Kawaii Joushi wo Komarasetai - Vol. 8 Ch. 103

[JagdPanther]

AFAIK in most 1st world countries you cannot have a written rule for that, because it's not legal, it conflicts with private life (and there are quite few bosses who marry their secretaries, AFAIK).

Of course, in many companies this rule could be unwritten, as in "if you have relationship, we'll find something to fire you for / transfer you to another department". But it's never outright spoken as a reason, because that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

In the US you definitely can have written policies regarding relationships between personnel. I just pulled ours up, and, again, we're a Fortune 100 company that is considered to be very conservative with its legal interpretations (to the point of competitively kneecapping itself by holding itself to stricter standards than it needs to). You'll likely lose a challenge if you try to ban relationships in general, but a cursory search shows that it's not generally considered unreasonable to bar relationships between a manager and an employee in their reporting line because there is heightened risk of conflict of interest, favoritism, retaliation, etc. that courts will recognize as reasonable justification for the policy. Even a traditionally liberal state like California appears to overtly allow companies to establish and enforce workplace policies prohibiting relationships between managers and managees.

But, to your point, it could be that the US is unusual in that respect because US employment law can vary so drastically from many other 1st world countries. Perhaps this is "fine" (in a way) in Japan.