icelava.net

http://masamania.com/archives/2004/09/japanese_busine.html

While the contents is truly funny, i refrain from placing this in the Facetious forum because i'd like to apply some serious view on this minor societal problem the Japanese face - they are certainly working much much harder than us Chinese despite our own toilings, which are already not healthy.

Did i say "minor"? Perhaps I should've mentioned it "major" since households generally regard workers who come back to family and home punctual or early as useless insignificant individuals with little to contribute to their work environment or company. Those who perform OT are viewed with high regard, suggesting a level of importance to the work they contribute.

What to do when you haven't got important work to do for the day, and don't want your spouse to belittle you? The great Japanese adult pasttime for the - pachinko - literally passing time doing little useful. To give your loved ones the impression you're busy at work.

But I digress. There is that population really working hard (sometimes to death), even when they don't know exactly why so when their jobs, unlike me, aren't exactly what they love to do.

If you ask me, this is bad. How soon before the modern kids of Japan change this cultural perception and lifestyle?

I work to live,not live to work.As a pal told me.Work so hard to earn so much money for what?In the end,you can't take all that cash with you when you are in that wooden box.The best is to work hard enough to enable you to retire comfortably.

Gibby wrote:

Work so hard to earn so much money for what?

I sincerely doubt they are doing it for the cash and incentives. Like the Japanese reporting this, nobody really give it a serious long thought (or study) on the societal matter to deduce the reasons and possible solutions to this problem.

Actually, I could have sworn i read a paper or article on this before a long time back. Likely by a foreign with outsider's view. It largely attributed this phenomenon to a confused post-War society that did not know how to prioritise various aspects of their lives. What was previously

1. Nation
2. Family
3. Company

became

1. Company
2. Family
3. Nation

or something in that light, for i seriously cannot remember the exact details. It will be good if anybody has up-to-date documents and studies on this issue.

Somehow,the company has replaced the daimyo as the head now with all these workers seeing themselves as corporate samurai.

Information from my dad, courtesy of his years spent dealing with the Japanese in the car industry:

the Japanese have a very open(-air) offices, which should not be too strange a concept to most of us exposed to their working cultures. Department or division heads would typically seat themselves in front of rows of desks occupied by subordinates. If the head does not go home, his/her minions pretend to be working just as hard (one then wonders if the head is pretending as well) and stay late.

And then consider this: Not everybody lives close to office. My dad has known a young chap (back then) who accommodated in the outskirts of Tokyo. It takes some three hours to get to the workplace. So he has to leave home at 4:30am in order to arrive on time. Add to that a financially wasteful culture of business entertainment and he'd probably depart from his clients at 1 or 2am.

So the question would become: How can he not drop dead while in commute?