Blaine Harden of the Washington Post penned a thought-provoking article about modern Japanese women that touches on many topics which have been raised here on Japundit. It asks why women are postponing or even eschewing marriage and children; a trend which I, too, have seen. Off the top of my head, I can name about 10 single Japanese women friends in their mid-to-late thirties; far fewer than the number who are married.

Takako Katayama has not closed the door on marriage and children. When she meets girlfriends for dinner, they ask each other, “Where are the good guys?” But she refuses to settle for a man who works long hours, declines to share in child-rearing and sees marriage mainly as a way to acquire lifetime live-in help.

“I want a mature, equal-partner kind of marriage,” she said. “Anyway, there are complete lives without a baby.”

Therein lies a dismal prognosis for Japan and for many of the other prosperous nations of East Asia. In numbers that alarm their governments, Asian women are delaying marriage and postponing childbirth. In Japan, the percentage of women who remain single into their 30s has more than doubled since 1980.

“We need to organize our society so that women and families will be able to raise children while working,” Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in an interview in May. “I think we still lack adequate efforts on that front.”

This year, Fukuda’s government is pushing a “work-life balance” program that addresses the country’s famously punishing work ethic. It pressures companies to shoo workers (primarily men) out of the office at night. The intent is to improve the quality of family life and, in the process, make more babies.

The stakes are high here in the world’s second-largest economy, which now has the world’s highest proportion of people over 65 and lowest proportion of children under 15. According to a recent forecast, population loss will strip Japan of 70 percent of its workforce by 2050.

There are three kinds of employees in Japan: full time, part time, and arubaito.

The last type, the name for which comes from the german word for “work” (arbeit), refers to contract-less employees who are paid by the hour and work irregular or semi-temporary schedules, as differentiated from full company employees, who have benefits like twice-annual bonuses and vacation time, and semi-official part-timers, who also have some formal benefits.

One of the biggest trends in post-bubble Japanese society is the tendency of younger workers to shun traditional full-time employment, instead being content to work informal jobs staffing video rental stores and gas stations, tutoring at evening cram schools, and so on. According to a new government report, an amazing 35% of the workforce now occupies these “non-regular” employment positions, exchanging freedom to change jobs at will and less on-the-job stress for lower job security.

Why so many would choose to work as freeters (as these part-time and temporary workers are called) puzzles older Japanese, who of course benefited greatly from the stable economic growth of the postwar period. The reasons ‘baito is so popular are many, but one big one is that many Japanese have come to value their own leisure time over work.

This is a good thing of course, although I personally consider the industriousness of the Japanese people as a whole to be no less than a National Treasure for the country, and something that I hope will continue into the future.

From an anonymous reader on Slashdot:

“A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees’ family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5″ for men, and 35.5″ for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women.”

I guess extreme problems call for extreme solutions!

Now, this also worries me. Potentially having to move in Japan soon to follow my love, and me being a bit overweight, will that new law make it impossible for me to find a job?

Stories about misbehaving public officials are commonplace - they differ only in the details. But the details usually make interesting reading.

A Wakayama prefecture civil servant has made worldwide headlines with a feat of astonishing dedication.

Tax-payers in Kinokawa wish he could show similar dedication to his job. For it has been revealed in a 9-month period, the horny civil servant clocked up more than three quarters of a million hits on pornographic websites from his work computer.

His superiors were alerted to the problem only when his computer became infected with a virus.

The 57-year-old man, who has not been named, works for the city of Kinokawa in southern Japan.

That works out at almost 10,000 pages a day, or more than 20 each minute he was at his desk.

The BBC reports that his habit “reached its peak” last July with more than 177,000 page hits times during office hours.

The man has not been fired.

according to articles found on both bloomberg and the guardian, the expanding waistlines of japan’s denizens is causing the ministry of health and welfare concern. so great is there apprehension, in fact, that they along with local and municipal governments, have hatched a comprehensive series of plans to reduce the girth of the nation. as its stated goal, the government hopes to reduce unhealthy weight and obesity in the workforce and their dependents by 25% in seven years time.

being the lazy ineffective bureaucrats they are, the ministry has a plan to hoist all responsibility for achieving these goals on the shoulders of the companies who employ overweight workers and their out of shape dependents. the firms that fail to meet the goal of having 25% of their workforce (and the work force’s dependents) shape up risk paying increased taxes to help assist with the overburdened public health system.

isn’t it enough that your manager harasses you about meeting quotas, productivity, and deadlines? now you have to report to them about your exercise and diet plans, too? lame. not to mention the increased taxes on the entire company. now you not only have to report to your supervisor about your waistline; but anyone who isn’t in shape is probably going to be the victim of hazing from their fellow employees who don’t want to hear about why their paychecks are being cut when the worker doesn’t manage to drop those last 5 pounds.

even more insidious are the possible implications for proprietors and small llc (or japanese equivalent) companies. while the articles are relatively sparse on the details of how this plan would affect small companies (or whether they are excluded) if the same laws did apply this could be a great hidden way to raise taxes on certain individuals who already have enough to wade through.

and would somebody please think of the women and the children here. aren’t the relationships between spouses and their offspring strained enough without having to watch each other’s weight. hey, at least it provides a plausible excuse for telling your wife she’s fat. “honey i’m just trying to help you with your job.”

i know. i know, i’m probably being a tad over-reactive (probably?) and might be engaging in my fair share of hyperbole, but this does seem like an underhanded and indirect way of trying to reign in the present value of future healthcare.

well at least there is a light side to this whole matter. in a bid to encourage japanese citizens to lose weight some municipalities have take it on themselves to create inspirational models of behavior for all the lardasses out there. case in point: the mitsuke mighty morphing metabo rangers.

do you think they morph into something less lame?

interesting series of photos on this website

in zenkoji temple, located in nagano, a movement is taking root. instigated by an incident in which one of the tendai sect’s high priests punished a monk for insubordination by forcing him to copy sutras in a small room for two months: enraged by this form of discipline the man’s fellow monks filed a lawsuit stating that the temple authorities were violating his contract of employment.

all it needs is a gm logo

not satisfied with the possible remedies of law and equity that the courts could offer, the monk also approached nagano’s zenroren and asked them to determine whether he had cause and standing to create a union at the temple. finding that his set wages and specifically defined hours working for daikanjin, the zenroren ruled that he was legally of the same standing as a salaryman working for a corporation and approved his petition to begin union negotiations with his monks and the temple.

the resulting agreement, dubbed the zenkoji daikanjin bunkai has already inspired monks from other sects to contact their own local labor boards and ask whether they to can create their own unions. the seeming hope among these junior monks is that one day they may enjoy better working conditions and higher wages for their work at the buddhist temples and shrines across the nation.

A company in Tokyo named Hime & Company(Japanese page) has started offering its all-female staff “heartache leave” to provide them with paid time off to ease the pain of break-ups with loved ones.

[The company], which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed. “Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” CEO Miki Hiradate, whose company of six women markets cosmetics and other goods targeted for women, told Reuters by telephone.

Under the heartache leave scheme, Hime (which means “princess” in Japanese) employees 24 years old or younger are allowed one day off per year, workers from 25 and 29 are given two days annually, and those older than 29 are can take three.

“Women in their 20s can find their next love quickly, but it’s tougher for women in their 30s, and their break-ups tend to be more serious,” Hiradate said.

Hime & Company also claims that their “shopping leave” also helps the modern working woman avoid problems and feelings of guilt for taking off to hit the stores when sales are on.

“Before, women could take half-days off to go to sales, but you’d have to hide your shopping bags in lockers by the train station,” Hiradate said.
“But with paid leave, we don’t have to feel guilty about bringing our shopping bags to work, and we can enjoy the best part about sales shopping — talking about our purchases afterwards.”

Via Asian Pop with YienJee

This familiar scene on Japanese trains appears innocent enough. But it’s not, according to the An Englishman in Osaka blog. Because one of these salarymen is actually dead.

That’s right, on their way home one of these guys drifted into a light sleep before passing peacefully away, moving on to that great office in the sky (where 20-hour working days are the norm).

But, which one? The Englishman in Osaka means to disclose the answer soon–but in the meantime, if you don’t cheat, we can play too! It’s actually kind of hard to say — they all look dead to the world, although I guess one of them is a bit more so.

However, as one of the commenters justly notes (all the comments are pretty amusing): “Dying while sleeping on the train sure beats dying while jumping in front of it. “

Further to yesterday’s post about the comparative uphill battle Japanese women have at work, the New York Times article mentioned had this rather revealing chart, just in case you missed it! The original is a bit more legible than this but maybe you can make it out:

The New York Times has an interesting article about how lousy it is to be a woman in the Japanese workplace, according to Entrepreneur’s small business blog. Despite the fact that 27 million women account for almost half of Japan’s work force, they only fill about 10 percent of management positions. Compare that with the percentage of American women filling managerial jobs: 42.5 percent.

Workers blame Japanese work customs that make it virtually impossible for women to have a family and a career, often causing women to quit their jobs in their late 20s and early 30s. If women do want a high-ranking position, they often feel they’re forced to stay single and not have children. But thanks to a growing population and declining birthrate, Japan may be facing a potential labor shortage. That, combined with more women quitting their jobs, could be problematic for the country. “Birthrates here are declining because of a lack of equality for women,” said Kuniko Inoguchi, a former cabinet minister in charge of gender equality. “The population shortage is forcing a change in attitudes.”

Those of you who work in Japanese offices know only too well about the bar. For the rest of you, the design of the Japanese desk is the old file drawers on either side supporting the writing surface on top. I think it’s carved out of a single block of steel. But at some point engineers get down on their hands and knees with their protractors and slide rules and determine the spot where 90% of users will place their feet when in a relaxed, comfortable position. Then they stick a bar there. So when you sit at a Japanese desk you have two choices, back straight, full attention posture with your feet on this side of the bar or heavy slouch with your feet on that side of the bar. For nearly two years I had been laboring under the assumption that the purpose of this device was either to torture the sitter into the government-approved work posture or its removal would cause structural collapse.

At great risk to my cherished preconceived notions, I asked a Japanese coworker what the deal with the bar was. “Japanese people are lazy,” he said. As an example of laziness he untied his shoes, removed them, put his feet up in the bar like it was an ottoman and leaned back in his chair, then he put his shoes back on again and tied them. All the shoe work on either side of his moment of relaxation hurt his laziness claim, but at least I had the answer about the bar. It was designed for comfort. But since I am a six-footer I would need to sit in the parking lot to put my feet up on this thing.

Four hex bolts hold the bar to the desk. I asked my lazy coworker (though by his reckoning, they are all lazy) if the office had a pair of pliers, in Japanese a penchi. Most offices probably don’t have penchis lying around, but I work in a factory and we have more than we know what to do with.

Friends, I am now working in bar-free bliss. My feet roam over the grimy expanse under my desk like nimble gazelles. Gaijin workers of Japan unite, take up you penchis, and unshackle your weary ankles.

Kidzania Tokyo, a new theme park, just opened. What’s the theme this time? Work. Who says kids have no much fun? (Actually, I don’t think anyone says this). It’s never too early to start your youngster on his lifetime of mindless subservience. If you can’t read Japanese, their website is a little tough to navigate. I saw a thing about Kidzania on TV. It’s an indoor city full of familiar workplaces like a bank, a pizza place, a travel agency, an airline, etc. Each “company” has adult staff that train the young recruits, dress them in little uniforms, and then put them to work.

The UK’s Independent interview and profile Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb, author of Fear and Trembling. I’ve not read the book but the film adaptation has some of the funniest deadpan observations of Japanese hierarchical bullshit I’ve ever seen. One critic likened the book to “a poison-pen letter to Japan” while another labelled the film “a jaundiced view of Japan that makes Lost In Translation seem like the epitome of cross-cultural understanding”. The interview reveals the author to be somewhat on the eccentric side, which might give succour to her ‘culturally-sensitive’ detractors. But it also reveals what makes her tick and how bad experiences can lead to such good literature/cinema:

I began to think ‘now, old girl, what will you do with your life? Your ambition was to become Japanese and now that’s impossible… Except speaking Japanese, you can do nothing’. Without that Japanese humiliation, I would never have dared to show my work. But as I was already humiliated by the company, I thought well, what could be worse?

Is teaching English in a Japanese jr/high school akin to being in a cult?*

As a soon-to-be ex JET teacher in a Japanese Jr. high, this is a question I have pondered long and hard, but only taken the steps to answer today. A quick googling took me to Steve Alan Hassen’s BITE model (BITE stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional), which outlines the common methods for mind-control a cult exerts on its members. See for yourself:

* Behavior Control: financial dependence (check), need to ask permission for major decisions (nenkyu battles), individualism discouraged and groupthink prevails, rigid rules and regulations, etc.

* Information Control: access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (”I’m not know how to explain this to you in English”), compartmentalization of information, outsider vs. insider doctrines, etc.

* Thought Control: adopt “loaded” language (tsss….muzukashii…), thought-stopping techniques (murida!) , only good and proper thoughts are encouraged, etc.

* Emotional Control: excessive use of guilt, extremes of emotional highs and lows, phobia indoctrinations.

omoshiroi…

*This post is based on the assumptions that 1) majority of English-speaking gaijin in Japan are/were employed as English instructors in some capacity, 2) JP readers care about the plights of these poor souls…

One of the first full-time jobs I managed to get as an English teacher in Japan was at the YKK Machinery and Engineering Group, in Kurobe, Toyama Prefecture.

Although YKK produces about 90% of the world’s zippers (though YKK calls them ‘fasteners’), most Japanese people are familiar with the company’s architectural products - the company chose to locate in Kurobe because of readily available hydroelectric power needed to produce aluminum, the raw material for most of what the company’s produces.

My roommate and I both lived in a large house built for former President Jimmy Carter (he had helped YKK set up a plant in Georgia at one point), and we taught at the Kurobe facility four days a week. On weekends I visited my girlfriend (from Tennessee) who lived on the Noto Penisula.

I don’t remember much about the place, except that there was a lot of snow that winter, most of my students were obsessed with horse racing, and the female students, who had been recruited from rural Toyama, had startlingly bad teeth. My roommate had also just turned 40, was getting a divorce, and had just been fired from his job as a salesman at a computer chip maker for sleeping with the boss’s secretary.

Not a happy time, but I’ve always had fond memories of YKK.

So, I’d like to invite Japundit readers to check out the YKK Fastening Awards. As the website explains:

Centering on the use of fasteners, buckles, snaps and buttons, this is a unique fashion contest aimed at aspiring designers.

A series of competitions have been held since the Spring, and finalists’ works will be displayed at a fashion show early in September.

A ’sample movie’ of those who made it through the semi-finalis can be found here (wmv).

Past awards are archived here (click on the links).

Click here to view scans of Japanese WWII propaganda that was intended to show readers how much better off they would be by exchanging their European colonial masters for Asian colonial masters.

As I always say… When you’ve got a jackboot to your neck, it really makes no difference whose foot is inside it!

Thanks to Mr. Pink.

The evanescence of today’s global news cycle means that most of the world already has forgotten last week’s railway accident in Japan that killed 106 and wounded 460 others, 150 seriously, when the lead car of a train pancaked—literally—into a nine story condominium building.

The story will not disappear so quickly in Japan, however, if only because train travel is such an integral part of everyone’s existence, particularly at certain stages of their lives, and especially for city dwellers. Though car ownership continues to climb, many people still use trains to commute to work or school every day. Unlike the United States, Japan has no public school bus system, so trains are often the primary means of transportation for students going back and forth to school, starting in junior high.

Therefore, the thought, “There but for the grace of God go I”, will inevitably rise in the minds of most Japanese when they see the images on television or in the newspaper. And what they are beginning to find out about the accident is also bound to create involuntary shudders the next time they board a train.

The crash occurred around 9:20 a.m. on a Monday morning, just after the main commuting hours, when the 23-year-old driver put the pedal to the metal and hit a curve at more than 100 kilometers per hour—where the speed limit was 70 kilometers per hour.

What possessed the driver to go so fast? It turns out he had earlier overrun a stop by 40 meters, causing him to fall 90 seconds behind schedule. The driver also overran a station in June last year, one month after starting the job, and was given a warning. The railway union is suggesting that the fear of punishment for being late drove him to speed up the train.

For the train company JR West, the driver’s employer, punishment does not simply mean lost pay or a delayed promotion. As this article in the Asia Times reveals, JR’s treatment borders on the medieval. They call it the “day shift”, and drivers will do anything to avoid it. It can include writing self-critical reports, being made to weed the company’s gardens, or groveling in apology for weeks to managers.

In some cases, this results in depression. In other cases, it leads to worse. Here’s what happened to one driver:

Human-rights activists produced tape recordings of one train driver, Masaki Hattori, 44, that revealed he was sobbing while repeatedly saying “I am wrong and I am a fool” during three days of harsh questioning by JR West managers in his “re-education” program, for falling behind his schedule. The proud driver, with 20 years’ experience and no accidents in his record, felt humiliated and later committed suicide.

Hattori is one of seven JR West drivers who have taken their lives after “the day shift”. Masako Shimano, a lawyer in the field of workers’ rights, claims, “Globalization and rapid privatization, coupled with a system in Japan where human rights have long taken low priority, have led to a frightening situation for workers and the lowering of safety standards.”

Globalization and rapid privatization have nothing to do with this case, but that’s the boilerplate that comes from labor lawyers. JR was privatized in 1987, and they haven’t had accidents this bad before. Japan’s big cities also have several private railway systems, so competition in this sector is nothing new.

She’s got the second part right, though. For most of Japanese history, individuals have subordinated themselves to the needs of the group, whether it be the government, society, or their company. And the government, society, or the company too often viewed the individual as a disposable, easily replaceable part.

The country has rapidly humanized since its citizens have become more aware of life and labor practices in Europe and the United States, however. So many rocks have been lifted in so many areas of society over the past few decades, exposing so many slugs to the light, that I thought the cruel and unusual punishments once so commonplace for employees and students had become obsolete.

Looks like I was wrong.

Further proof of a rapidly changing Japan can be found in the results of a Cabinet Office poll showing that for the first time, a majority of Japanese disagree with the statement, “The husband should work outside the home and the wife should stay at home”.

According to the poll, 48.9% of respondents disagreed with this idea and 45.2% supported it. The first poll was conducted in 1979, when 20.4% of the respondents opposed the idea and 72.5% were in favor.

A comparison of the Japanese and English articles highlights different cultural approaches. The second point discussed by the Kyodo article in English, found here, is that by an overwhelming margin, Japanese women still do most of the housework. (The survey does not compare the amount of time men and women spend at the workplace.) Meanwhile, the second point brought up in the print version of the Japanese article I read is that while the ideal for 36.8% of the women (the highest percentage) is a combination of family life with a career, in reality 44.8% (again the highest percentage) say they are primarily housewives. An on-line summary of the report in Japanese can be found here.

In yet another blow to those who cling to the myth of the subservient Japanese woman, the poll also reported that the wife is in charge of household finances in 67.1% of the families, while the husband controls the purse strings in only 14.1%.

On a linguistic side note, a comparison of the English and Japanese expressions used for the reports is interesting. The Kyodo English article says the survey was about “gender equality”, while the phrase used in Japanese, literally translated, is “the equal participation of men and women in society”. Also, the English article refers to the housewives’ role as “staying at home”, while the corresponding Japanese phrase (used in everyday speech) is that the wife “protects the household”.

There is no report of any questions being asked about raising or lowering the toilet seat.

We’ve all got problems, but Kenji Kawakami has solutions for problems we never knew we had.

For example, suppose you’re getting ready to prepare a fish for sashimi—particularly one that’s still alive—and you get unnerved by that fish eye staring back at you.

Kawakami’s solution? A fish face cover that slides over the fish head so you can slice in serenity.

Suppose you’re a Japanese housewife whose husband has to get up at 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning to tee off with some customers at a golf course that’s two hours away by car? Kawakami lets you fulfill your wifely duty to see him off in the morning while still asleep by providing an automated waving hand that you can attach to the alarm clock.

These and dozens of other problem solvers are inventions that Kawakami calls chindogu, which means “unusual tools”. A self-described “designer, anarchist, and pathological mail-order enthusiast”, Kawakami is the founder of the International Chindogu Society, which claims 10,000 members.

Another Kawakami term for chindogu is “unuseless inventions”, and I think several circuits in my brain have shut down permanently just by reading it.

Take the plunge and start with this review of Kawakami’s new “Bumper Book of Unuseless Japanese Inventions” that appeared in The Scotsman. (Ignore their claim that chindogu literally means “distorted tools”.)

If you have the nerve to keep going, you should try the website of the International Chindogu Society in English. It has photos of some of these marvels, a few of which were actually shown on TV. (I could not find a Japanese website for this organization.)

If you’re ready for more, you can try this site featuring the Chindogu Manifesto. Number 2 is, “A chindogu must exist”, and declares, “You are not allowed to use a chindogu, but it must be made.
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If you’ve seen the light and want to commune directly with the source, the listing for Kawakami’s books in English at Amazon is here.

“Basically, chindogu is the same as the Industrial Revolution in Britain,” - Kenji Kawakami