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The intake, and why April matters
Japanese companies hire once a year, as a cohort, straight out of university, and everyone starts on the first working day of April. The practice — 新卒一括採用 — means your 年次 is a fact about you for your whole career, and it is why the April intake arrives together, trains together, and stays a 同期 group for decades. It also explains two things that look strange from outside: that someone three years older can be your 後輩, because they entered later, and that leaving a company resets nothing — you join your new employer's hierarchy at the year you joined them, not the year you started working. The system is loosening as mid-career hiring grows, but April still fills the trains with identical dark suits.