Japanese working conditions

A few days ago, I discussed the article, “Unpaid overtime is killing McDonald's managers”, from the website, Japan Today, with my teacher during an English lesson. The article was about “karoshi”, which means death from overwork.

http://japantoday.com/category/commentary/view/unpaid-overtime-is-killing-mcdonalds-managers/

According to the Japanese Labor Standards Law, employees are not supposed to work more than 8 hours a day. However many Japanese companies’ work time is still more than 8 hours, for example 9 to 6, because they don’t count the hour for lunch as work time, whether the employees take a full hour lunch break or not. In the same way, overtime work is a matter of course as well.

About 20 years ago, most Japanese had never thought overwork would kill people because working hard was treated as a virtue in Japan. We － companies, chief executive officers and employees － also believed working very hard was the nature of the Japanese character. Many Japanese worked without realizing that they were working too hard.

In my case, I usually worked from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. or 12 a.m., 6 days a week when I at a company in the music industry even though the company’s working hours were 10 to 7, 5 days a week. Almost all of the employees worked more than 100 hours a month on top of their regular monthly hours, which did not seem surprising to anyone. When the employees were late for work their salaries were cut, but overtime pay was never given to them. Many young workers slept in their sleeping bags on the company’s floor, because they didn’t want to waste any time for sleeping going home and back. While I was working at the company with these co-workers, I started to become numb to the working conditions there.

When I heard the word “karoshi” for the first time I really thought that one of us would be the next victim. Many Japanese might have been feeling just like I was － I would be killed by my company. Then I did a calculation converting my pay into hourly earnings, while looking at my time card. My hourly wage was an unbelievable and laughable figure － IT WAS LESS THAN 200 YEN.

After leaving that company, I still worked more than 8 hours a day, because it was my nature. I couldn’t stop working until I finished the job that I was handling at that time. Basically, I wanted to finish my work as soon as possible in case, be I got some urgent work the next day or became sick. I wanted to be prepared for the next job or coming situation. When I left a job halfway done I thought about it all night. When I had nothing to do or took a day off, I felt guilty. My entire schedule was built around my work. When I look back now, I enjoyed being busy with work. I liked being a hard working person. While I was working I felt I had a reason for living. I think I was a workaholic at that time.

Since “karoshi” became an issue in public, many companies have promoted their employees. The companies gave them higher position titles and base salaries which increased only a little, instead of disapproving their overtime allowance. However, their salaries were mostly formed by the overtime pay. That was why their take-home wages didn’t rise even if they got promotions. Not only that, in the worst case their take-home pay would go down, even though they worked as long as or longer than before.

Now Japanese working conditions are changing. Many Japanese workers are starting to think that overwork is not a virtue. They try to get better working conditions. Nevertheless, many companies still give their employees titles which are only names, and request unpaid overtime work. There are still many workaholics like I was before.

Both the companies and the employees have to think the working conditions over now. If such perverse working situations are not eliminated, unfortunately the same things like in the article, “Unpaid overtime is killing McDonald's managers”, will happen again.

Childhood

“I was worried about you because you were such an enigma when you were a child. Now you are not strange. It is an amazing transformation that you are becoming a normal person”, one of my cousins told me when I met him after 10 years gap.

Almost all people who knew me in my childhood say with one voice, “You were truly strange”. Whether it was true, I don’t remember anything about my “strange” childhood. Perhaps I had been possessed by something, like the film “The Exorcist”.

My mother usually says to me, “You only did what you wanted to do, even if I told you it was dangerous.” When I was three or four years old I nearly drowned in a pool because I didn’t listen to her. I shook off her hand, then just ran to the pool and jumped in; I couldn’t swim. I remember only this, when I was six years old: she told me, “Stop drinking like that! You will burn yourself!” because I was trying to drink hot miso soup with a straw. As you guessed, I burned my tongue.

I have two photos and I am in both of these wearing a swimsuit.

Left photograph: I am two; I am behind my brother, touching my inner tube.
Right photograph: I am on the right, wearing swimsuit and playing with my friends in the street.

The first photo was taken when I was two years old. I was wearing a men’s swimsuit which was the same as my brother’s. Although I was a girl, there seem to be brothers in the photo. The other one was taken when I was around three years old. I wore a pink swimsuit while I was playing in the street in front of my house in Meguro, Tokyo. Of course, my friends were wearing normal clothes.

When I had found the pictures, I asked my mother, “Why was I wearing a men’s swimsuit? Why did I wear a pink swimsuit while I was playing in the street? Did you not want me to get my clothes dirty?” She answered, “Don’t you remember that you wanted to wear them? You never listened to me even though I told you to stop wearing them a thousand times. You really wanted to wear the same swimsuit as your brother and you refused to wear a girls’. I also told you wearing a swimsuit in the town was weird, but you were never satisfied without wearing it.”

“Even though I called your name in your ear, you never answered me.” Her story was supported by this: I couldn’t enter the kindergarten where all of my cousins entered, because I didn’t answer any questions during the interview. Actually I said nothing, even my name, so she had to look for other kindergartens and pleaded them, “My daughter is a very good girl but she doesn’t answer questions, however she understands everything you ask. Would you accept a girl like my daughter?” All of them answered, “I understand what you are saying but … I’m sorry.”

A few days later, My mother and I got an interview with a kindergarten near my house. Of course I didn’t answer anything. In fact, I turned my back to the interviewers while they were questioning me: “What is your name?” “…” “How old are you?” “…” “Who did you come with today?” “…” “Who is sitting next to you?” “…” “Where is your mother?” － I answered only the last question. I pointed my mother by my leg without talking.

She says that she was really upset and broke out in a cold sweat during the interview. She also says it was like a nightmare, the most horrible one she has ever seen. I had the good fortune to enter that kindergarten because they accepted any kid.

After I entered the kindergarten, my eccentricities would go on. During drawing class, I never did the drawing of the day. I always only drew a big-headed girl, while other students were followed the teacher’s directions. Finally I did the drawing of the day alone, after I came home.

I always returned to my home when I did not like the other kids. When a child next to me opened her lunch box before I did, I went home. When a boy next to me brought Yakisoba (=fried noodles) for his lunch, I went home. I still don’t know why; I might have been angry about her action and his Yakisoba lunch, however these were not my business.

I don’t want to believe I was such an unusual child, but I might have been strange, as many people say. Fortunately my unbelievable personality became normalized as I grew up. If I had become older without any changing, I would have become a headline or a perverse person; I only did things I was dying to do and I didn’t do anything I was not interested in. There is a thin line between genius and insanity.

Generally speaking, when people get old, they become like a child. That theory makes me scared because I have the possibility to become such a strange person again.