What struck me is how everyone is clearly very senior (in age) looking, or at least how nobody looks young. Are there no apprentices/journeymen type of up&comers? I haven't had a chance to read the full in-depth article, so maybe that is mentioned, but this looks like one of those jobs that probably doesn't attract a lot of interest from the younger generation.
I think there are (young) apprentices. But some parts of the process probably requires years of practice and experience before they are allowed to work with minimal (or no) supervision that only 'older' people appear at those stations.
An example from the article:
I asked Arai-san how the press-operator knew how long to apply the forming pressure, and he replied that there were three factors: 1) the softness of the glass, based on its appearance, 2) how the glass feels while pressing it, and 3) how the glass feels when it drops from the mold. I can imagine that it takes a lot of experience, to be able to take all these cues into account, to produce perfectly-pressed preforms!
The two people in one of the first pictures look younger - but Japanese people are old in general. The median age is 47 and the population is actually decreasing.
Their economic system of having everyone pretend to work 12 hours a day may have had some issues.
There are major cultural difference between America and Japanese corporate life. Among them are uniforms for workers, and not just factory workers; many companies have standard-issue uniforms for every employee from janitor to CEO.
Not sure that's the case here, but it's got to be much more common in Japan than the US.
