The Delivery Network

In 1963 the pattern of a woman taking charge of her own district and delivering daily spread across Japan; before that the sellers had mostly been men. Then in 1972, a deliverer in Koriyama in Fukushima heard that an elderly person living alone had died unnoticed, and began delivering at her own expense. Local authorities took it up, and it is now a watch network agreed with 878 municipalities and police forces. It was not planned at head office; one person's goodwill became an institution. The domestic workforce has fallen from a peak of 65,000 to 32,000, while overseas it stands at 47,000 across fourteen countries and territories — shrinking in Japan and growing in the world. The fact that most work as self-employed contractors is debated, and in 2020 the company announced a plan to bring some three thousand of them onto the payroll.