[patio11]

c.f. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-il...

Suffice it to say that I am aware of situations created by a societal expectation of lifetime employment which make the above article look positively sane. (And I recently learned that, in some cases, what I had assumed was just an ironclad social contract actually is legally enforceable, which blows my mind.)

[eru]

Not true. See correction to article.

[nandemo]

The correction is unclear... Since there are always exceptions, of course it's not the case that "dismissing a permanent employee (正社員) is always illegal". But there's in fact a (somewhat vague but broad) provision in labour law and also　precedents that make it very difficult to legally fire a permanent employee in normal circunstances.

Basically you can legally fire a permanent employee in the same sense that a civil servant in most countries can be fired: if the employee does something egregious, like stealing from the company, not showing up for a long period of time with no reason, etc. Certainly not for incompetence, or even　if the company has been in the red for several years in a row.

E.g. Japan Airlines went basically bankrupt (technically a restructuring) and even so they had trouble laying off part of the staff.