The pattern of manual male employment by age across sectors in Japanese industry between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s is analysed in relation to two aspects of pay structure: the level of adult pay and the relative pay of young workers. The results prove similar in key respects to those already obtained for large Western economies, which suggests that similar institutional forces structured youth employment patterns in Japan and the West. There is also evidence that the development of Japan’s school-to-work institutions in the 1960s and 1970s reduced somewhat the sectoral dispersion of youth employment. The longitudinal nature of the Japanese data suggests however that the results for Japan are not robust, and that underlying but unmeasured sectoral attributes are stronger influences than pay structures on youth employment patterns.