MANY former executives find retirement dull. But few react like Kuniaki Nozoe, the former boss of Fujitsu, one of Japan's biggest computer companies. He stepped down as president in September, but is now demanding that Fujitsu “nullify” the resignation.

In a four-page letter sent last month to the board of directors, the 62-year-old Mr Nozoe claims that he was unjustly forced out without even having submitted a formal resignation. After a hastily convened board meeting on March 6th, Fujitsu admitted that it had ousted Mr Nozoe due to his association with a person suspected of having ties to organised crime—not for the “health reasons” cited at the time. Such ties could, in theory, get a firm delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). But Fujitsu has found itself in trouble with the TSE anyway. On March 9th the exchange scolded the company for its “inadequate disclosure” of the reasons for Mr Nozoe's departure. Mr Nozoe, meanwhile, does not really want his old job back or a payout, but rather to have his honour restored, says his lawyer, Kei Hata.

For all its oddities, the row is, at its root, a reflection of the peculiar status of Japanese bosses. They are often mere figureheads who serve for a short time before handing the baton to other old company hands. Firms are run by consensus, not individuals. Indeed, the lifetime employment system makes bosses loth to rock the boat (and means they have few other job options if they do). So when a board requests a resignation, as it did at Fujitsu, employees loyally fall on their swords. Bosses then tend to take up ceremonial yet well paid positions as “senior advisers” (such as the one Mr Nozoe himself enjoyed until he started complaining about his ouster). That Mr Nozoe was quietly asked to step down without any proof of wrongdoing is also typical.

The irony is that under Mr Nozoe, Fujitsu was a model of corporate reform. He actively sought to restructure the bloated company, which has roughly 175,000 employees and around $50 billion in annual revenue, but makes meagre profits. Mr Nozoe accelerated Fujitsu's drive to shed hardware business and move into services, where margins are better. He sold Fujitsu's hard-drive unit to Toshiba, outsourced some chip production to Taiwan's TSMC, took control of Fujitsu's European joint venture with Siemens and focused the company on cloud computing as a new growth area. Services now account for over half of sales, though some two-thirds of the company's revenues are domestic at a time when the home market is stagnant.

Fujitsu is also among the few Japanese firms that has done away with a sprawling board of company insiders in favour of a modest nine directors, three of them independent. By forcing them to review his departure, Mr Nozoe may help instil one last reform: greater transparency and accountability at the level of the board.