Dearest ML,
My friend S who is an intelligent Japanese woman is having a tough time. She is very smart but I do think she is living in a wrong culture that does not appreciate her. We had a few email exchange on this and the "real" Japanese culture. It is funny how a lot of Hong Kong people / foreigners are fascinated about the Japanese culture but how much do they really know about it?
With her permission, here is how S sees it. A little bit more background about S, she is approaching 30, speaks fluent English and Japanese with good degrees but struggling to find a job. Why?
- Japanese is "expected" to be high conforming / obeying & suppressed, and it is difficult to break the "norm".
- Women without make-up will get bad impression and disliked by both women and men. So Japanese women spend a lot of time on putting on (heavy) makeup and spend a lot of time on clothes. I think they are really concerned about their appearance and how people perceive them, and thus conforming into the social role with a particular mode of behavior.
- They are also taught to behave in good manners and play the "role" perfectly. But as we all know this is not 100% of the case and so they feel very frustrated, and they bad mouth their colleagues behind their back, behave and talk very differently among women or close friends / co-workers.
People from other countries say Japanese women are quiet, obedient and beautiful. But they are shockingly two-faced (in S exact wordings), as in multiple personality disorder. They are not allowed to express their opinion freely and the only way to relieve stress is behind the back.
When S was working at the airport, some colleagues asked her for gathering but they were badmouthing other colleagues for 8 hours (I cannot believe this!). They act so nicely in front of them yet hate them actually. She received this sort of invitation sometimes but eventually dropped the idea of going as it had always been a 8 hour bad mouth competition.
OMG, how tiring that will be!!
- Japanese practices the age hierarchy where people judge other people simply by their age. In S terms, some people behave like a king / queen just because they are older than you, even one year old than you.
More than once, I heard about Japanese women do not receive same wage treatment as with their male co-worker. It means even if they are doing the same job, they do not receive the same wage.
I once watched a TV program on how Japanese women were being treated in the job market. They can get entry level job, and then a few years most of them will quit to stay home and take care of the kids. Promotional prospect is minimal.
Having said that, I am truly happy that I do not live in Japan! I mean if I think I am not a Chinese in Hong Kong society, very likely I will commit suicide in Japan if I were a Japanese!
Why am I writing this blog post? Nothing will change unless we do something about it. So S, think about it again - if you wanna a change you can move to some other places (especially you now have D), conduct advocacy campaign, join in an organization to gather similar voices and do something. This is how I see it. You may not change this overnight (nobody can) but to have a change, someone must take a lead and do something.
And that person can be you.
k xoxo
Thank you so much for this post! I even don't know where to start. As for wage differences between men and women are more than 33%. Japanese companies see women as just decoration(like receptionists) or temporal workers who marry or get pregnant and quit in a few/several years. Single women in their 30s and 40s at work are disliked by both men and younger women. Some big bosses treat them coldly so they finally quit. Your opinion is totally normal. Quite many would feel committing suicide. Work environment is just suffocating (In this case, men suffer more because they have to keep working till 60)You have to work till midnight with no extra pay, bowing 300 times a day, apologizing for someone else's fault, doing someone else's work(team play), can't leave office until your boss leaves. If you leave office at 6pm, you're labelled as extremely immature and selfish. Many Japanese men who suffer from slavery work says Japan is the same as North Korea.
ReplyDeleteAs for women, they have to change the way they speak, voice tone(you would notice their high tone voice) etc. I was told many times I sound too casual(I was the only one speaking formal JPN there though), I look arrogant(by shorter men and women. I'm 174), I don't say Hello to colleagues(they, older women than me, were the ones who kept ignoring me)
Well, anyway, Japanese have been trained to follow the rules, be polite, cooperate, maintain the harmony and obey the older since they begin school at 6. Especially among girls at junior high, you get bullied so cruelly when you say different opinions. Japanese are so critical against "Japanese who's different" and try to bully/ignore at work or wherever. That's why people here, especially women, ended up "acting" all the time which is very stressful actually.
Anyway, thank you for the suggestion. I'm going to start a blog about this and try to make some change.