Thursday, January 29, 2015

It's a Thin Line Between Love and Hate for Japan


 

Just the other day a lovely non-Japanese friend of mine declared to me, I FUCKIN' LOVE JAPANESE PEOPLE! While I too shared her affinity for the island full of people I share half of my heritage with––or is it a fourth, me being half Okinawan (It's all very complicated)––I couldn’t help also thinking, simultaneously, BUT I ALSO FUCKIN' LOATHE JAPANESE PEOPLE!

I mean that somewhat facetiously, but a lot of what they do and how they operate as a culture does indeed infuriate me to no end––do you know how strong an emotion infuriating is?

That then led me to ask myself, if they cause me to feel such a palpable negative reaction to the mere mention of their existence, why then, as many of my friends know of me, do I love the country so dearly and want to exist there so much? It goes well beyond just sharing blood with the people. I have non-Japanese friends whose command of the language and knowledge of the culture far exceeds mine, and who know of the horrors I will soon speak of, yet, still love Japan, seemingly, unconditionally. But why?

I compared it to the oft talked about reason women like broken men (I’m sure it happens the other way, as well): perhaps I believe that if I stay with Japan long enough I can truly change it from the inside out. Foolish and futile, I know, as I am but one lone half-breed guy with zero influence in what I will eat for dinner on any given night, let alone enough to change an entire first-world country. But did the insurmountable odds stop Harry Potter and or Batman from trying? Or, to use a more appropriate, Japanese-themed analogy, Goku? Actually, Goku has his roots in Chinese literature, but hopefully you get the point.

Let’s get the good out of the way.

Since it’s been talked about ad nauseam, I have nothing new to add, so I’ll just lazily blast-list the great I find in Japan:

Food, culture, castles, comedy, porn, technology, efficiency (good lord, the efficiency), the service, the variety in all things tangible, the convenience stores, the vending machines, the trains, music, and, lastly, food.

Yes, I mentioned food twice. It’s that good––certain types not withstanding, of course––that it deserves a second mention. I’m not some idiot that doesn’t proof read my posts to make sure I don’t accidentally mention things twice twice.

Now, the bad.

Working Just to Work: The Japanese Work Ethic

Now, it’s great that they have such good work ethic. Indeed, without I would not have the efficiency, the food, the technology, and pornography that I love so dearly. But, it just seems that the people work just to work.

About two years ago I got the opportunity to work at a small production company that a friend was working at, largely thanks to a favor I did for them that same year. Now, despite the head honcho telling me I could come in at around 11am, my friend, who I was staying with at the time, tended to drag me along as he went there at around 8am, and he also drug me home at around the time the last trains ran, despite being done about four hours prior. During this time I observed what he did, and maybe it was fatigue that clouded my ability to judge things properly, but I could have sworn he wasn’t being especially productive during this extra time in the morning and in the evening. That led me to the conclusion that Japanese people do just work to work, perhaps in some attempt to look good to the boss. I know that’s absolutely the case in probably 90% of the work places in Japan, but the boss at this particular company actually spoke to me of wanting to start a union––a concept which, to my knowledge, doesn’t currently exist in Japan––to change the way Japanese people work, so I was reasonably sure he wasn’t cracking some kind of S & M-styled work whip, forcing my friend to come in when he didn’t need to.

Indeed, I recall another friend, in response to staving off boredom, or some similar subject, saying, “I’ll just work all the time.”

Again, another friend of mine used to talk of working morning, noon and night, often not having the time to properly eat or sleep. Normally, this would be said in the tone of a complaint, but he used to speak of it as some kind of accomplishment, or badge of honor. Like he just did a bunch of reps at the gym. “Yeah, I worked to the point of complete exhaustion and starvation today. How many overnight shifts can you do?”

That’s some deep engrained shit right there.

The real kicker, though, is the word “Karoushi (過労死)” which, by the definition in my Japanese-English dictionary, means “death by overwork and mental stress.” Had I not looked that up I was just going to say “death by work”––a gross underestimation.

They have one single word to describe what it takes a full goddamn six-letter sentence to explain in English. I absolutely detest that that word exists.

The overtime situation can be blamed for that, as people are expected––EXPECTED–– to work overtime shifts, many times, if not in every case, not being compensated for their extra time. People wake up, go to work in the morning, go home on the last train, go to sleep, then repeat that process six more times throughout the week. A position that is great for masochistic workaholics, but not so desirable for 90% of the rest of humanity.

There’s no wonder Japan’s suicide rate is so high. And it’s not like that it’s a recent phenomenon, either. I remember, when in high school, waking up and watching the Japanese news and there would be an almost daily story about some poor student or salary man jumping off of a building or onto the path of an oncoming commuter train effectively ending their existence. And that was eighteen years ago! Suicide is rampant there, the rate of which has rapidly increased since the nineties. Rampant is a word usually used for things like looting, or measles, or teenage sex. It shouldn’t be used for mass self-extinction.

It’s gotten so common that people actually complain about the distressed jumper disrupting the flow of their workday. I hear the jumper’s family actually has to pay for damages. It’s an actual problem for the country that begs the question, at what point does the country stop blaming the victim and start thinking to themselves, hey, maybe we should look internally and figure out that it’s maybe the way we do things that’s the real culprit?

Hey, maybe it’s mass decades-long data collection for all the inevitable robots that they plan to build to do that work in the future. At least that would provide a comforting narrative to all the sad chaos that’s happening.

But, apparently, it's not as bad as I once believed, so there is hope. 

The whole work situation in Japan is probably the one thing I most hate about the country that I love.

Above the sexism, the bureaucracy that I hear so much about, above the robotic nature of the people, above the near non-existence of free available wifi in an industrialized country that should totally have that––that one is a biggy.

And the reason why it takes precedence over everything else is perhaps that I can see change in the other compartments. Japan is like America in the fifties in some aspects. I can see change in sex inequality as years go by, slow as it may be. The opinion many hold of the unfriendliness of some people is something that seems to change by region and not a countrywide thing. And Osaka recently just tried citywide wifi. But years later I see no change in the Japanese workplace.

Now, I know I sound like some kind of whiny lazy American who doesn't like to work, but I just don't believe life should be lived away from it. It's that simple.

Maybe, in a couple of years Japan will change they way they do things and I’ll lose all the efficiency and tasty foodstuff and convenience I gush about to many people, but if that results in a stark drop in the suicide rate than, I believe, it would have been worth it.

In the meantime, I’ll take the good, I’ll take the bad, and I’ll largely shut up about it.

Japan, you beat the shit out of us, but we still love you in spite of the abuse.

Sincerely,
your battered foreign boyfriend.

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