Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

by Edward Slingerland

Gately has also argued that more recently the “water trade,” the infamously alcohol-soaked, after-hours but mandatory drinking sessions endured by Japanese salarymen (and they were almost all men), was a key driver of Japanese industrial innovation in the 1970s and ’80s. One of its functions was to suspend social hierarchy norms in order to allow innovative ideas to flow from junior to senior employees. “Alcohol was the lubricant that enabled the Japanese business machine to run smoothly,” Gately notes. “While the gerontocracy demanded and received respect for their years when behind their desks, after work, off premises, and over a drink, they let their young Turks speak.”