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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 25, 1984
Blue-collar and white-collar workers alike embrace the new
attitude, but it seems most noticeable, and most threateni r:1 g,
among recent college graduates, who will one day be running
Japan's corporations.••• Younger workers are less committed to
teamwork, more individualistic, and more detached from their jobs
than their elders are••••
"The younger workers do what they are told and not one iota
more," says Atsuko Toyama, 45, author of A THEORY ON THE MODERN
FRESHMAN, as a college graduate recently arrived at the
corporation is called.
Young Japanese still work very hard
during duty hours•..• But they are increasingly reluctant to go
beyond and above the strict call of duty and turn a good enough
performance into a superb one.
Behind the change in young workers' attitudes are several forces.
The most obvious is prosperity. Thriving companies in a rich
Japan can't make the same pitch for sacrifice that struggling
companies in a poor Japan could make•••• With more money in their
pockets, young Japanese can pay for the expensive diversions that
compete for attention with work.
Sales of skiing and skating
paraphernalia soared from $397 million in 1975 to $973 million in
1982•..•
More and more Japanese companies are reducing their workweeks
from six days to five•••• In a few years hardly anybody is likely
to work on Saturday. When most Western countries went to a five
day week after World War II, there was a marked change in
workers' basic interests, according to British sociologist Ronald
Dore. On � six-day week, workers tended to be job-centered.
Their day off was largely devoted to resting up for the next
week. When they got two days off, they began to develop a variety
of interests.
A decade ago the Japanese language contained no idiom like the
West's TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) • Today many young office
workers exchange salutations of "Hana no kinyobi," which freely
translated means "Friday's the greatest."
They•••let their
thoughts drift to the weekend social calendar.
Sports and
friends, not work and study, give meaning to life, young Japanese
said in a recent government survey.•••
The Japanese work ethic will almost certainly not collapse, al
though it may sag enough to slow the country down••.• Short of a
national emergency, however, Japan's young people seem unlikely
to be transformed into what they call the "working devils" of a
generation ago who astounded the world.
The Japanese, like the Germans, can be dangerous when they are unhappy or
uncertain about their future. It is possible that we could see a welling up
of national pessimism in Japan partly as a result of the Persian Gulf
crisis. Japan's economy does stand on at least one "foot of clay"--depen
dence upon foreign sources for its primary energy needs. The Japanese have
been forced to move quickly to reduce their heavy oil dependence upon the
Middle East, especially Iran. Their imports from Iran have been trimmed in
half already.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau