Nice argument from Noah Smith, guest contributor at Observing Japan, which I would like to forward for our esteemed readers’ comment.
I am in a position to know that Japanese white-collar labor productivity is substantially lower than most other rich nations (including Asian nations such as Taiwan and Singapore). That means that whatever is getting done in all those long hours Japanese people spend in the office, it’s not as much as it could be. Any physics student will tell you that work equals force times distance*; Japanese workers put in a lot of force without getting enough distance.
Japan’s leaders should recognize this distinction. We all know the story of how government protection of Japan’s domestic service sector has left it inefficient, but it’s important to realize the real impact this has on the lives of Japanese people – parents who can’t go home to be with their children, salaries that are lower than they could be, exhausting hours of work put in with not enough to show for it at the end of the day. Maybe Aso should take a clue from King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 4:14, and help the Japanese people to work smarter, not harder.
MY COUNTERARGUMENT: Much to the contrary, the “inefficient” 18-hour day is probably based more on being the easiest way for husband and wife to survive many of the bizarrely fractured marriages that prevail in Japanese society. If husbands had to come home earlier in the evening, for whatever reason, there would be a lot more chopstick-throwing and perhaps some instances of “hot ochazuke”. (Note that I’m generalizing here — there are many women in the workforce these days and more than a few “stay at home dads” — but the traditional structure still prevails.)
THE QUESTION: Even though I think the insane Japanese workday is self-imposed for the sake of the mismatched couple’s sanity, there’s almost certainly a long-term benefit in giving more Japanese boys a regularly-present and halfway-conscious father. What’s the appropriate policy response to move Japan closer to this outcome?
You’re not seriously suggesting that I hope. What “bizarrely fractured marriages” are these? I could argue, for example, that the incidence of teinen rikon would be a lot less if the men worked more rational hours, rather than it being a symptom of an insane marriage in the first place.
Counter Arguments:
I just don’t understand the point of these social analyses. Maybe the Japanese workers like being inefficient. Who are we to argue with that system? These arguments always strike me as ethnocentric.
It is at times like this I am reminded of my old J Culture classes. The teacher once assigned an essay where we would analyze situation X and recommend how it should be improved for the benefit of Japanese society. I flatly refused, I insisted I had no way of making any relevant argument, and that nobody could unless they were directly affected, which would mean that they would have to be a nihonjin in that social circumstance. I did suggest I could write an equivalent essay, analyzing why fish swim in water, and how this was vastly inferior to bipedal locomotion on land, and how fish should give up swimming and take up walking.
Joe, I think this you have an interesting argument. Interesting meaning that you will get into a lot of trouble for bringing it up.
There is clearly a certain amount of social pressure keeping people at their desks way longer than they should be there, but at the same time, a lot of people just do not want to go home. Whether that’s because they are in social-contract marriages, don’t want to help around the house, hate their spouses, are single and bored, have no hobbies — it must depend on each individual case. So what you need is a national dialogue about what work “means.” I know in the West we tend to think work is a chore and not “our lives,” but there must be a better balance than now.
which would mean that they would have to be a nihonjin in that social circumstance.
You mean an elite nihonjin who decides for everyone else. Cultural relativism only works when they you start looking at the relative distribution of power within the society in question. Not every part of culture is decided in a perfectly democratic style. Did women somehow ask to get paid less?
I’m sorry, I don’t agree with you at all and hope you were being facetious.
You aren’t seriously suggesting that a significant number of marriages are dysfunctional here in Japan are you? What exactly are you basing that statement on? Even if it were true, and my personal experience tells me it isn’t, is it not more likely that the working conditions here are a cause for alienation between couples?
I’ve been enjoying this blog for a while, but this entry is not up to your usual standards.
cheers
sendaiben
I’m playing devil’s advocate here to some extent, but I think it works both ways in practice–which is why my subject is “cause and effect.” From experience in a couple of Tokyo firms, it seems to me that the long workday is something of a self-perpetuating cycle, but I’m not sure that a policy to shorten the workday is going to fix the marital and familial problems which often keep the cycle alive.
Further comments are welcome, of course: that was the whole reason I posted this.
There might be quite a few salarymen out there who work late to avoid their marriages, but I think the long hours have more to do with the value of ganbaru-ing in Japan. If you look like you are trying hard at what you do, you are a good worker/teammate/student and earn the respect of others.
By the way, I don’t think this is anything that can be proven or even argued statistically. The only halfway relevant statistics I’ve come across is that most overtimers in Japan blame their work schedule on simply “having too much to do” — but this only helps to illustrate the level of inefficiency and does nothing to explain the reasons for it.
And there are a great many happily married salarymen out there — but anecdotal evidence from my companies and from various (Japanese and foreign) friends’ companies suggest that a big percentage are dawdling at the office because they really don’t want to go home.
“but anecdotal evidence from my companies and from various (Japanese and foreign) friends’ companies suggest that a big percentage are dawdling at the office because they really don’t want to go home.”
Even assuming we can get anything meaningful from anecdotes, is this because the damage is already done? They want to remain long hours because they cannot break free from the cycle? In other words, we have a classic chicken and egg situation. The only way to resolve this and get anything meaningful is a proper survey of work hours and attitudes to work and home over a wide range of workers from all ages. Also this hypothesis would fall flat on its face if single men showed no difference.
Personally I’m with James – it’s all about showing up, being a team player, etc.
Just another quick comment – the phrase “osaki ni” and its more polite variations said when leaving before others reinforces the idea that longer hours = more teamwork.
Joe, as others have said, I cannot believe that you are arguing that Japanese white collar workers choose to stay at the office and work long hours so they can avoid abusing their wives. That doesn’t make any sense.
Japan’s economy–especially its labour practices/policies/philosophies– is one of the most intensely studied areas of modern Japan. You need to do some reading instead of making sweeping generalizations. Start by Googling Japan’s “lifetime employment system.”
Ask yourself, “What is the relationship between between employers and employees, and how did it develop?” Also, what is the relationship between labour and management? What role has industrial policy had on the development of Japan.
Once you do some reading in these areas, I think you’ll find your argument is in need of some serious revision.
Cheers
I have a vague impression that shorter hours would mean more quality of life for more Japanese.
However, let’s not forget that a lot of this “forced overtime” actually consists of pub crawls and regular hours don’t last a lot longer than they do elsewhere.
From the university point of view, there are lots of grad students who are ALWAYS around their departments (in Japan and elsewhere). They like the small talk, they like going out for dinner, they just like being there rather than home, etc. I think that this mindset carries over to companies as well. These students, by the way, invariably say that they have “too much to do”.
From my experience with Japanese companies and bureaucracy – lots of guys spend half the day in the smoking area (or going back and forth to the smoking area anyway).
The “do it for the children” argument also seems a bit flat. While there are no stats to back this up, it strikes me that Japanese men spend just as much time with their kids on weekends as do NAmerican men. As for weekdays – between soccer practice and homework for NA kids and bukatsu and juku for Japanese and a few hours of TV and videogames for both (that stats show us are always there and American PARENTS also watch more TV than Japanese) – where does all the love get fit in anywhere?
I saw a survey for Australia recently – amount of quality time that Aussie men spend with their kids on weekdays. 4. Not hours, MINUTES.
M-Bone: That’s a pretty stark statistic. I wonder how they defined “quality time.” But yes, this is a problem that transcends national boundaries, and it also transcends single issues like working hours.
Marxy: Thanks for that comment. I agree that there are a lot of causes swirling together here. My point here is not to bash Japanese men. My point is that the problem isn’t as simple as saying “regulation is the answer” — this is a system which the workers are at least relatively happy with for their own reasons.
ST: Where did I say anything about wife-beating? All I mentioned was husband-disfiguring.
Jade: Such a survey would be really enlightening. I’m not sure if the government could do it right, though — I suspect they would come up with some sort of half-baked results based on intentionally vague questions with useless multiple-choice answers that would leave Ken Y-N scratching his head. This may be a job more suited for a budding team of researchers, perhaps including Noah himself. (Perhaps that’s what he has in mind for his Ph.D. thesis?)
Duh. While getting ready for bed, I spontaneously remembered that a pretty comprehensive survey of work and home attitudes has already been done. IKEA commissioned it as part of their market research when they were re-entering Japan.
I don’t have any numbers in front of me (and I don’t know if they were ever made public), but the gist, as I understood it from one of their consultants in Japan, was that (a) Japanese couples generally disliked each other’s presence after a few years of marriage, and this was a significant factor in the work schedule of married workers, and (b) the home was generally seen by stakeholders as a place to sleep, eat breakfast and store things, and not much else–another reason why working people didn’t like to go home early.
Those who were around for IKEA’s comeback may recall that a lot of their initial marketing centered around two themes. The main theme was showing that even a small space could be made very pleasant with the right furniture (hence the famous 4.5-mat rooms set up in Yoyogi Park), but the other theme was inducing working people to spend more time at home with their families, e.g. station ads saying “Did you talk to your kids today?,” the notion being that if people spent more time at home, they would want to buy nicer furnishings.
I wonder if IKEA ever released their research data. It sounds valuable from many perspectives. Assuming it’s proprietary, an academic “open source” version would be nice to have.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/witn/2008/10/081022_australian_men.shtml
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24522007-5016679,00.html
I want to see studies like this one done for UK, America, and Canada. (In Japan, everybody already knows what the result will be).
On the issue of our views of work, I’d recommend Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness” – an insightful forerunner of this current debate written in the 1930s. While some may disagree with his radical socialism – the idea that the way that work is conceived of and valued in our society(-ies) does immeasurable mental / emotional damage to people is food for thought.
Some of the French post-Marxists like Althusseur are also useful.
I tend to think that regulation alone won’t do a damn thing – it seems as though other post-industrial societies like Australia are moving in a Japan-like direction (pressure to stay in white collar jobs, need to work more in blue collar). Education could help change things slowly. Marxy is spot on in his call to look at individual motives – some people no doubt very much enjoy the social side of the workplace. It also varies between industries – academics are unique – I think that it is common for an academic to consider a day of writing at home to be a “hard” day, while a day with a seminar and coffee with a grad student and drinks after work to be a “fun” day. We can’t use a “one size fits all demand”.
I do know one thing, however – if there is going to be a revolution in ways of looking at work, it isn’t going to come from an IKEA style attempt to sell people more stuff (which, while encouraging people to “spend more time at home”, also encourages people to think more about bonuses and raises).
Just did 10 minutes of poking around –
Looks like 79.8% of Japanese married couples report that they eat dinner together always or most of the time. Higher than I thought.
We can also a massive gap in “feelings” between generations – does it feel “good” to be together with your partner – 90% for men in their 30s and 80% for women in their 30s. 85% for men in their 60s compared to 65% for women in their 60s. These results are unsurprising.
Do you have feelings of gratitude toward your partner – 30s – 96% of men and 93% of women.
It looks like the picture may not have been as dire as we feared.
It seems that 65% of Japanese men feel that they are getting enough family time (but what is enough?), while only 3% feel that they are absolutely not getting enough.
Another number that stands out (and meshes with a lot of recent publications) is that 90% feel that the government should cooperate with employers to encourage a better work-life balance so a consensus / discussion already seems well under way (but will it result in more change?).
This is mashed together from Daiichiseimei and Cabinet polls done last year.
I’m all for working smarter rather than harder.
As for avoiding going home, haven’t they heard of the phrase, “you don’t have to go home, but you’ve got to get the heck out of here?”
M-Bone, thanks for pulling those numbers up. Do you have links to those surveys, or can you share the search terms you used? It’s interesting information, but I am very skeptical of those numbers — they seem far too rosy. There is no way that 80% of the working population gets home for dinner on a regular basis. Perhaps they’re skewing the survey population toward retired people and manual laborers.
Another point. If I recall correctly, IKEA’s team did some large-scale questionnaires and then did in-depth case studies on a cross section of families, and found that their subjects were very prone to gloss over their problems on questionnaires but would happily start complaining as soon as the [friendly young Japanese] researchers had won their trust. The “gaman” mentality discussed above (and of course the practice of “tatemae” or concealing true feelings) is still very strong in this country.
I am not arguing that IKEA will save Japan. I am merely saying that they did a good job of sizing up the market here (at least, they figured out how to make loads of money in Japan) and their methodology could be useful to policy analysis, like what we’re arguing about here.
I think that I typed in 夫婦、調査. No time now, but I’ll get the links if this thread is still going strong this time tomorrow.
It does include retired people. You also have to think about it from a non-Tokyo point of view. My father-in-law (white collar) in the relative inaka walks 10 minutes to and from work and is home every day before 5:30.
On the subject of Tatemae – shouldn’t it be far more important in face to face interviews?
“would happily start complaining as soon as the [friendly young Japanese] researchers had won their trust.”
So how much of it was serious and how much of it was just a “chat”? Did they do 10 of these chats or 100? Was it all around Tokyo? Lots of potential problems here. How did you get your hands on the survey, BTW?
Joe, my bad if I misinterpreted throwing chopsticks and hot ochazuke as wife-beating or domestic violence; it sure sounds like it. I still think the premise of your argument is flimsy, and now that you are citing a survey commissioned by IKEA, what you are saying is laughable.
As I wrote in my previous comment, do some reading on Japan’s lifetime employment system. If you’re going to make assumptions about the general inefficiency of white collar workers, you should ground them in something more substantial than a survey by IKEA.
Cheers
ST, what do you think I’m missing? I’m sure you have a lot to add to this discussion, and it would be helpful to all of us if you made your comments more concrete. I just brought up IKEA as an example of studies on work and home attitudes.
An actual case study: a friend of mine works for the Japanese subsidiary of a multinational firm. The Asian office (not in Japan) charts the Japanese employees’ comings and goings and desperately wants them to actually go home on time. So they had a talk with the employees and said, please go home. They didn’t go home. The boss talked to each person individually: please go home. They didn’t go home. Finally, the company threatened punishment if people stayed too late. They still didn’t really go home.
Clearly in this case, it’s not about “gambaru-ing” but some fundamental aversion to going home on time. Not that this is every office or every scenario, but I do think we need to take into account the fact that some people are just desperate not to ever go home. I was definitely of the “social pressure to stay” school for a while, but it takes both labor and management to make the current situation. Even in foreign companies where managers want labor to go home, they do not jump at the first chance.
Lots of lifestyles out there.
A few months back, the media were on the case of a woman who died in her bedroom under odd circumstances. She, a housewife, and her husband apparently had a nightly ritual of drinking beer in their room from the time that he got home at 9ish until 1 or 2. The death isn’t relevant to the current discussion, but it seems that even habitually getting home late does not rule out a desire for “quality time”.
One of my wife’s cousins is married to a guy who seems like he really, really, really, wants to go home, but also wants a promotion that will allow him to move to a bigger city. Here we see a clear gaman = future reward mentality.
My wife is adamant that I shouldn’t teach night classes.
Joe’s “fractured marriages” do exist, but I’m not sure that “prevail” is the right word there.
I think that watching “Shinkon-san Irasshai” can be instructive. We see young couples who are very clearly “into” each other. But a common “stress” that is discussed is ‘space in the home’. This comes up a lot. With the idea that the working world is a man’s world (never absolute) came the idea that the home is the woman’s world (an example of the postwar working class mimicking the prewar middle class) – and a man not being in it that much on weekdays is part of a healthy relationship. When we consider holidays and weekends, stats that I have seen suggest that going out or travelling together are major priorities. So are men not allowed home on weekdays and not allowed out fishing on weekends? Anecdotal evidence and reams of popular culture suggest that this may be the case.
So maybe a structural “gambaru” because of pressures rooted in the economic ordering of society (this is what Noah and ST are raising) works to some degree, but so do a variety of post-structural negotiations like Joe’s broken homes, my “work as social space”, and Marxy’s bored and lacking hobbies types. They co-exist.
“Clearly in this case, it’s not about “gambaru-ing” but some fundamental aversion to going home on time.”
The reason they do not jump at the chance may not be to do with management, but pure peer pressure. What would be interesting would be to compare offices in mainland Asia with one Japanese employee as opposed to lots.
Anyway, p. 15 of the pdf linked to at:
http://www.ipss.go.jp/ps-doukou/j/doukou13/point13.asp (the first hit with M-Bone’s 「夫婦、調査」)
has some interesting things on how wives see marriage. Only 28% think the wife should stay and keep house and the man work. It also has trends. However the survey as a whole is more concerned with children (having them).
This also paints a fairly rosy picture:
http://www.macromill.com/r_data/20041116couple/
Reading the bottom of this:
http://negaopi.exblog.jp/8368769/
suggests you could argue that those that do not want to come home early don’t want kids.
“On the subject of Tatemae – shouldn’t it be far more important in face to face interviews?”
It depends a lot on how the interview is done. Winning trust, as noted, is important.
I also remember reading a while back that even in its heyday, lifetime employment was for the big white collar firms, not the manual blue collar work that made up the bulk of the workforce. Toyota might have given you a job for life, but the small factory that made their door handles wouldn’t. A very quick check found this statement, albeit from the ’90s:
労働省が５月１９９６年行った調査によると、１８．９％の企業が「終身雇用制度が大切だ」と回答している。この数字は１９９３年を１２．９％も下回っている。一方、５０．５％の企業が終身雇用制度を採用していない。
(http://www.geocities.co.jp/Technopolis/2225/sruangsuda.htm)
And for my own personal anecdote, when I lived with a Japanese family for a year in suburban Kanagawa (pretty much the opposite of where M-Bone’s dad-in-law is), the father was almost never home for dinner – in fact he was almost never home before I went to bed, and usually left as I was getting up. He certainly did not have a ten-min walk to work, of course.
First, a meta-comment on the charges of ethno-centrism and related criticism: As an observer, I think some commenters made a valid point that Joe was basically jumping to conclusions, even though the whole point of this was explicitly framed as an intellectual exercise, not a sweeping or even well-founded conclusion.
Questioning the very validity of big bad Westerners wondering how Japanese society should be improved seems a little wrong-headed, at least at MFT. Basically, while our backgrounds aren’t ethnically or culturally Japanese, we don’t have the same conflicts of interest that the US trade representative or Washington Post might.
If you are worried that it’s impolite to propose policies to the Japanese government or anyone who will listen, just go to your local bookstore and you will see it is over-loaded with proposals on how Japan should reform, by Japanese authors mainly. For people living in Japan, it’s the question of the century. More than anything, it’s this mentality that I would guess most influences Joe (and it is certainly my inspiration). I don’t think Joe is positioning himself as the nation’s savior in any way.
Even though Joe might not be “right” why should that be so important? Look at all the discussion this has generated already, and you can’t just dismiss this as counterproductive or ethnocentric.
Even the specific issue at hand is hugely controversial and hits at issues of what direction Japan should head in as a society. What’s the problem with staying late if you primarily identify yourself as a member of your company? If you are a ginko-man then it is only natural to center your life around the bank, and likewise for other firms. Those advocating a reform of this system find fault with the post-war system of lifetime employment and an illiquid workforce.
That out of the way, here’s what I think about this office zangyo issue:
In my own experience at a Japanese organization of about 500 people, the (American) management promotes work-life balance VERY hard, with a simultaneous investment in productivity software of the type that’s typically used in the US.
But there is a big gap among departments in terms of how well it is working. Most of the back office, administrative side is doing fine at this, but the sales and fund management ends, in other words the money-making sections of the company, tend to be stuck in traditional Japan Inc territory.
For areas like sales, the situation doesn’t differ that much from the US — you either make the results or you don’t. So while I don’t get a daily look at what the sales staff is like, I imagine it’s not that different from Glengarry Glen Ross.
But even in the back office, everyone stays at least an hour after official quitting time, basically for appearances.
Even if they love their husbands/wives to death, they still have to sacrifice a little bit for the good of the company. The attitude that you are not just doing a job as a professional but working to make the company better is quite strong. I even feel that way myself sometimes.
The above explanation applies mainly to the full-time seishain workers. Right now there is a dual structure in the labor market of full time workers who get all sorts of concessions in exchange for their loyalty and possible placement on a generalist career path that will render it quite difficult to find outside employment later on in life, and the contract employees who can’t catch a break but perhaps have are permitted a more independent mindset.
I think you have to understand that this sort of employment is considered a kind of Japanese dream — what could be better than a stable life in a good job that allows you a strong group affiliation in addition to the chance to develop as a professional. There are some real advantages here.
But this system has long been criticized as untenable without consistent or even high economic growth, and the contract workers who can be had for almost half price are suffering at the expense of their better-compensated co-workers.
(Comment eatern, reposting)
My proposal: telecommuting. More and more workers should be able to, and encouraged to, work from home, and not just from a suburb of Tokyo but the far reaches of all the islands. Pushing this would be the perfect way to promote growth in far-off countryside villages. Telecommuting Taro could still go into, or fly to, Tokyo or another office once a month, or however often is required. And it would put money into those places where telecommuters chose to live and reduce congestion in Tokyo — plus ease the economic and business risk that comes with concentrating the economy in one crowded earthquake-prone metropolis.
Curzon, that’s an interesting proposal, and at the risk of digressing (which at this point might be a good idea from a reputational perspective):
Telecommuting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When people are “on the clock” in a home office, they still have to be detached from their families. What’s worse, they lose the benefit of being in close communication with their colleagues. When everyone’s in a cubicle, ad-hoc communication is super easy; when everyone’s on the other end of a phone, communication becomes a pain in the neck.
This has practical adverse effects on work product–for instance, a lot of the ignorant/stupid customer service people you get on the phone these days are telecommuters who can’t answer anything outside of their script because they have nobody convenient to ask. The effects are bad enough when you’re talking about different divisions within the same firm, but much worse when you’re talking about distributing everyone within the same division. So I don’t think telecommuting is the answer.
One change I think *would* be good would be more emphasis on promoting entrepreneurship through individual and small businesses. Japan is so well-wired these days, in terms of both transportation and communications, that one can sell anything to someone on the other end of the country almost as easily as they can sell to someone in their hometown. Takkyubin does all the legwork.
This would spur on the demise of lifetime employment, and so it may be ethnocentric of me to even propose it, but let’s face it — self-employment is, in many ways, a more secure situation than surviving at the whims of a badly-managed mega-corporation that’s just waiting to “restructure” the worker bees away. And as you are implying above, in the absence of the need to lounge around amid a Mutually-Assured Destruction environment of scores of colleagues, people might actually make Japan’s service industry into a citadel of efficiency.
By the way, Adam, you have hit on my goal in writing this. I don’t care whether anyone agrees with my view of the world, and in fact, I’m grateful that so many people are contesting it, because together we’re creating a clearer picture than any of us would create on our own. That’s what I love about this blog.
Most of the discussion so far has been about the habits of office workers, irrespective of whether they work for a bank, shipping company, newspaper, manufacturer etc. M-Bone has also brought in academics so there are certainly other work environments which appear to encourage people to linger. It’s worth noting, however, that there are many which don’t. For instance, you don’t tend to find people hanging around a factory, warehouse or building site to the same degree. On the other hand, you have the example of small shopkeepers and restaurateurs who live next to or above their workplace and so are virtually never away from it. A Tokyo office is also likely to be a very different animal to one in Fukuoka or Sendai. For example, average commuting times may have come down for central Tokyo workers but they are still handily above those you see in smaller cities. Arguably, another distinction might be between public sector employees and private sector employees. This isn’t clear cut, because many public servants, such as police or ministry bureaucrats, have fairly all-consuming work environments. However, it’s common to hear people moaning about how local government employees appear to have generally less strenuous hours than their private counterparts because their only “client” is the public rather than some capricious corporation. One final distinction might be between a mostly female workforce and a mostly male one. Again, this isn’t clear cut because you can find some all-female companies in fashion, media and marketing where the employees are working horrendous hours but it isn’t difficult to imagine how women might be more likely to head for home than the men.
To sum up, then, it’s important not to draw too many conclusions about Japanese family life based on the working habits of Tokyo private sector male office workers. They do represent a large number of households and it is also a group that is highly visible for white, foreign residents of Japan, but there are plenty of households that don’t fit that description.
One thing that only Adam has brought up so far is that the “stay late” mentality often ONLY applies to career workers (seishain). I worked for one year in an office at Ritsumeikan University which had a mixture of seishain, “contract workers” (direct hires on a contract with a 3 year limit, with no possibility of promotion- a disturbingly common setup but that’s a discussion for another day) and a few arubaito (part time job with no real contract) workers. The only people who generally stayed after official closing time at 5.30 were the seishain. Other staff would leave almost immediately at 5.30 except on the rare days when there was actually a project to finish, in which case they were officially putting in for overtime. I should add that the seishain were a mix of men and women, the contract workers are mostly married women (some with kids), and the baito workers are all women.
I think, as Mulboyne said, there is a strong trend of looking only at the lifestyle of the seishain Kanto white collar worker with a lifetime employment type job and generalizing it to the entire country. I believe that at its peak this cohort was only about 10% of the total population (or is it workforce?) and seems to be on the decline. Of course, being the wealthiest significant population group this is also likely the target market for the IKEA survey that Joe cited.
“the whole point of this was explicitly framed as an intellectual exercise, not a sweeping or even well-founded conclusion.”
Yeah, this pretty much lets off the hook. Plus, Joe didn’t suggest anything that Japanese “have” to do. He just raised something (rather controversial) for discussion. Adam is perfectly correct – Joe lit the fuse of a discussion.
“I imagine it’s not that different from Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Probably not quite so many F-bombs.
“Takkyubin does all the legwork.”
Saw a recent statistic that the average Japanese household gets SEVEN packages a month. That is high and it is only going to go up. May be a deathblow for shotengai, however.
In one area that I am familiar with – used bookstores – Japan seems to have even more centralized (and convenient to search) online sales databases. Used bookstores were hurting as storefronts, but have gone online in just the right way to sell that Mishima first edition or Edo period manuscript.
“demise of lifetime employment”
Seriously, this has already happened. Even areas like academic tenure are under siege. I like Roy’s “lifetime employment type job” as a phrase – they often aren’t and statistically, these are some of the most stressed out workers in Japan.
Excellent points from Mulboyne. I have spent the bulk of my years in Japan in two cities of around 500,000. When I go to Tokyo or Osaka, I honestly wonder – “how can people live like this”? In fact, when I go back to North America, I typically find the bigger cities that I hit to be more stressful, more crowded, and full of people who work long hours and either hit a long commute in insane traffic, or power drink of Wednesdays. As Roy mentioned, it is only 10% (and it was of the work force).
Another issue worth raising – no matter what kind of hours Japanese white collar workers may put in, they typically don’t do squat at home (once again, keeping the work and home life as separate spheres). I think that in North America, we have seen a creep of more and more “work” into the home on off hours and days, especially for people in sales.
I completely understood your original comment as being part devil’s advocate and being basically true. 🙂 And, yes, much of it also has to do with peer pressure and promotion. It was all well described in the late Miyamoto Masao’s “Straightjacket Society” and I don’t think much has changed since then unfortunately. But I will say that Japanese girls as well as boys also need the presence of their fathers.
Something that is being missed here is that this mentality doesn’t start when Japanese enter the workforce.
The white-collar workforce have been selected (and self-selected) through the education system. Students at academic high-schools have much more study than students at vocational high-schools, along with the extra hours that go with that study. These hours are the only way to get into university and succeed in their careers.
Add those long hours in school to the group ethics that students learn – always eating with their class, having all lessons together, sports-day together. The students who fit into the class best are well rewarded. Those that don’t are left behind. Loyalty to their work-group is drilled into students.
Japanese students learn that long-hours and total dedication to the group are the way to get ahead in life. And from their parents they learn not to cause embarrassment – not to be meiwaku.
So, those Japanese who are succeeding and want to continue succeeding will be undyingly devoted to their jobs. There will be their own acceptance of that devotion, and their desire for everyone to believe that they are devoted – to fit in. In varying individuals those two emotions will vary in strength, but together they will be very strong.
Of course, companies can try to break this pressure, but that is missing something at the centre of the Japanese character – the necessity of anticipating other’s feelings rather than relying upon the stated feelings of others. No matter how much the company may protest, those Japanese workers will continue to believe that others will think them bad if they don’t show their devotion to the group.
Japanese society works through individual Japanese anticipating what will cause meiwaku for others, and avoiding those actions. How can one company fight that social conditioning?
Now, don’t get me wrong – I think that part of this social system is wonderful. I wish that people cared as much about meiwaku as Japanese, and I wish that British schools taught British children to think about the group as much.
The main problem is the heavy emphasis placed in schools upon the need to work long hours to succeed in the university exams. The group ethics could be taught without that emphasis. It could be replaced with more school clubs, for example. (although not so many baseball clubs with hours of practice) Or maybe more community service.
But this requires breaking the hold of the exam system – which is protected by the vested institutional interests involved.
Finally – poor relationships in Japan? I don’t know – it is difficult to say because of the habit of being derogatory about your spouse to be humble. How much of it is truth and how much is politeness, I don’t know. However, outside of Japan, a lack of intimacy is the biggest cause of infidelity, and the other woman is normally not prettier or younger. Find out how much Japanese couples confide in each other, and you’ll find out how good their marriages are.
Jeeze Chris, what factory produces these “the Japanese” you describe?
Here we see the problem with a structuralist look at the issue.
Why not take your schema a bit further and argue that Japanese were, because of Edo perod social heiarchies carried over into the modern era, predestined to not go home after work? Or trace the Edo period organization to early agrarian communities? At what point does it get silly to write in such a deterministic way?
Let’s apply a similar methodology to the other side – you mention British kids not being taught to think about the group. At present, this is being used as an explanation of everything from boomerang kids to violent crime and drug use (and your “wish” that a strong concept of meiwaku was inculcated in British schools clearly puts you in the poor schooling = bad behavior discussion).
Three problems. The first is that this idea takes away any sense of personal responsibility. You stabbed someone for 2 quid to buy crack? Guess it was the schools. The second is that we can’t seriously apply these ideas to ourselves. Socialized is for other people. Could you seriously write about your own character like you write about “the Japanese character” above? What if someone else did it about your mom? The third is that lots and lots of exceptions exist. A Kyudai grad at the local kencho does not go home until 9, but his classmate working at the shiyakusho goes home at 6. Your scheme does nothing to explain diversity of reactions between different individuals and different environments.
Also, there has been a significant decline in the grip of the exam system, you should keep up on more recent literature.
In any case, some of the points that you raise can be applied to some Japanese some of the time, but not in an essentialist way, and you should stop writing as though you have some sort of objective scientific grasp of “the Japanese character”.
By all means, however, stick around and share some anecdotes.
“Japanese society works through individual Japanese anticipating what will cause meiwaku for others, and avoiding those actions.”
Yup, agreed. And the lack of that outside of Japan has made it impossible for me to live outside of Japan…
Roy has a good point above. Let me add some data:
My company, a bank, is mostly seishain (i.e. lifetime employees), but it has a mixture of male and female seishain, as well as a bunch of receptionists, secretaries, janitors and security guards on shorter-term contract, and a few contracted expats who until recently were getting bonuses large enough to buy Iceland (note: I am not one of them–I am a true salaryman).
The contract workers all go home at quitting time. The female seishain are a bit more interesting — most go home at quitting time, and only a few hang around with the men after hours. And, to beat a dead horse even further, those who do hang around often have lots of intractable spousal problems (although it took a few all-night drinking sessions to learn all this). The male seishain still hang around late, for the most part, although some have become so under-confident in their career prospects lately that they’re starting to keep more time to themselves.
By the way, a public service announcement:
We all love to talk about a certain individual who lives in Thailand and whose name rhymes with “Falex Farr.” Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution (one of the best econ blogs in the world) has just brought up “Dogs and Demons” in the context of Obama’s infrastructure plan. Read and comment here.
Employees who work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week are entitled to overtime pay unless they are supervisors or managers. Often, this was not actually paid but, for some years now, the courts have been helping employees claim it back. This was a big factor in the attempt by the LDP, prompted by the Keidanren, to revise the Labour Standards Law and introduce the so-called “white collar exemption”. In short, this would have meant that any worker with a salary of 4 million yen or more would not be entitled to overtime pay. This generated enormous opposition, with unions and lawyers groups claiming that this would be a licence for employers to exploit their white collar workers since peer group pressure would undoubtedly mean that they would be forced to work the same hours for less total pay. Employers countered that they really did want employees to work more efficiently and leave the office earlier.
Employees had good reason to suspect the motives of their employers. The economic recovery had benefited the corporate bottom line but wages and bonuses had not kept pace. For many, Japanese companies were failing to keep their end of the informal social contract. Some employers were already getting around the Labour Standards Law by naming employees as managers, to avoid paying overtime, but giving them no management duties. The courts ruled this practice illegal in a high profile case brought by a McDonald’s employee which has had a major impact on the restaurant and retail business. I think it is likely that some employers genuinely do want more efficiency from their white collar employees but there are many more who would not have managed the process so well and the net result might easily have been as the unions feared. What this does show, however, is that there is a very active discussion about white collar working practices which is one reason it is risky to see them as somehow set in stone and predetermined by habits formed at school.
The new year is but a tender infant and already MFT has two contenders for Understatement of the Year in a Reply to a Post”:
1. [from the post immediately above] “Employees who work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week are entitled to overtime pay unless they are supervisors or managers. Often, this was not actually paid but…”
[bonus points for the use of the past tense “was” – is the writer implying that “sabisu zangyu” has been consigned to the dustbin of history? If so, good riddance! Alas, I think it remains more pervasive than ever.
2. [ibid] “Employees had good reason to suspect the motives of their employers.” [again, note the past tense. Western writers extolled Japan’s putative “human capitalism” in the eighties. Apparently, a Dickensian ice age of discordant labor relations followed, but, going by the the “had” in the quote above, some recent political and legal swallows are again making a summer of benevolent employment practices in Japan.
Well, a commenter can dream, can’t he?
Actually, I’m doing sabisu zangyo right now. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone I’m actually blogging.
I don’t think anyone would argue that service overtime is dead and buried. However, the Keidanren and LDP wouldn’t have been so keen to introduce their proposed legislation if workers were still so happy to do it. Instead, what you find is workers began going to court to have their rights confirmed and, to the surprise of many, the courts found in their favour. That’s the key difference. It isn’t a new development for companies to work their employees hard. It also isn’t new that some disgruntled employees turn to the courts. It is new for the courts to take their side. Indeed, some of the most important recent legislative changes in areas like tenancy, consumer protection and employment protection have been prompted by court rulings which have essentially clarified existing law.
Just as we have to be careful about drawing a picture of Japanese work habits based on Tokyo private sector office workers, you can’t think of that latter group just in terms of head office employees for Japan’s largest corporations. If you worked for an administrative department for a mid-sized wholesaler which was spun off and turned into a non-equity-method subsidiary which required you to sign a new contract with a lower salary and benefits, your loyalty to the company would take something of a knock. When you then start working alongside contract employees who think nothing of going home when their working hours are up, you would start to wonder why you weren’t getting the overtime pay the law says you should have. And this is what has been happening.
Certainly, we can dispute the importance of this kind of change at the margin but I’d argue it must have developed some kind of significant momentum for the Keidanren to push for new legislation to counter it.
You may be on to something in attaching significance to Keidanren’s move. Then again, the big K may be simply preempting any presumptuous on the part of Japan’s long-suffering workers. And while the legal cases are encouraging “at the margin,” it should be borne in mind that _gyosei shidou_ (“administrative guidance”) will ultimately obtain over any Legal Standards Law findings in Japan’s mandarin-based economy. Really, for how long has this _sabisu zangyo_ shodow-boxing been going on? Since at least the early 90s. Japanese working stiffs will tell you that they were exhorted to work uncompensated overtime in the Bubble Era because businesses were busy; then in the Lost Decade the boss’ rationale was that times were tough. We’ve gone back to the “times are tough” era with a vengeance; the odd court ruling aside, one can’t see how labor’s hand is strengthened in an environment in which unemployment rates are rising and wages are falling.
presumptuous –> presumptuousness (something the Keidanren and the J-Establishment might like in a good wine, but certainly not in workers)
Re:M-bone
“The second is that we can’t seriously apply these ideas to ourselves. Socialized is for other people. Could you seriously write about your own character like you write about “the Japanese character” above?”
Yes, I could. My character has been very strongly influenced by the strong Christian upbringing that I received, although I am not now Christian. There are influences from my parents’ economic situation, their attitude to their friends, the things that my grandparents talk about, my life experiences in Japan and China, the people who I interacted with at university.
All of that has created who I am. Now, inside of that personality I may criticise certain parts of my personality – we all have conflicting desires and needs and are self-reflective – but to imagine changing **all** of my personality is to imagine myself as a **different** person.
I have worked in Japanese high schools – academic and vocational – and I have lived next to a agricultural high school. The differences, as well as the similarities, between the students seemed quite obvious to me. And, having been brought up in the UK and known a range of people matching the same socio-economic groups as those I observed in Japan, then I have a good position to compare the two groups from.
Notice that I am not talking about historical social determinism, but rather the effects of childhood influences on the characters of individuals. Of course different individuals will react in different ways to those influences. But you seem to be trying to suggest that that makes those influences insignificant. The effect of different school systems on individuals inside the societies those school systems serve can not be denied simply because different individuals react in different ways.
Look at it this way – if you are measuring a broad trend in a population then you expect to find varience within that trend. For the trend to be statistically important, a certain proportion of the population need to fall within that trend. A few outliers can be discounted. So, the question is, can we identify a broad trend in Japanese society that is identifiably different to UK society? I would argue that we can, and that it is connected to the Japanese school system. Is there **anything** in my argument that claims that **all** Japanese are alike?
“Also, there has been a significant decline in the grip of the exam system, you should keep up on more recent literature.”
In the Japanese academic high school where I worked, all the kids were focused on the university entrance exam. I left in 2004. It may be that in the past few years the university entrance exam has become less important. But that is irrelevant in a discussion of workers who passed through the education system 10 or 20 years ago.
“In any case, some of the points that you raise can be applied to some Japanese some of the time,”
Oh, well thank you for being so condescending.
“but not in an essentialist way,”
Which you have read into my comment. A comment that was a couple of hundred words – hardly an academic thesis. Perhaps I should pre-empt all obnoxious trolls with the words ‘Although I am a strong materialist, I believe that humans are self-aware creatures who daily change themselves, albeit within the particular confines of the limits of their experience, although sometimes they have limit-experiences which can drastically shake their concept of their self and allow more drastic change’. Or I could just post up a PDF of my MA thesis on that subject. Every. Single. Time. I. Post. A. Comment.
“and you should stop writing as though you have some sort of objective scientific grasp of “the Japanese character”.”
Thanks – and you should stop using high-school level strawmen to try to look big while trying to humiliate someone for the fun of it.
Really – get a life.
Maybe I should get a life, but have you published anything from your MA thesis? I’m grading one tonight and if I see anything like the level of determinism that you write with, it is getting sent back for revisions.
“Yes, I could. My character has been very strongly influenced by the strong Christian upbringing that I received, although I am not now Christian. There are influences from my parents’ economic situation, their attitude to their friends, the things that my grandparents talk about, my life experiences in Japan and China, the people who I interacted with at university.”
See, I don’t need strawmen. Here you are not speaking of a strictly socialized subject with painfully restricted individual choice at all. You were raised Christian, but abandoned those beliefs. Your attitudes were shaped by unique intercourse with family and friends (also individuals) and travel (to places not predetermined), work (most likely chosen by you) and a unique university experience (once again, directed by interests that originate from personal spark and the sum of diverse experiences). Those are diverse influences, what I described as “diverse reactions between different individuals and different environments.” Nothing that you write about yourself is deterministic – you present a combination of unique influences and personal choices. You don’t give “the Japanese” subject that benefit in your original post.
“The effect of different school systems on individuals inside the societies those school systems serve can not be denied simply because different individuals react in different ways.”
Nor can it be written of in an entirely monolithic manner.
“For the trend to be statistically important, a certain proportion of the population need to fall within that trend.”
In that case, why not present some statistics to back up what you are saying? Why write about “the Japanese character” or this –
“There will be their own acceptance of that devotion, and their desire for everyone to believe that they are devoted – to fit in. In varying individuals those two emotions will vary in strength, but together they will be very strong.”
How could you possibly quantify something like that? Or suggest that a certain system predetermines emotional reactions and the results of those emotions? Because of X, Japanese will be Y (within a limited range of variance) = determinism. In using these terms, you iron out all of the individual wrinkles that we were (rather vigorously) discussing above, hence my post taking you to task for trying to change the terms of a discussion that was already more diverse and sophisticated than your monocausal explanation.
“obnoxious trolls”
Obnoxious, yes – essentialist and determinist statements set me off. Troll, no. You see, if you read the other comments, you can see that we had already moved away from the idea that there was a single clear origin of the problem. It was your post that was a bit of a hijack in a different direction. Not that I have any problem with that, really. I welcome it as a challenge to the ideas that I have put forward. Just keep in mind that we DEBATE here. Don’t take it personal.
Like that ad hominem toward the end there, though.
BTW, keep in mind that this is also consistent with the philosophy that I outlined – just because you made essentialist and determinist statements, does not mean that you are an essentialist (and if you are and can defend that in more clear terms, go ahead). I believe that your attitudes could be different tomorrow or in a different context so I’m not essentializing or attacking you – just criticising something that you wrote.
Anyway, why not hang around? This is a great blog, we have great discussions, and you will probably be able to catch me contradicting myself before long anyway. And when you do – we can both have a laugh about it.
M-Bone: Your snarky response(s) to Chris may work when you’re talking down to your students, but frankly your writing is another reminder of why the real world doesn’t take professors seriously. Like this choice morsel:
“Also, there has been a significant decline in the grip of the exam system, you should keep up on more recent literature.”
First, I don’t trust the unnamed sources your invoke to dismiss Chris’ comments, and even if I trust them, your logic is wrong. Just because the exam system may be in decline compared to past dominance, that doesn’t mean that the system isn’t still a galaxy apart from the rest of the developed world.
Let’s do some comparative univesity entrance system review. In Japan it’s about an entrance exam score, and possibly “suisen” recomendation letters, i.e. contacts. In the US it’s about grades and GPA, recommendation letters, SAT or ACT scores, extracurricular activities, community involvement, sports, essays written on your application, and more.
Having put in enough hours in the Japanese high school, university, and local workplace environment to know what I know, it’s absolutely true that the types of people who succeed and advance in school and work environments in Japan are a different species from their counterparts in the US and much of the West. Chris says a lot about why that’s the case.
OK, I see you guys arguing about different and perhaps unrelated points. What is the connection between the group dynamic and an exam based advancement system? Both taking and studying for an exam are pretty much solitary activities, regardless of how central it is or isn’t to the system. Even if both exam-centrism and group-centrism are strong dynamics in Japanese society, they don’t necessarily come from the same source or even have much of a connection.
Curzon points out that US universities often put a heavy emphasis on extracurricular activities when judging admission while Japanese schools ignore them. And yet, the stereotype is the average Japanese student spend far more time and energy on those activities than the average American student. Isn’t this actually an example of the competition between group-oriented activities and the solitary studying which is needed for academic advancement?
I’m actually an easy marker in real life.
In any case, sometimes professors are taken seriously – I recall that you (Curzon) were in enthusiastic agreement with some points that I had to make about Japanese higher education a year or two back. At the time, I was arguing against a trend to brand Japanese higher ed as being ALL one way and American ALL another, I’m really not doing anything different above (perhaps in tone, but I thought that Chris’ jump from exams to emotionally conditioned workers was no good).
“Also, there has been a significant decline in the grip of the exam system, you should keep up on more recent literature.”
Don’t have much time to get into this now, but Earl Kinmouth, a frequent NBR poster, has written quite a bit there (including article citations) about how the declining number of young people has made it easier and easier to get into the second tier universities, and how the top have also decreased pass marks and admitted a higher percentage of applicants. 3rd tier universities are increasingly letting in anybody who applies. There is a corresponding decline in juku attendance. Measures of average hours studied and the like are also going down and down. So the exams are still important for admission, but the all important exam system – the study and other forms of prep, the guides, and the juku – has been in decline for some time now. We also see the rise of “suisen” only in some places.
“Chris says a lot about why that’s the case.”
I did say that some of his points are true some of the time. I also only reply with hardass academic comments to posts that take that track to begin with. Chris wrote in an academic way, later touted his academic credentials, and I think that taking him up on academic points is fair game.
“extracurricular activities, community involvement, sports”
So America’s power elite are conditioned to avoid work in order to pursue these things later in life? One could argue that by following Chris’ logic. However, plenty of Americans come through this process of selection and still decide to work 18 hour days (particularly notorious in law, one of the ultimate success areas). Of course, personal choice and the work environment itself play a large role in shaping this, why bring it back to conditioning?
“Even if both exam-centrism and group-centrism are strong dynamics in Japanese society, they don’t necessarily come from the same source or even have much of a connection.”
I agree and I obviously thought that Chris’ attempt to connect the two (and eating together with the class!? I ate together with my class) was couched in some sketchy determinism which is a trend in social sciences that has been widely criticized (even, or especially, within disciplines) over the past two decades. Recall Adamu’s “tough love” toward eikaiwa teachers (or mine for that matter) – there are some situations where we tolerate snarkiness (or encourage it) and I see people writing in my professional niche, but using connections that are impossible to establish, as one of those times.
Re: M-Bone
Curzon hits the nail on the head here – the snarky response was way out of line.
I don’t believe that my first comment discounted anything that anyone else was saying above. I started with “Something that is being missed here is that this mentality doesn’t start when Japanese enter the workforce. The white-collar workforce have been selected (and self-selected) through the education system.” I didn’t say that anybody else was wrong – hell, I didn’t even engage in anything that anyone else had said. Neither did I say that what they were saying was irrelevant – if M-Bone thinks that I did, then he was clearly reading in more than he should have.
Which comes on to the topic of “Obnoxious, yes – essentialist and determinist statements set me off.”
So, faced with an essentialist and determinist statement, M-Bone is set off – in other words there is a clear cause and effect relationship without the interjection of any sort of free-will choice deciding whether or not to be obnoxious.
Now, being a determinist, I don’t believe in free-will (that statement actually isn’t supposed to be sarcastic – I really don’t believe in free-will) however, I do believe in complex systems that have a large amount of ‘self’-introspection built in. So even I would not like to suggest such a simple cause-and-effect mechanism as M-Bone has sketched here.
“Just keep in mind that we DEBATE here. Don’t take it personal.”
No. It wasn’t a debate that you were engaging in. You saw a new guy who was saying things that you assumed were things that you disagreed with, and, perhaps wishing to look big, decided to pick on him. That’s not debate – that’s bullying, trolling, or whatever you want to call it.
As a determinist, I think I’ll put it down to you having had a bad day and wanting to take it out on somebody, rather than your essential character just being obnoxious.
Okay, so Chris does not believe in free will. He made some statements that I interpreted to mean that Japanese do not have free will (rightly, since he does not in fact believe in free will). I find those statements to be worth some snarkiness.
You do realise how touchy the “Asians have no free will” issue is, right?
“I don’t believe that my first comment discounted anything that anyone else was saying above.”
But it discounted the idea that free will has a central place in the debate. I was a bit shocked by that. Don’t see it very often. Do you often argue that and not have people get snarky with you? While we are going to have to drop the free will discussion because I don’t see it going in profitable directions. I will, however, defend myself on one point –
“M-Bone is set off – in other words there is a clear cause and effect relationship without the interjection of any sort of free-will choice deciding whether or not to be obnoxious.”
Set off is a figure of speech, if my current environment, financial situation, and free time were different, I may not have responded at all. I also take responsibility for what I wrote (and you certainly wrote a long follow-up holding me responsible for it) because of free will.
Now I hope that others see the mindset behind my original post – damn, Japanese or no, if we can’t stick up for free will, what can we stick up for? I don’t think that this is the big bad prof picking on the new guy. This is a huge issue and I saw the fingerprints of it all over your first post.
Re: Roy (and others)
“What is the connection between the group dynamic and an exam based advancement system? Both taking and studying for an exam are pretty much solitary activities, regardless of how central it is or isn’t to the system. Even if both exam-centrism and group-centrism are strong dynamics in Japanese society, they don’t necessarily come from the same source or even have much of a connection.”
Ok – my first post wasn’t clear enough, but that’s what (polite) debate is for.
Exam-centrism and group-centrism are separate and do come from different sources.
Group-centrism is something that is established early on in the child’s schooling – although it is also present and reinforced in the home. It is established at school because that is where the child encounters their first large grouping. I would say that group-centrism is something that is a defining part of most Japanese – whether they follow it or reject it. It is something that is as present as Christian ethics is for church-going Christians, in that it is very important, even when it is observed in the breaking of its rules.
Exam-centrism is something that I described in my first post as more common amoung white-collar workers – in many ways self-selected by those workers. It begins to emerge with the exams to enter high school, but reaches its peak with the university entrance exams. The important part for future life is not the exam itself, but the inculcation of an ethic of hard-work and **suffering**. It becomes normal to be tired and over-worked, to focus solely on one thing – to ganbaru and gaman – to fight hard and endure. These are qualities that are easily carried over into professional life after university.
“Curzon points out that US universities often put a heavy emphasis on extracurricular activities when judging admission while Japanese schools ignore them. And yet, the stereotype is the average Japanese student spend far more time and energy on those activities than the average American student. Isn’t this actually an example of the competition between group-oriented activities and the solitary studying which is needed for academic advancement?”
This is a good point – Japanese students do spend a lot of time on extracurricular activities. Certainly much much more than British students. But I don’t think that it is even across all activities. I remember that the sports clubs required much more dedication than things like English club. It may be that the clubs involving competition between different schools were taken much more seriously.
But I’m not sure that there is really any competition between the group-orientated activities and solitary study. Students will do those activities, but won’t use it as an excuse to take time out from their studies. I can’t imagine any academic high-school student (and remember I’m only talking about that particular part of the high-school system) saying to their teacher “I didn’t do the homework because I had baseball practice.” Instead the student will study into the night, and then fall asleep in the 15-minute breaks between classes, or in class if it isn’t a subject that is related to an important exam.
In addition, once those students have reached their final year in high school, most of them will stop their club activities to focus solely on the exam. This is something that is expected of them by the academic high-school that they are attending.
Ok – so where does this fit into the discussion of the Japanese office? (which others have already established is not a monolithic culture)
When these selected Japanese students enter into an office, they are ready to fit into that office culture. They have become used to senpai-kohai social structures, and dedication to the values that an organisation has set (previously exams, but in the office it will depend upon what that office does) They are used to having their social life revolve around one organisation, and they are used to putting in long hours during the week, and at the weekend. They are also used to not having much in the way of holidays.
There will be an established culture in the office that they join, which they will be expected to adopt. It will take a while for them to adopt that culture, but it is made easier by the preparation noted above.
This is where the different cultures of different offices is important. Others have noted that in places such as local government offices, the hours worked will be much closer to the 9-to-5 expectations that we have. In private companies the hours may be much much longer. I would suggest that part of the understanding of this is to think of the office culture as having a memory of its own, carried on through the passed on culture of its inhabitants.
The emphasis upon self-sacrifice and long hours, exemplified by the exam system, is not a timeless feature of Japanese society. I would guess that it is not even something that dates back as far as the Second World War. That in local government offices the workers work much more reasonable hours, clearly indicates that the culture of long-hours is not part of a deeper Japanese culture. Instead we could perhaps look at the suppression of the power of trade unions, combined with increased competition and drives to get more work out of individuals, along with promotion policies. It’s not something that I can address as it isn’t something which I’m familiar with.
However, I would suggest that an increase in competition for university places took place alongside an increase in the number of hours worked in many white-collar offices. Those private companies will have found that graduates who had gone through the competitive exam system were easier to mold into office workers, and were more willing to work longer hours. Some relationship will have emerged between the two – although I won’t speculate which side encouraged which, and to what extent.
Marxy has related a story about a company that tried to get its workers to go home – “Finally, the company threatened punishment if people stayed too late. They still didn’t really go home.” There is a lingering office culture here, perhaps, that is taking some time to shift. In spite of legislation and pressure from the government, both office staff and office management will take time to change their ideas and viewpoints.
Office cultures are resistant to sudden change, and so it will take time for the changes to become established. New graduates entering the office will be part of that change, as they won’t remember the older office culture. If the gaman spirit built up by the exam system isn’t supported (and also if the exam system is no longer building that spirit) then it won’t be carried over into their office life.
Hmmmm… I’m going to close that up there, as there’s no “comment preview” button and I’m losing track of where that post went…..
Re: M-Bone
You simply haven’t bothered to try to understand what I suggest in place of free-will. You have not engaged with my suggestion of self-introspection as agency – which would introduce responsibility back into the discussion quite easily, without the necessity of allowing individuals to radically change their personality on a whim, as ‘free will’ does.
Neither have you done anything other than assert that I must have dismissed agency in my first post, with the evidence of “you saw it behind my writing”. That I suggested that white-collar Japanese workers were “self-selected” has passed you by.
“Now I hope that others see the mindset behind my original post – damn, Japanese or no, if we can’t stick up for free will, what can we stick up for? I don’t think that this is the big bad prof picking on the new guy. This is a huge issue and I saw the fingerprints of it all over your first post.”
You’re defending ‘free-will’ by fighting on this blog? Overinflated ego, perhaps? And certainly no excuse for being overbearing and rude.
Okay Chris, here is the problem. What you suggest in place of free will is your ability to make massive fundamental generalizations about groups of people. Your assertions just don’t hold up and you are using gobbledygook like,
“There will be their own acceptance of that devotion, and their desire for everyone to believe that they are devoted – to fit in. In varying individuals those two emotions will vary in strength, but together they will be very strong.”
to back up your points instead of evidence. In your long post above, you finally present something that is falsifiable with real evidence and I will do it.
“However, I would suggest that an increase in competition for university places took place alongside an increase in the number of hours worked in many white-collar offices. Those private companies will have found that graduates who had gone through the competitive exam system were easier to mold into office workers, and were more willing to work longer hours. Some relationship will have emerged between the two – although I won’t speculate which side encouraged which, and to what extent.”
Will it?
http://univ.howtolearn.biz/gakuji/gakuji_07.html
The opposite is the case. There has been a significant decline in both competition and general failure rates throughout the entire Heisei period. This corresponds to a period in which Japanese report that their number of hours worked daily has increased –
http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/honkawa/2320.html
In the same period, the average number of hours that students say they study outside of school has dramatically declined from approximately 4 hours in the 1970s to 1 hour and a half at present (fitting with my earlier point about the exam system no longer having such a grip). This is despite the fact that much of this period has seen an increase in hours worked (or at least fluctuation) and a decline in hours of sleep according to a range of lifestyle white paper data –
http://www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/whitepaper/index.html
Here is an interesting chart with US comparisons –
http://www.naraken-pta.jp/kirinuki08.htm
In my original post the only things that I can really see as perhaps out of bounds (before I was told to “get a life”) are – when I said that you write in an “essentialist way” (and later you admit to holding a belief system that includes essentialism, which is NOT an insult, it is a concept in philosophy that is shared by Plato, Hegel, etc., but does not translate easily to analysis of a group of living, breathing people) and “you should stop writing as though you have some sort of objective scientific grasp of “the Japanese character”.” … which you should stop because your systematic interpretations are just not supported by evidence. There are a whole range of factors that influence Japanese overwork, schooling is one of them, but please use some clear evidence if you want to suggest a sort of master plan.
Hi!
(I’m even newer than Chris. Will I be ijimed as well?)
Perhaps I’m nit-picking, but I wanted to comment on this:
“The emphasis upon self-sacrifice and long hours, exemplified by the exam system, is not a timeless feature of Japanese society. I would guess that it is not even something that dates back as far as the Second World War. That in local government offices the workers work much more reasonable hours, clearly indicates that the culture of long-hours is not part of a deeper Japanese culture…It’s not something that I can address as it isn’t something which I’m familiar with.”
Finally, something I know a bit about! Long hours and self-less devotion to the company does not date back, as some think, to samurai’s devoted to their lord. From what I can remember from reading works on Japanese leisure, Sepp Linhart, an anthropologist from Vienna, wrote a paper quoting several foreign sources commenting on the laziness on workers during the Meiji and early Taisho eras. Nothing at all like the 24-hour white-collar machines of the later Showa era.
These were created by a government so obsessed with modernizing the workplace attitudes of its elite employees that it even implemented policies to encourage firms to maximize the efficiency of their employees’ leisure. The state actively encouraged companies to keep control over their employees’ “off” time, and companies responded by hiring “leisure specialists” who planted the seeds of things like 社内旅行. (The book on this is “Rules of Play” by David Leheny)
I know this is a small point in a much larger discussion (on free will?) but I think its important to note that the Japanese “culture” of working long hours at the office is probably more a result of a government bent on catching up to the rest of the world than cultural idiosyncrasies.
The academic jury is still out on this one.
竹村 民郎, 大正文化 has a nuanced description of lengthy work hours during the Taisho period.
今井 清一, 大正デモクラシー (is old) but also gives a standard Japanese look at the way that prewar labor is presented in the historio – lots of work all around, especially around the WWI boom in the Japanese economy.
In English, the article about office women in the collection Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 certainly suggests that long working hours were the norm. The topic is also covered in great detail in Janet Hunter’s “Japanese Women Working”. The priority of the English scholarship has been women in white collar jobs. For men, we have the appallingly titled, but actually very good –
“Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa” discusses a lot of continuities between the prewar and postwar salaryman culture of work. Ezra Vogel (yes, that Ezra Vogel) had a book (early 60s) “Japan’s New Middle Class” that looks at the historical evolution of white collar and certainly suggests no great difference in overwork / office culture between the pre and postwar eras. It is certainly not like they were working 7 hour days before the war or anything.
Come to think of it, Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” gives us a look at a zombie-like office culture that had obviously been there long before the war.
I have some serious doubts about the accuracy of foreign observer’s accounts in Meiji and Taisho. They often expected to find certain things (lazy colored people) and dammit, they did! Let’s not forget that in 1941, the book on Japanese was that they were too lazy and ignorant to pose a serious threat to the allies. There were even theories that they could not read maps for cultural reasons so would never even be able to find, say, Singapore.
We also shouldn’t equate long hours only with white collar work at all – the considerable literature on Meiji textile mills shows us that 14+ hour days were considered to be normal for blue collar. This was true of the 1950s and 1960s as well to some extent. Uber-work is not only a white collar phenomenon.
“is probably more a result of a government bent on catching up to the rest of the world than cultural idiosyncrasies.”
As I allude to above, it is a whole grab-bag of factors, and this one is certainly in there. However, the government also frequently extolled the value of hard work and national advancement in the prewar period so this, I think, is another example of pre/post war continuity. The crass exploitation of workers by elites is also right up there and I think that we can connect this with the Confucian ideology of pre-modern times to some degree. It was, however, like Bushido, a pattern of thought that was reinvented over and over again in modern times.
So did I get a “tsumo”? (I’m 三段 on 天鳳, BTW – nothing close to your credentials but I enjoy a good game)
Grabbed this quickly from http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/honkawa/index.html –
（日本の労働時間の長期推移）
戦前の労働時間は、非常に長いものであったことは確かである。特に繊維女工の労働時間の長さがよく知られるところとなっている。一方、男子型の機械工の労働時間は、繊維女工と比べると20世紀初頭で3000時間台前半と確かに長いが極端なものではなかった。
繊維女工、機械工とも労働運動や工場法の影響等で1930年代まで労働時間は短縮していったが、満州事変、日中戦争、第２次世界大戦と戦時色が強まる中で労働時間は再度拡大していった。
戦後は、1947年の労働基準法による影響で急激な労働時間の短縮が実現された。その後、経済復興で経済の稼働率が上昇するにつれて労働時間は長くなったが、1960年代にはいると生産性の上昇の成果を得る形で日曜休日定期化などを通して労働時間の短縮が実現された。
Re the Meii-Taisho work ethic – I have heard, though a long while back now, that the reason there are Chinatowns in Yokohama and Kobe is that Chinese were brought in to do the work Japanese would not. A number of period works I have have read also suggest that work ethics were lacking. However it must be stressed that these all applied to the servant or coolie (there’s a reason why that word is Chinese) class – the Japanese, as much as anything, saw this work as beneath them. No one doubts the length of hours for ‘real’ workers – especially not in the silk industry, which was not a fun place to be. Lots of articles in prewar media about the reduction of working hours and business owners saying it would ruin them.
Anyway, I need to return to my own 14 hour day – at least I get paid better than a silk reeler….
Jade, do you know if the govt. was keeping stats for white collar hours worked pre-war?
Not sure about white-collar – while I haven’t read the newspaper articles on reducing working hours that carefully, the issue at the time was blue-collar definitely. I am pretty sure there are stats on certain jobs – government employee and related areas, possibly teachig, but generic private company? I do not recall ever having seen anything, which of course doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
Before the war, I think that business owners complaining about a reduction in working hours meant “how dare those peons think that they only have to work 12 hour days!”
The three thousand hours a year ref above is CRAZY!
“I’m even newer than Chris. Will I be ijimed as well?”
That is a fair point. Though as resident Internet tough guy I don’t exactly speak from a position of authority, I would just like to remind both new and regular commenters to keep the tone of comments civil. Without knowing each other it is easy to assume biases etc. that you’ll find just aren’t there.
M-bone,
Very informative! I think I may have been writing about company identity as opposed to a culture of long hours, and you make your points very clear. (Although I’ll have to reread that Linhart piece since I don’t think I did it justice.)
You certainly do get a “tsumo” although I’m a little disappointed that a 3-dan like you couldn’t come up with something a bit more appropriate than “self-win”. Since you posted a good response, why not rate it as a 満願? Perhaps you 頭はね’d me? At the very least, since your post was a response I think it should at least be a 直撃 ロン.
Adamu,
Just trying to lighten the tone (^_^) This isn’t somethingawful.jp
直撃 ロン
Yeah, but “tsumo” gets me an extra yaku. I take em where I can get em.
How did you get into Mahjong research? That is a wide open area as I understand it.
Ah, but a direct hit nets you more points relative to me. And isn’t that what blog discourse is all about? (Unless I’m oya, this works in most cases)
How I got into Mahjong research is a long story that involves a trip to Tibet, time spent in hostess bars with professional gamblers, and a need for a thesis topic. There’s certainly a wide area open but after 4 years looking at it I’m afraid I don’t have much to show for it besides a couple of papers that will probably never see the light of day (T_T)
I *do* however have a 4 page Japanese comic that details the story of how I got into Mahjong. Let’s see if I can post the link:
http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/benkun/BenIsAJapaneseComic?feat=directlink
Missed a lot of good chatter here after spending the last 4 days in Tokyo, but I should mention that Ben and I know each other from summer camp about 12 years ago, and after a decade of no contact just happened to be at Kyodai at the same time.
Ben: I’d say the research you’ve done so far is enough to get you into a sociology or Asian Studies PhD program if you just present it the right way. And why should those papers NOT see the light of day? I daresay M-bone and a number of others here would be able to suggest someplace to submit to.
“And isn’t that what blog discourse is all about?”
No! I took things too far above and I’d like to extend a hand to Chris. We can leave things said in this thread in this thread.
“How I got into Mahjong research is a long story that involves a trip to Tibet, time spent in hostess bars with professional gamblers, and a need for a thesis topic.”
That sounds like a novel that I’d like to read. 外人麻雀放浪記？In any case, this is certainly the first time that I have asked someone about their life and they just said “read the manga”. Awesome.
“and after a decade of no contact just happened to be at Kyodai at the same time.”
Another “holy $^#%” Japan community moment.
“I daresay M-bone and a number of others here would be able to suggest someplace to submit to.”
We can talk about your ideas here in public (as we may attract the many other Mahjong junkies that I am sure lurk around the dark underbelly of academia) or you can get my contact info from Roy. If you have a Fulbright, you already have a foot in the door. Your Sotsuron idea looks like just the kind of thing that a journal or grad school admissions would love.
(A man of my credentials should have remembered his theory and known that 直撃 always nets more points than tsumo unless your opponent is the oya, thanks to the idiosyncratic and needlessly complex scoring system.)
“We can talk about your ideas here in public (as we may attract the many other Mahjong junkies that I am sure lurk around the dark underbelly of academia) or you can get my contact info from Roy.”
Thanks! I’ve e-mailed roy asking for your info. To quickly summarize both papers, the first one argues that the fall of Mahjong reflects the fall of hegemonic masculinity in Japan as reflected in Mahjong media. The second paper argues that the reason Mahjong, particularly Mahjong with money on it, was directly supported in both the private and public sectors in Japan is because it was recognized as a good mechanism for bringing people together.
Neither paper is close to publishable form, and I’m not sure if the first one ever will be. I send the second one to a couple of anthropologists, and one recommended refocusing it as an argument that there are forms of gambling that are socially constructive and are supported by the state. That seems like a promising direction, although for a number of reasons I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to rewriting/re-researching it.
Another area I’d like to explore is how the law interacts with Mahjong and gambling in general. I was able to gather a lot of information on this during my Fulbright year, but couldn’t organize it before I had to move on. Again, sadly I don’t know if I’ll ever have the time or reason to write this one.
Whats probably more interesting than the arguments is the background info and, dare I say it, my own personal experiences in the world. I have a million and one stories, but to be honest I have a lot of trouble getting them down on paper, or computer screen. I really wish I could write as freely as the folks here (and in the Japan blogosphere in general) but I suppose that’s just something I’ll have to work on.
By the way, M-Bone, I have heard that you are a historian. The bottom-left panel of the comic I directed you to features my concentration (college major) advisor, who happens to also be a Japan-historian, Kerry Smith.
“外人麻雀放浪記？”
You sir, are very well read indeed.
“needlessly complex scoring system”
Ain’t that the truth. I’ve been letting computers and other people do it for me for too long. I DO however, feel that “tsumo” is just more badass because people who get tense about “ron” let their mental guard down and end up even more shocked. That’s Mahjong for ya.
“I really wish I could write as freely as the folks here (and in the Japan blogosphere in general) but I suppose that’s just something I’ll have to work on.”
While I Mahjong book in English may be a bit obscure for the mass market, I can imagine that a 外人麻雀放浪記 would have a huge novelty factor in Japan – might even get you on Mondo21. Will save the rest for email.
“might even get you on Mondo21”
Wow, you really do know a lot about the Mahjong world.
I was actually on Mondo21 last season. I had my own little corner where I would interview pros and ask them embarrassing questions. I got a DVD from the producer, now all I have to do is figure out how to get them up on youtube so my friends and family can see me making a fool of myself. You can google ベンジャミン and 麻雀 and read the 2ch threads where they make fun of my accent. I swear that was the best part of the experience.
Holy crap, my wife says that she saw you on Mondo21 (a repeat) just a few days ago.
Get that stuff up on Youtube ASAP!
Are you a registered pro on Kakuto Kurabu or the Sega one? This is fascinating.
Yeah, that’d be me. Let her know that I had no idea what I would be doing when they invited me to the studio, and that my accent gets even more horrible when I’m nervous. Also, they cut a lot of stuff out of those interviews, particularly in the one with Hagiwara Masato (the voice of Yon-sama) where I asked him why he doesn’t like female pros and if he could explain this scientifically.
The only westerners in video game mahjong are Jenn and Garthe, the two American pros in Renmei (the Konami Fight club one). They run a site at http://www.reachmahjong.com that is well worth checking out (join the Forum).
I’ve never asked if I could take a pro test. I’d imagine most of the groups would let me, but who knows, and who knows if I’d pass. I’d prefer to be like Ryan (the first American in the MJ world) and try not to affiliate with any of the organizations so as to keep good relations with everyone. There’s a lot of bad blood in the MJ world over here, unfortunately.
Back to a previous part of the conversation: Japan Times actually has a decent summary of how the university exam system has declined.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090120i1.html
The exams are just as necessary for getting into university, but it only remains similarly competitive to 10-20 years ago in the absolute top schools.
Even at the top places – I’ve checked questions and while the failure rates may be high, the exams themselves are far easier than what was seen in the 1980s.