Might unions claw back some of their lost power in this recession? As part of a generalised nostalgia for older times, many feel they might – although not if Japan’s shunto, its annual spring wage offensive, is anything to go by. Big employers such as Sony, Toyota and Honda have already binned unions’ requests for pay rises.

Collective bargaining has long been in structural decline across the globe. Margaret Thatcher squelched Britain’s labour union movement in the 1980s, leaving private sector toughies such as Rupert Murdoch to put the final boot in. US union membership is well below 1983 levels; today just 12 per cent of the total workforce is unionised and only 8 per cent in the private sector. Continental Europe still keeps the torch flickering; strikes are all but a national pastime in France. Japan began with a rather vapid system put in place after the second world war by the occupying Americans, who established enterprise-based labour unions. But their stock rose from around 1950, along with greater wage bargaining. By the height of the movement, about 20 years later, co-ordinated negotiation by, say, auto unions across different companies had standardised wages.