese, the insult for a worker who obeys without question translates as "company dog."
The Japanese phrase kaisha no inu (会社の犬) translates literally as "company dog." It describes a worker whose loyalty to the company is so total that it erases independent judgment. The phrase is pejorative, used to describe someone who follows orders without question, stays late without being asked, and subordinates personal life entirely to the demands of the employer.
The phrase emerged during a period when lifetime employment at a single firm was the dominant model of Japanese working life. Under this system, formalized in the postwar decades, large corporations hired young men directly from universities and retained them until retirement. In exchange for loyalty, the company provided job security, housing assistance, and a seniority-based wage scale. The arrangement was not a formal contract but a social norm, reinforced by mutual expectation.
Within this structure, the kaisha no inu was the extreme case, the worker who internalized the company's interests so completely that colleagues viewed the devotion as servile rather than admirable.
The phrase carries specific cultural weight because of the broader Japanese vocabulary of work identity. A kigyō senshi, or "corporate warrior," describes a similar dedication to the firm, but with a heroic valence rather than a submissive one. The kaisha no inu lacks agency. The distinction is between a soldier who chooses to fight and a pet that has been trained to obey.
The concept of karōshi, or death from overwork, and karōjisatsu, or suicide from overwork, emerged from the same system of total corporate devotion. The first recognized case of karōshi was in 1969, when a twenty-nine-year-old newspaper employee died of a stroke after extended periods of excessive overtime.