IB Language A: Literature 1



IB Language A: Literature 1

Inside Modern Japan: Explorations in Culture, Sub-Cultures, and Place

With regard to cultural context and influence, translator Phillip Gabriel recently told The Asahi Shimbun, that "Murakami's work does appear kind of 'American' at first glance. The influence of his reading of American literature, and his love for American pop culture, is clear. But there are 'Japanese' aspects as well – especially aspects of Japan's history and recent social changes, such as echoes in the second world war, Aum Shinrikyo, the Kobe earthquake, (and) the economic decline of the past two decades. In this sense, Murakami is very much a Japanese writer” (Bury).

A. The “salaryman” in Japanese business

Modern Japan is often perceived as a “land of company men,” or to use the colloquial Japanese term, the “salaryman.” In sociology, the salaryman is known as Japan's new middle class, as opposed to the old middle class consisting of farmers and storeowners. The Japanese term 'salaryman' generally includes all white-collar male employees from newly recruited freshman to general managers but does not include Japanese executives and directors. The salarymen and their families make up a sizeable chunk of Japan's 'middle-class' and the Japanese government and its policies is pretty much a reflection of their mood. In fact an often quoted reason for the popularity of former Japanese Prime Minister, Koizumi (from 2001-2006) is that his unpretentious background and mannerisms allowed him to relate well to the concerns of the salaryman (as some have said of the former Prime Minister, "He acts like a salaryman and talks like a salaryman in phrases that ordinary Japanese can understand").

To, perhaps, better understand the salaryman—how he influences Japanese business culture and doing business in Japan—let’s examine Tanaka-san, a 35 year-old 'rising star' salaryman who is a departmental manager at a large Japanese corporation. Tanaka-san is a real living salaryman and the subject of Venture Japan’s (a consulting firm that assists prospective global business partnering) orientation materials, although his name has been altered for this discussion. Thus, I present to you, “Tanaka-san the salaryman…”

In a sense, Tanaka-san's business life started when he was just 2 or 3 years old. He is an only-child - his parents knew that if he was to become a respectable salaryman working for a secure and respectable Japanese company, he would be recruited by that company only after graduating from a top university. Tanaka-san's father is a general manager at a Japanese multinational consumer electronics company and earns a good salary, but to put 2 children through a top university would have been beyond his father's salary, so Tanaka-san is an only-child.

Tanaka-san's mother investigated which kindergarten, which junior school, which middle school and which high-school would best enhance his chances of entering a top university. His father approved the decisions, but it was Tanaka-san's mother that made them. By the time his father returned home to Tama City, after a 1½ hour commute from the east side of Tokyo, he was too tired to do anything but sleep. On Saturdays he would be at his office and so the only time Tanaka-san ever really spent time with his father was on Sundays, when his father would do his 'family service'. So his mother researched the decisions and his father approved them.

From age 8, Tanaka-san attended cram schools and throughout his middle and high-school years, he studied 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, to ensure his entry to that top university. After years of dedication, hard work, detailed study and not breaking the rules, Tanaka-san graduated from Tokyo University on March 31, 1990. In the previous October he had competed strongly at the career fair organized by the university and had proudly accepted an offer from a major Japanese company. On April 1, 1990, the very day after he graduated, Tanaka-san proudly joined the mass of daily commuters in his new blue suit and white shirt - he was now a freshman salaryman.

When Tanaka-san first entered the company, he had no idea (and neither had the company) what position he would eventually occupy. Together with the other new employees, he entered the 3 month induction course and upon completion was assigned to a junior position in one of the company's offices. He made a lot of friends during induction training and even though those friends were dispatched to different offices, he will stay in contact with them throughout his working life. During the next 3 years, Tanaka-san was rotated through 4 or 5 different departments - 6 months in accounts, 6 months in patents and intellectual property, 6 months in production, 6 months in purchasing etc., until eventually he was assigned to a longer-term opening in the IT division. He again made many new friends during those rotations and they also will remain his friends throughout his working life, even though they too may be working in other departments in other offices. Even at just 25 years old, Tanaka-san has already begun to build a strong web of intra-company relationships - a network which will be important to him as he ascends the corporate ladder.

B. “Datsusara”

Datsusara refers to the act of quitting work as a salaryman and finding a new occupation. The term only refers to those who quit their office job to find a more fulfilling line of work, and not those who were forced to search for a new job after being fired, or quit simply out of boredom. Becoming a “stay-at-home dad” (to use a Western expression) also does not qualify for this category. Datsusara is not an easy option for the salaryman. The new job is often a childhood dream or a momentary inspiration of some sort, and takes a huge amount of time and work to come to fruition. The main danger lies in taking up a profession without the proper knowledge and training; a salaryman seeking to become an organic farmer can unwittingly devastate his first crop because all of his knowledge is based on reading and studying rather than actual hands-on training. This shift was somewhat uncommon in the 1980’s, but despite the numerous risks involved, the number of salarymen who quit their jobs has been on the rise since the 1990s. Many of these people only became salarymen because they were told to do so by their childhood environment, and quit after becoming discouraged by the nature of their work. Datsusara can also be seen as a rebound against the stress of schoolwork and university entrance exams, or against corporate hierarchy. Another factor is that improvements in living standards have made it so that one does not necessarily need a set income in order to survive.

C. “Karōshi”

Karōshi (過労死), which can be translated literally from Japanese as "death from overwork", is, essentially, occupational sudden death. Japan is one of the few countries that report this statistic as a separate “annual-fatality” category, hence the significant numbers reported. The major medical causes of karōshi deaths are heart attack and stroke due to stress. Family enacted “death-by-overwork” lawsuits are not uncommon in the business world.

D. Subcultures

There are a great many subcultures found within the youth of modern Japan, many of which are visually and aesthetically stunning. Many of these, however, do not seem to explicitly find themselves upon the pages of Murakami’s work. Still, I will share a few of them in class with the understanding that we should not jump to stereotypical conclusions. One subculture that I do find some Murakami-esque interest in, though, is that of the “Freeter.” Also, we must keep our historical context in mind—Murakami is focusing upon the Japan of the 80’s not necessarily the country and society in its most current form.

Freeter/NEET

• Japanese expression for people between the ages of 15 and 34 who lack full time employment, or are unemployed, excluding homemakers and students

• The word freeter or freeta was first used in the late 1980s as a result of the bubble economy. It is a combination of the English word "free" and the German word "Arbeiter," meaning worker

• Freeters do not begin a career after high school or university, and instead elect to live as so called "parasite singles" with their parents

• In the beginning, freeters were somewhat (but not by the traditional, older generations, of course) glamorized as people pursuing their dreams and living life to its fullest. Generally, the “freeters” are largely viewed with some level of cultural contempt

• Freeters that do work tend to seek employment in convenience stores, supermarkets, fast food restaurants, and other low paying, low skill industries

• Their low income makes it difficult to start a family, and their lack of qualifications make it difficult to find a career later in life. This can become problematic when compared to the traditional norms of the Japanese business world, work ethic, and economy at large

• Since 2000, with increase in the number of young people who did not enter the labour market even after having left education, the term NEET (not in education, employment or training) was introduced from Great Britain. Some interpreted this as a reflection of the severity of the labour market, while others viewed it as a failure to foster young people’s desire to acquire skills or find a profession, including the ability to interact with others. Again, although this problem had existed for some time, it had not attracted society’s interest.

• The Japanese government has seriously grappled with youth employment problems since 2003

E. “Haruki Murakami’s Japan: See the real—and surreal—land of the rising sun” by Susie Rushton (The Independent Saturday o5 Feburary 2011)

At the Uniqlo UT store in Harajuku, Tokyo, printed T-shirts, packaged in canisters, are delivered to the customer automatically on vending-machine shelves. Some have manga designs, but discriminating shoppers also browse four styles of shirt bearing the words "Norwegian Wood", the title of the coming-of-age novel that made Haruki Murakami a literary star in 1987. The writer is due another big year in 2011. Norwegian Wood has been adapted into a movie to be released in UK cinemas next month. In September, his latest novel, 1Q84, will be published in English.

Murakami is often described as one of the world's greatest living novelists. Over the past two decades, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase and Kafka on the Shore have won him ardent fans everywhere. His fiction is wildly surrealist, frequently philosophical, but also accessible. His narrators are sensitive young men who sit in cafés, cook spaghetti and drink beer. They break up with girlfriends and then acquire new ones. They listen to jazz and classical music, or read American and Russian novels. They express themselves with decidedly un-Japanese directness. It's just that strange things happen to these regular guys: talking cats pop up, as do seers, psychics and even a giant frog who can cause earthquakes. Dreams, memory and reality blur in a labyrinth of competing narrative threads, but the typical Murakami narrator is almost always standing in an actual place, his worn-out tennis shoes taking him to subway stations and shopping areas that exist today. Usually, those places are somewhere on the east coast of Japan, specifically western central Tokyo – where the author himself now lives.

The best place to start a Murakami Tour is at Otsuka Station, far from the glittering skyscrapers, flagship designer stores and Lost in Translation locations usually on a Tokyo itinerary. A few practicalities first: save cash by finding a better-value, connecting flight to Japan via Paris, like the route operated by Air France. Buy a JR rail pass while you're in the UK – it allows unlimited travel, including on bullet trains. You'll need a Pasmo card (like London's Oyster) for the excellent subway. Sprawling Tokyo isn't a city for walking, despite the habits of the lovers in Norwegian Wood ("We kept walking all over Tokyo in the same meandering way, climbing hills, crossing rivers and railway lines, just walking and walking with no destination in mind...").

From Otsuka, join the Toden Arawaka streetcar line, one of Tokyo's two surviving trams. The 20-minute ride to the end of the line takes you between the backs of tidy, white-tiled houses, affording a close-up view of life in urban Japan. It doesn't take much imagination to gaze on to a sunny veranda and see a melancholy young Murakami hero smoking cigarette after cigarette as Miles Davis drifts out from his stereo.

The tram terminates at Waseda, at the campus of the university of the same name. Murakami studied here in 1969, and so, too, does the narrator of Norwegian Wood, Toru Watanabe. Today, the area is leafy and peaceful, with a red-brick ceremonial hall modeled in the American Ivy League style. It's hard to believe that Waseda's tranquil avenues, lined with cafés, book stores and stationers, are just a couple of subway stops from the vertical neon fantasy of the Shinjuku station area. Here, go to DUG, the cozy jazz bar where Toru Watanabe sinks whisky-and-sodas (see dug.co.jp for a map).

Between 1974 and 1981, Murakami ran his own jazz bar, called Peter Cat. The bar is no more, but a stroll between the Sendagaya and Gaienmae subways takes you through Jingu Gaien gardens. This is where the author, noted for his love of running, trains for marathons. You'll pass Jingu baseball stadium, home to the Yakult Swallows. It was here in 1978, as American pitcher Dave Hilton thwacked the sweet spot that Murakami "first thought I could write a novel ... Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it". Writers seeking inspiration can see games from April to October.

In Murakami's world, characters either try to escape Tokyo – leaving it for rural Hokkaido to the north, or Shikoku to the south – or are drawn to it. One smaller city that often figures as the place characters "leave behind" is Kobe, three hours away by bullet train. Murakami was born in Kyoto (a stop on the same rail route), but he grew up in Kobe. It was completely rebuilt after the devastating earthquake in 1995, an event Murakami marks in after the quake. (Visit Kobe's touching Earthquake Memorial Museum, staffed by survivors of the disaster.) As a child, the writer lived in the wealthy suburb of Ashiya, a 10-minute ride on a local train from the city centre. A walk down the manicured river path is idyllic. Only the large sign with a symbol of a wave and the words "Tsunami Hazard Zone" recall the seismic peril beneath the ground.

Ninety minutes south of Kobe, across the Inland Sea, see rural Japan on Shikoku Island. Port town Takamatsu is the location for Kafka on the Shore. Slurp the Shikoku speciality, fat and silky sanuki udon noodles, which Murakami's idiot-savant Nakata enjoys with gusto, "I'm in udon central!" From here by train, like 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura, you can reach the forests and temples of Kochi.

Murakami's Japan doesn't titillate the visitor with geishas, samurai or Hello Kitty. But it offers both the romance of rural escape and an urban experience at once familiar, and yet unlike our own. Giant frogs and talking cats not included.

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