Job Discussion Forums

[seklarwia]

[seklarwia]

[Rooster_2006]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[seklarwia]

[quote="Rooster_2006"][quote="seklarwia"]

[cornishmuppet]

The woman who sits on my right at high school is 47, a home economics teacher and lives at home as well as holidays with her parents. The man who sits on my left is 58 and lives at home. When I asked him about his lunch one day and commented him on his cooking skills, he told me his sister made it for him every day. There's three that perhaps should have flown the nest by now...

[Cool Teacher]

[ssjup81]

[Glenski]

[Cubic09]

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

the difference is that a lot of these kids aren't like the ones who are mostly going about their lives, getting jobs etc... many of these people are basically dropping out of society altogether. No job, no going out, no friends, nothing at all. They just sit there all day, every day maybe playing video games or reading manga, getting their parents to pay for everything. And it's the same thing they did throughout junior and senior high-school as well.

And in Japan, it's not like other countries where companies are hiring all year long- if they miss the hiring season of their cohort, then that may be it.

The example of the European countries is just a traditional thing, it's not really uncommon here, either.

[RollingStone]

When offering social analyses one is forced to do a certain amount of abstracting, in order to make a coherent argument. Thus, some distortion is necessary but to do so successfully is somewhat of an art. It is tough enough to do in a large thesis, much less a forum post. By creating too big a picture one simply caters to anecdotalism.

So, keeping this in mind, focusing on Japan what do we know:

J power (that which dominates society) remains confined to a very narrow few. It has been said that the people that matter in J (those in real power) could fit into a room. Note that the past several J PMs have been related (either son or grandson) to a former PM. The same goes for the 'backroom boys' - the industrialists and bureaucrats.

Significant social change that began to develop into democratic force on J campuses in the early 1950s was squashed by an American/Japanese power conglomerate with aid enlisted from the yakuza thugs, to assuage conservative paranoia during the Cold War and Korean War. Thus, we have 54 years of single party politics. There is no serious descent in J; democracy is a shell for maintaining status quo. Add to that the conservative mindset of the culture.

This is a way of asking -- what is there to do in J? Besides work. For previous post-war generations one's family was one's coworkers, often one's biological family came 2nd. But if one does not consume or produce, what does one do? It seems to me that J is a very cloistered society - very brittle due to the tremendous amount of energy going into maintaining status quo. I think this has been evident to some degree in its culture for decades. Even now, in the private sector, you do not go home at quitting time. Do people have outside interests, causes, reasons for being? Certainly the money is there, as is the standard of life (as strictly limited in measurement to purchasing power). But the people I have spoke to seem to echo the things I read - people live largely to work because the social and political constraints are so narrow that there is not much else to do.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[RollingStone]

Well, as I suggested in my opening paragraph above, stretching a generalization that exists in Japan into life generally on this planet may be problematic. Point is, it doesnt really matter what people do elsewhere, since we are discussing Japan and, more specifically, why J is the way it is.

Whether people outside of J watch tv or not, there is an intense status quo unchanged likely since feudal times in J society - from the top down. Had democracy been given even a slight chance in the 1950s you would likely see a different J today. The crushing of democratic change by the US/Japan governments and underground has had, I would argue, a lasting and detrimental affect. There has been no impetus for change in Japan since and status quo has become even more entrenched. You see this throughout J society in numerous ways - including the pressure to conform to the J way and full-scale corruption among politicians, bureaucrats, capitalists ie the power elite.

The result, again in keeping with the OP, is that these power relations are remarkably unimpeded. When the status quo is so entrenched like that, alternatives are slim. Apathy appears as the natural alternative, if one is taught they either conform to the status quo or they are nothing. Thus these social drop outs mentioned in the OP are simply exercising the flip side of the same coin, the same paradigm. And this is because an alternative paradigm does not exist. I really sense a suffocating society in J.

[RollingStone]

alas, i am allowing myself to get drawn into that sweeping and misleading generalization about all people do anywhere is watch tv or drink. Now, I am not sure where you originated, my congratulations to you on escaping though!

some things that people do in my neck of the woods - take evening courses; return to school full-time; volunteer; walk around; attend concerts, festivals; exercise; have hobbies; see their kids; get active in social forums; travel. And this is just taking off the top of my head of a few people I know. The norm in J is that you work until late hours - or, accepting your version, simply stay late - either way, it is conforming to the norm (artificially and meaninglessly it seems), you do not take vacation time (for the same reason), you do not do anything that can be interpreted as questioning or upsetting the status quo.

there is a world of difference between the civil society in the West compared to J.