Responses to Japanese Prime Minister Abe's proposed labor reforms, which are part of the economic stimulus plan known as Abenomics, are a window on the positions of major stakeholders’ social debates in Japan's future. This paper identifies, summarizes, and analyzes six responses to one of the proposed structural reforms: new labor rules that would encourage expansion of “limited regular employment,” an employment status between Japan's famous “lifetime employment” and the burgeoning number of non-regular workers. Proponents in the business community and government tout limited regular employment (gentei seiki koyou) as a way to introduce flexibility and mobility in the labor market, boosting productivity, and helping stem the bifurcation of Japanese society into winners, with regular employment, and losers, with non-regular jobs. Opponents, however, see the proposed reforms as an ominous step toward dismantling Japan's already weak worker protections. They argue that limited regular employment is a poison pill containing inherent contradictions that threaten the hopes of women and younger workers for stable careers, as well as loosening long-standing social and legal constraints on employers’ right to dismiss workers. Parliamentary debate on this labor legislation is set for the summer of 2014.