Reasons to Work (Too?) Hard
If you’re interested in reading about stereotypes of Japanese people as hard-working buisnessmen (and who isn’t), there are two threads to check out on Quora: “What are the reasons Japanese People work long hours, and is it necessary?” and “How is it that the Japenese are such a hardworking people?”
The threads offer some interesting insights into the Japanese culture but also are a good prompt for thinking about your own work ethic. Check this part of Chris Gilbert’s response to the second question:
I was recently chatting to a Japanese friend of mine about her job and she was complaining about how lazy her foreign (western) co-workers are. One thing she said that really stuck with me was this:
“It’s all about ‘them’ with my colleagues. It’s all about their money, their holidays, their weekends etc”
When I probed her further on the subject, asking her how they should be (according to Japanese culture) she replied:
“They never think about the company, their colleagues or their responsibilities”.
I mean … guilty, kind of? I have never been A Company Man, that is for sure. There’s also this, from Roy Fuentes:
One word: Confucianism.
Awesome. But, this 2008 article from the Washington Post hints that the stereotype comes from somewhere:
Death from too much work is so commonplace in Japan that there is a word for it — karoshi.
There is a national karoshi hotline, a karoshi self-help book and a law that funnels money to the widow and children of a salaryman (it’s almost always a man) who works himself into an early karoshi for the good of his company.
Photo: flickr/tinou bao
People who know a lot about Japan, what kind of influence did Confucius have on the country, really? It seems so odd to cite a 21st century Japanese cultural phenomenon to Confucius – like saying that cultural trends in America are rooted in the influence of Maimonedes and Ibn Battuta. Like, yeah, he had some impact on Japanese philosophy, but ultimately he was Chinese and I don’t see how he could’ve had a bigger impact than either Buddhism or Shinto.
Also, working too much. It’s bad.
@Sean Lai Well they followed the Confucian social hierarchy for a good long time.
Ooh. Me. I will probably die from Karoshi. I was once offered a reporting assistant job at a big Japanese newspaper, and I decided that I could not take the job because it would mean all of this.
And your current work ethic is different how? (IT’S NOT.)
And down the ladder, plenty of American workers feel the same way about their European counterparts/co-workers. Eight WEEKS of vacation every year, PLUS every Catholic holiday off? Come on, man. The last company I worked for was based in central Europe and I feel like those dudes barely got anything done, ever.
Okay, maybe that was a little harsh. But I got about three days vacation in two years working in the only American office at that company, and I am still kind of bitter about it.
I lived in Japan for 2 years, working at a Japanese high school. I also spent a year tutoring Japanese businessmen in Tokyo. I can tell you that I personally met men who worked 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and put themselves in the hospital over it. I can also tell you that even though my colleagues at said school spent long hours at the school and gave up much of their independence (you were required to notify the school if you spent more than 2 days out of the prefecture) they didn’t actually get all that much done. Incompetence and laziness was just as rampant as at any company I ever worked at in the States. We were forced to stay at work 8 hours a day during the summer vacation–even though there was absolutely nothing to do, since the kids were out of school. Most of my co-workers spent the time sleeping at their desks, reading the paper, and smoking in the school garden. The Japanese work ethic is incredibly inefficient and it’s one of the reasons the economy is in the toilet. Don’t even get me started on the culture of non-stop construction and public works projects in the countryside, which I believe is the direct consequence of this culture–you have to look like you’re working, but nothing ever actually gets done.
@Liz YES, THIS, ABSOLUTELY. I lived in Japan for five years and spent four of those years working in a proper company (in other words, not teaching). I find the Japanese working model just terrible. You spend your ENTIRE LIFE at the office, but half the time lots of people aren’t doing anything. It’s just the culture; you’re not allowed to leave before your boss, it’s career suicide to use up your vacation days, and you’re expected to put in 14 hour days just so you can show your face at the office. Actually getting the work DONE has very little to do with it.
Of course, that said, my company was owned by a foreigner and was a bit more relaxed–you could leave at the end of the day if you were done. However, it still differed from an average American office job in that the standard day was longer (9-6 was the absolute minimum), and you were preeeetttty much expected to do at least an hour or two of overtime. Not for the useless reasons described above, but because they simply assigned a ton of work to each person, and an average day for me usually meant working hard from about 8-8. (Not to insult American workers; I know tons of people who put in these kinds of hours. But this was a very low-level, unimpressive office job, and the employees in our US, Canadian, and Australian offices doing the exact same jobs always had 9-5 workdays and that was it. I think their offices were just much more highly staffed.)
@Liz My understanding is that the constant construction projects are part of an intentional macroeconomic stimulus program that has been going on since the 1990s (that, and massive endemic corruption within the construction/government procurement sector).
I’m a couple days late on this, but, Japanese workers have actually worked fewer hours on average than Americans every year since 1998.
Average hours actually worked per worker in 2010
Japan: 1,733
United States: 1,778
Greece: 2,109
Source: OECD