It looks like special foreign nanny visas are about to become law, for many thousands of nannies who can be hired by regular Japanese working women.

Japan is undergoing a massive labor sea-change, and is creating two classes of workers -- the privileged and the rest of irregular workers.

Most Japanese senior managers, no matter how entrepreneurial, are educated and conditioned to work in groups, and the idea of working alone in their Country Manager role doesn't feel to them like a "real" company.

Economists reckon that 10% of employees (about 4.5m people) in Japanese companies are redundant, and if they could, companies would let that many go in order to increase productivity.

The percentage of non-regular to full-time workers is now a record 28.75%, almost 18m people (there are 62m in the workforce), and this is not just a temporary trend.