Blaine Harden of the Washington Post penned a thought-provoking article about modern Japanese women that touches on many topics which have been raised here on Japundit. It asks why women are postponing or even eschewing marriage and children; a trend which I, too, have seen. Off the top of my head, I can name about 10 single Japanese women friends in their mid-to-late thirties; far fewer than the number who are married.

Takako Katayama has not closed the door on marriage and children. When she meets girlfriends for dinner, they ask each other, “Where are the good guys?” But she refuses to settle for a man who works long hours, declines to share in child-rearing and sees marriage mainly as a way to acquire lifetime live-in help.

“I want a mature, equal-partner kind of marriage,” she said. “Anyway, there are complete lives without a baby.”

Therein lies a dismal prognosis for Japan and for many of the other prosperous nations of East Asia. In numbers that alarm their governments, Asian women are delaying marriage and postponing childbirth. In Japan, the percentage of women who remain single into their 30s has more than doubled since 1980.

“We need to organize our society so that women and families will be able to raise children while working,” Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in an interview in May. “I think we still lack adequate efforts on that front.”

This year, Fukuda’s government is pushing a “work-life balance” program that addresses the country’s famously punishing work ethic. It pressures companies to shoo workers (primarily men) out of the office at night. The intent is to improve the quality of family life and, in the process, make more babies.

The stakes are high here in the world’s second-largest economy, which now has the world’s highest proportion of people over 65 and lowest proportion of children under 15. According to a recent forecast, population loss will strip Japan of 70 percent of its workforce by 2050.

There are three kinds of employees in Japan: full time, part time, and arubaito.

The last type, the name for which comes from the german word for “work” (arbeit), refers to contract-less employees who are paid by the hour and work irregular or semi-temporary schedules, as differentiated from full company employees, who have benefits like twice-annual bonuses and vacation time, and semi-official part-timers, who also have some formal benefits.

One of the biggest trends in post-bubble Japanese society is the tendency of younger workers to shun traditional full-time employment, instead being content to work informal jobs staffing video rental stores and gas stations, tutoring at evening cram schools, and so on. According to a new government report, an amazing 35% of the workforce now occupies these “non-regular” employment positions, exchanging freedom to change jobs at will and less on-the-job stress for lower job security.

Why so many would choose to work as freeters (as these part-time and temporary workers are called) puzzles older Japanese, who of course benefited greatly from the stable economic growth of the postwar period. The reasons ‘baito is so popular are many, but one big one is that many Japanese have come to value their own leisure time over work.

This is a good thing of course, although I personally consider the industriousness of the Japanese people as a whole to be no less than a National Treasure for the country, and something that I hope will continue into the future.

From an anonymous reader on Slashdot:

“A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees’ family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5″ for men, and 35.5″ for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women.”

I guess extreme problems call for extreme solutions!

Now, this also worries me. Potentially having to move in Japan soon to follow my love, and me being a bit overweight, will that new law make it impossible for me to find a job?

Stories about misbehaving public officials are commonplace – they differ only in the details. But the details usually make interesting reading.

A Wakayama prefecture civil servant has made worldwide headlines with a feat of astonishing dedication.

Tax-payers in Kinokawa wish he could show similar dedication to his job. For it has been revealed in a 9-month period, the horny civil servant clocked up more than three quarters of a million hits on pornographic websites from his work computer.

His superiors were alerted to the problem only when his computer became infected with a virus.

The 57-year-old man, who has not been named, works for the city of Kinokawa in southern Japan.

That works out at almost 10,000 pages a day, or more than 20 each minute he was at his desk.

The BBC reports that his habit “reached its peak” last July with more than 177,000 page hits times during office hours.

The man has not been fired.

according to articles found on both bloomberg and the guardian, the expanding waistlines of japan’s denizens is causing the ministry of health and welfare concern. so great is there apprehension, in fact, that they along with local and municipal governments, have hatched a comprehensive series of plans to reduce the girth of the nation. as its stated goal, the government hopes to reduce unhealthy weight and obesity in the workforce and their dependents by 25% in seven years time.

being the lazy ineffective bureaucrats they are, the ministry has a plan to hoist all responsibility for achieving these goals on the shoulders of the companies who employ overweight workers and their out of shape dependents. the firms that fail to meet the goal of having 25% of their workforce (and the work force’s dependents) shape up risk paying increased taxes to help assist with the overburdened public health system.

isn’t it enough that your manager harasses you about meeting quotas, productivity, and deadlines? now you have to report to them about your exercise and diet plans, too? lame. not to mention the increased taxes on the entire company. now you not only have to report to your supervisor about your waistline; but anyone who isn’t in shape is probably going to be the victim of hazing from their fellow employees who don’t want to hear about why their paychecks are being cut when the worker doesn’t manage to drop those last 5 pounds.

even more insidious are the possible implications for proprietors and small llc (or japanese equivalent) companies. while the articles are relatively sparse on the details of how this plan would affect small companies (or whether they are excluded) if the same laws did apply this could be a great hidden way to raise taxes on certain individuals who already have enough to wade through.

and would somebody please think of the women and the children here. aren’t the relationships between spouses and their offspring strained enough without having to watch each other’s weight. hey, at least it provides a plausible excuse for telling your wife she’s fat. “honey i’m just trying to help you with your job.”

i know. i know, i’m probably being a tad over-reactive (probably?) and might be engaging in my fair share of hyperbole, but this does seem like an underhanded and indirect way of trying to reign in the present value of future healthcare.

well at least there is a light side to this whole matter. in a bid to encourage japanese citizens to lose weight some municipalities have take it on themselves to create inspirational models of behavior for all the lardasses out there. case in point: the mitsuke mighty morphing metabo rangers.

do you think they morph into something less lame?

interesting series of photos on this website

in zenkoji temple, located in nagano, a movement is taking root. instigated by an incident in which one of the tendai sect’s high priests punished a monk for insubordination by forcing him to copy sutras in a small room for two months: enraged by this form of discipline the man’s fellow monks filed a lawsuit stating that the temple authorities were violating his contract of employment.

all it needs is a gm logo

not satisfied with the possible remedies of law and equity that the courts could offer, the monk also approached nagano’s zenroren and asked them to determine whether he had cause and standing to create a union at the temple. finding that his set wages and specifically defined hours working for daikanjin, the zenroren ruled that he was legally of the same standing as a salaryman working for a corporation and approved his petition to begin union negotiations with his monks and the temple.

the resulting agreement, dubbed the zenkoji daikanjin bunkai has already inspired monks from other sects to contact their own local labor boards and ask whether they to can create their own unions. the seeming hope among these junior monks is that one day they may enjoy better working conditions and higher wages for their work at the buddhist temples and shrines across the nation.

A company in Tokyo named Hime & Company(Japanese page) has started offering its all-female staff “heartache leave” to provide them with paid time off to ease the pain of break-ups with loved ones.

[The company], which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed. “Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick,” CEO Miki Hiradate, whose company of six women markets cosmetics and other goods targeted for women, told Reuters by telephone.

Under the heartache leave scheme, Hime (which means “princess” in Japanese) employees 24 years old or younger are allowed one day off per year, workers from 25 and 29 are given two days annually, and those older than 29 are can take three.

“Women in their 20s can find their next love quickly, but it’s tougher for women in their 30s, and their break-ups tend to be more serious,” Hiradate said.

Hime & Company also claims that their “shopping leave” also helps the modern working woman avoid problems and feelings of guilt for taking off to hit the stores when sales are on.

“Before, women could take half-days off to go to sales, but you’d have to hide your shopping bags in lockers by the train station,” Hiradate said.
“But with paid leave, we don’t have to feel guilty about bringing our shopping bags to work, and we can enjoy the best part about sales shopping — talking about our purchases afterwards.”

Via Asian Pop with YienJee

This familiar scene on Japanese trains appears innocent enough. But it’s not, according to the An Englishman in Osaka blog. Because one of these salarymen is actually dead.

That’s right, on their way home one of these guys drifted into a light sleep before passing peacefully away, moving on to that great office in the sky (where 20-hour working days are the norm).

But, which one? The Englishman in Osaka means to disclose the answer soon–but in the meantime, if you don’t cheat, we can play too! It’s actually kind of hard to say — they all look dead to the world, although I guess one of them is a bit more so.

However, as one of the commenters justly notes (all the comments are pretty amusing): “Dying while sleeping on the train sure beats dying while jumping in front of it. “

Further to yesterday’s post about the comparative uphill battle Japanese women have at work, the New York Times article mentioned had this rather revealing chart, just in case you missed it! The original is a bit more legible than this but maybe you can make it out: