In Japan, working people is called "shakaijin" which literally means "a member of a society". Their main duty is contributing to society, in other words, their "job" is "contributing". Most of people work in a company which is called 会社 (kaisha) in Japanese. Chinese character of the word "company" （会社）is exactly the same with Chinese character in the word "society" （社会）, although the order is opposite, defining that "company" has a very strong relationship with "society".
In the society, shakaijin mainly has right and obligation to the society. Shakaijin is considered to be someone who is already mature in personality. In general, the shakaijin stage starts after graduation/completion of college/graduate school. Mainly people in their 22-27 start the shakaijin stage. In Japan, usually people work until they reach 60-65, so we can say that the retirement age become the end of shakaijin stage.
The word shakai (society) comes from the West with some additional Japanese nuance. However, there is no other language that uses the word "a member of a society" as the phrase for "working people". For example, in English we know "worker", "adult" or "citizen" to address "working people", yet we never find a word such as "a member of a society".
However, actually everyone who is a member of a society can also be considered as shakaijin. Kids, students, unemployed persons, senior citizen are actually also members of a society, but here in Japanese term of shakaijin, it simply address "people working in a company". How about people working as farmers or fishermen? In Japanese term of shakaijin, they are also not considered. Shortly, shakaijin means white-collar worker.
This article is translated and paraphrased from Japanese Wikipedia with some additional thoughts.
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