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Is working as a cashier or janitor literally worse than dying over there? If you're a Japanese man raised by middle class parents, the prospect of working as a

by patio11 11y ago

Is working as a cashier or janitor literally worse than dying over there? If you're a Japanese man raised by middle class parents, the prospect of working as a cashier or janitor implies: You will never have economic security. Substantially all cashiers are hourly contract workers; virtually all janitors are. (The janitorial exceptions are government employees.) Contract workers can have their employment terminated in a fashion similar to in the United States. This contrasts markedly with the traditional expectation of the Japanese middle class, which is lifetime employment. Your parents will consider you a failure, principally because you have failed in the one thing men are expected to do. You will find your dating and marriage prospects markedly curtailed. You will be considered a loser by the vast majority of young women who you wish to date. Some will tell you that, in as many words. Many will prefer euphemisms like "My ideal boyfriend is someone who has debuted in society." Honest labor as a cashier is not considered honest labor in the Japanese middle class, at least not for a member of the middle class. Japan is a very status-conscious society. Cashiers and janitors occupy some of the very lowest rungs of it. You will spend most of your day being obseqiously polite to people; you will watch other people spend their fragments of your day snubbing you, repeatedly, in the ordinary course. You have recently read of other blue-collar employees who worked service jobs dying cold and alone, because the government safety net doesn't really consider them a priority, they had no savings, and they never had a family for the above reasons. So, tell me: given that this is your mental model of reality, and the mental model shared by substantially everyone you consider a peer or mentor, how attractive does working at 7-11 sound to you? Oh, salient fact: if you work so much as one day at 7-11 past college you'll probably never work as a salaryman. You're damaged goods for the rest of your life. If you thought of maybe doing it for 6 months while spending your time playing in a band and then getting on with your adult life, go ask one of the 45 year olds working at 7-11 and living on ~$1,400 a month how that decision worked out for them. The above math, or something close to it, is why most salarymen consider themselves blessed to be proper employees at a stable corporation, even if that job is actively killing them. (n.b. I'm not Japanese but I am a recovering Japanese salaryman. "Salaryman" is a local coinage which identifies full-time white collar employees of a certain strata of Japanese companies which are desirable to work at. The traditional expectation is that you sign a deal with the devil ^H^H^H^H^H your company where the company insulates you from all risks and in return you commit to the company mind, body, and soul.)

shostack 11y ago
Hey Patrick, thanks for the additional insight. I had considered moving to Japan at one point in college and studied up on the culture quite a bit, but obviously have no first hand experience like you do. Two things I've wondered about that I'm hoping you can shed some light on... First, do people that low on the totem pole socially have any tendencies to emigrate to societies with more open cultures about this stuff like Europe or America? I realize there can be a cost barrier, but even a cashier could save up enough to make the move if they were dedicated enough to the idea. Second, my experience with cashiers and other service staff there was the expected flawless politeness. But beyond that, people genuinely seemed to want to go above and beyond and take pride in their job, even if it was "just as a cashier." Is my perception due to just not being well-attuned to the social/body cues of the Japanese? In America, the cashier at a 711 typically hates their job and many give off the impression of being a slacker. Some practically exude this. I never once encountered this in a 711 in Japan. So do most of the cashiers there really hate their jobs/status and just make a good show of things? Or am I just blind to the cues?
- patio11 11y ago
  Japan does not have a recent experience of high levels of emigration. (It did back when Japan was still a poor nation. There is a large Japanese diaspora in the United States and a few countries in South America, notably Peru and Brazil. That's a long story.) Factors counseling not emigrating include linguistic isolation (the overwhelming majority of not-comfortably-middle-class Japanese people do not speak useful levels of, most relevantly to their chances for successful emigration, English), cultural attitudes regarding the importance of Japan to Japanese people [+], and similar issues. Your second question: depends on the cashier. Note that a good portion of the things I were referring to are a result of falling out of the class you were born/raised/worked into. (Japan doesn't have classes... but Japan totally has classes.) If you never expected anything in life other than going to an agricultural high school and maybe working on the farm, like many young'uns in Gifu, then moving to Tokyo and working at a convenience store might not be catastrophic. If you expected to test into a good college, and did, and then end up working at a convenience store... that's a violation of the proper order of things. Also, I would give non-zero credence to an explanation that a hypothetical observer who can't speak the language and has very little experience with the culture perhaps not understanding subtle distinctions like the difference between one's participation in a public social ritual and what one can tell one's closest friends when all of you are drunk. What's a good US example... hmm... OK, here's one: sincerity of religious belief. That's a spectrum, right? And Americans exist along that spectrum, right? And we have to have functioning radars for where someone is on that spectrum or it's socially disastrous, right? Imagine a hypothetical politician who pings your radar as "Absolutely zero sincere belief in any religion." Think backwards to the cues they give off to give you that impression. OK, now imagine that guy says, in response to a debate question, "Mr. $FOO, what is your favorite Bible verse?" and answers "I really like all of them, because I'm a Christian." That probably changes your radar value not at all, right? Because that's exactly what you'd expect a politician to say? The modal Japanese person, who probably does not have as good a radar on this issue as you do, will probably be confused as to why you think this politician is not religious when he just said something religious and claimed belief in a religion. And you could imagine writing a fairly long anthropological comment on a message board to that person saying "No, no, that's just the way we do things here. That question always gets asked and not having an answer to it, or disputing the basis for the question, would be political suicide. He's pretending to care about it and we pretend, for form's sake, to believe him." whereupon the Japanese person would say "Wow, you crazy Americans, so inscrutable." [ + ] "What, like nationalism?" Not exactly the sense that I meant it in. Try on your mental model of a nationalist American for a moment: suppose an American spends several years abroad then comes back. Is this happy or sad? Happy, of course, because America is clearly the best place to live in the world and of course Americans would prefer to live in America, like everyone else would if they had the opportunity. A Japanese nationalist, on the other hand, would more typically say that the returning Japanese person is a sad event because the traitor will probably bring their foreign contagion with them. Is there even a word in English for what I'd be if I moved back to America next year? "What, an American?" No, a word which describes "previously lived a long while in another country." Japanese has a word for this (slight oversimplification for brevity going on here but I'm thinking of 帰国子女) and if it describes you you have challenges associated with that.

by patio11 11y ago

shostack 11y ago

Hey Patrick, thanks for the additional insight. I had considered moving to Japan at one point in college and studied up on the culture quite a bit, but obviously have no first hand experience like you do. Two things I've wondered about that I'm hoping you can shed some light on... First, do people that low on the totem pole socially have any tendencies to emigrate to societies with more open cultures about this stuff like Europe or America? I realize there can be a cost barrier, but even a cashier could save up enough to make the move if they were dedicated enough to the idea. Second, my experience with cashiers and other service staff there was the expected flawless politeness. But beyond that, people genuinely seemed to want to go above and beyond and take pride in their job, even if it was "just as a cashier." Is my perception due to just not being well-attuned to the social/body cues of the Japanese? In America, the cashier at a 711 typically hates their job and many give off the impression of being a slacker. Some practically exude this. I never once encountered this in a 711 in Japan. So do most of the cashiers there really hate their jobs/status and just make a good show of things? Or am I just blind to the cues?

patio11 11y ago
Japan does not have a recent experience of high levels of emigration. (It did back when Japan was still a poor nation. There is a large Japanese diaspora in the United States and a few countries in South America, notably Peru and Brazil. That's a long story.) Factors counseling not emigrating include linguistic isolation (the overwhelming majority of not-comfortably-middle-class Japanese people do not speak useful levels of, most relevantly to their chances for successful emigration, English), cultural attitudes regarding the importance of Japan to Japanese people [+], and similar issues. Your second question: depends on the cashier. Note that a good portion of the things I were referring to are a result of falling out of the class you were born/raised/worked into. (Japan doesn't have classes... but Japan totally has classes.) If you never expected anything in life other than going to an agricultural high school and maybe working on the farm, like many young'uns in Gifu, then moving to Tokyo and working at a convenience store might not be catastrophic. If you expected to test into a good college, and did, and then end up working at a convenience store... that's a violation of the proper order of things. Also, I would give non-zero credence to an explanation that a hypothetical observer who can't speak the language and has very little experience with the culture perhaps not understanding subtle distinctions like the difference between one's participation in a public social ritual and what one can tell one's closest friends when all of you are drunk. What's a good US example... hmm... OK, here's one: sincerity of religious belief. That's a spectrum, right? And Americans exist along that spectrum, right? And we have to have functioning radars for where someone is on that spectrum or it's socially disastrous, right? Imagine a hypothetical politician who pings your radar as "Absolutely zero sincere belief in any religion." Think backwards to the cues they give off to give you that impression. OK, now imagine that guy says, in response to a debate question, "Mr. $FOO, what is your favorite Bible verse?" and answers "I really like all of them, because I'm a Christian." That probably changes your radar value not at all, right? Because that's exactly what you'd expect a politician to say? The modal Japanese person, who probably does not have as good a radar on this issue as you do, will probably be confused as to why you think this politician is not religious when he just said something religious and claimed belief in a religion. And you could imagine writing a fairly long anthropological comment on a message board to that person saying "No, no, that's just the way we do things here. That question always gets asked and not having an answer to it, or disputing the basis for the question, would be political suicide. He's pretending to care about it and we pretend, for form's sake, to believe him." whereupon the Japanese person would say "Wow, you crazy Americans, so inscrutable." [ + ] "What, like nationalism?" Not exactly the sense that I meant it in. Try on your mental model of a nationalist American for a moment: suppose an American spends several years abroad then comes back. Is this happy or sad? Happy, of course, because America is clearly the best place to live in the world and of course Americans would prefer to live in America, like everyone else would if they had the opportunity. A Japanese nationalist, on the other hand, would more typically say that the returning Japanese person is a sad event because the traitor will probably bring their foreign contagion with them. Is there even a word in English for what I'd be if I moved back to America next year? "What, an American?" No, a word which describes "previously lived a long while in another country." Japanese has a word for this (slight oversimplification for brevity going on here but I'm thinking of 帰国子女) and if it describes you you have challenges associated with that.