KWPro.net

I had the opportunity to talk with my coworker over some beer at the pub tonight.  It was an interesting conversation where she divulged some private issues (which I won't go into) and one other issue about how she's looked down upon in the office as a woman and recent graduate.  My other coworker is treated with little to no respect either as he lacks experience, even though he's potentially full of good ideas and energy.

These situations and my own situation got me thinking about a huge problem in Japan.

Old people.

The older generations in Japan are a huge plight for the young.  Asian societies in general have been typecast as being respectful towards their elderly.  Japan, in particular, has this moral social code.  Heck, at bars at times I'm heckled by some drunk oyaji who demands that I respect him.  Sometimes it's facetious but other times I feel that they're being serious.

Either way, I find this respect to be disrespectful towards the young people.

The thing with respect (for me at least) is that you earn it, you don't demand it, and you never force it upon people.  In Japan at least, it's the latter.  I see these young kids with potentially bright futures subjected to this social discourse where they're essentially trapped.  The older generations basically have these kids work long hours for small wages while the older people leave early from work, collect fair sized paychecks, impose their wills on their subordinates, and basically act as leeches off society.  It's absolutely brilliant because they've managed to create a neo-slave society without the world being able to accost them in a legal manner.

There was a study done and reported over at Yahoo where they polled the hardest working people/countries.  For some strange reason, Japan wasn't even mentioned.  Even more bizarre, they counted America(ns) as having longer hours.  Certainly, the Japanese have a few extra holidays compared to Americans, but I don't think the polls were fair.  From a productivity viewpoint, America will win out in comparing sizes with the Japanese.  But I think most Japanese don't report the horrendous overtime, which is actually illegal here.  I know for a fact that most Americans probably don't work nearly as many hours compared to the Japanese, unless they're holding multiple jobs.  I'm not saying there aren't jobs where people are under working the Japanese in America, but the majority of the Japanese people I know (even in my office) have terrible hours.

Going back to the topic, the Japanese society is still feudal in nature; they've simply reorganized it with laws and corporate buildings to hide what's going on inside.  The guy on top still wins out while the rest are petty farmers looking for a break that never will happen.

Then you get the anomalies like Horie-mon.  But because he didn't suck up to the older folk, he got slammed back down as a message to all the younger generations in Japan.

It's really sad seeing all these kids with little hope to escape these situations while these big wigs play puppet master, entertaining themselves with their network of buddies from the old days.  They leech off society and stay in companies well beyond their usefulness.

I'm not saying at all that people should not respect elderly people, nor that old people should not hold jobs.  However, it's one thing when these people long outlived their usefulness to society and contribute nothing back in a constructive manner.

My main fear about how things work in Japan is that it'll send a horrible message to how things should get done, which is terribly inefficient.  With younger people unable to be given the confidence, authority and wisdom to make decisions, they constantly are forced to delegate to a higher authority.  With this dependency chart, you have endless confirmations that return to an answer that would be obvious.  Worse yet, these methods of perpetually delaying decision making or understanding the quickness of how the world moves simply slows down the potential progress of what Japan can achieve.

Take the internet for instance.  The internet really is a young person's domain.  The constant growth and changes require a lot of energy and open-mindedness to be able to absorb and adapt quickly.  Technology has traditionally, between culture to culture, never been something that older people could adapt because of force of habit.  However, in places like America, we've seen many explosive companies emerging from the imaginations, creativity and desire of young people who see visions and promise.  You name it from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Myspace, ebay, Napster, etc.  Where are the disruptive, world changing internet technologies in Japan?

I personally want to see more of the older generations starting to step down and allowing the kids to take up the cause, take bold risk and do things against the norm to make Japan great as a leader in the world.  It is a country that has done well, but everything is locked up in perpetual potential and can only be released if this situation is amended.