Each April, hundreds of new graduates report for work in Japan's corporate world, all on the same day, all dressed in standard business black, and all ready to be molded into staunch company loyalists.

Across the country, companies select and groom new staff under a decades-old formula that puts an emphasis on loyalty, diligence and conformity, not the vision or out-of-box thinking that experts say corporate Japan badly needs to halt its decline.

The current heads of Japan's companies are often criticized for failing to keep pace with fleet-footed foreign rivals, but most are a product of that system and there is nothing to suggest it will change any time soon.