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Is this a cultural thing? I've never been to Japan so I'm kind of flying blind here but I'd assign that 5 yen as a convenience cost and happily pay that price to avoid the long line. I have a hard time thinking the Japanese people place no value on their time whatsoever...
walmart(lines to get in line) vs. Kroger(generally pretty fast) vs. giant eagle(empty walk right up and pay).
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> There's a large population of chinese students in Japan who are very happy to work at such rates. > which in Tokyo barely cover your transport and lunch costs Is this another of those things where paying a person an non-livable wage is going to be construed as a Good Thing™? How about we raise the prices so the people serving us the food can, you know, live?
train is extremely cheap in tokyo and eating is cheap as well. with one hour of this kind of work you can pay for both and you just dont work one hour so the rest is profit.
Running out of people? Most large corporations in Japan have WAY too much staff doing about nothing productive all day long. This is due to the long standing tradition that started in the 70s to keep hiring most university graduates well before they graduate in April every single year, even though there is no such need for hiring (kind of social contract between the Japanese government and the large corporations). If…
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Japan may have been the loser, but it also had a big postwar economic boom. To me this seems like the more obvious cause.
The Allied Powers had seemingly learned the lessons of Versailles and didn't try to punish the losers (well, not as much), instead letting them grow. Thus why them not being victorious didn't matter, I guess.
This was true for Germany but not for japan. Due to hard feelings over ww2 and of course racial animosity/hatred, our plan for japan was deindustrialization. We wanted japan to be at least a few decades behind the US and turn more of their nation into docile agrarian farmers. We also instituted starvation policy to thin out and subjugate the japanese. There was rampant starvation in japan in the first few years after ww2.
We had troops specifically assigned to destroy japanese industrial/engineering/science capacity. One of the most famous was the destruction of japan's cyclotron.
Keep in mind that we were an extremely racist nation 70 years ago and we had just nuked and firebombed japan into complete rubble. Whereas germans were "our white aryan brothers" ( it's absurd to think it now, but that's how the leaders of the US thought back then ) and we felt an obligation to rehabilitate them, the japanese were viewed as inferior asians with plenty of motive to attack the US again.
The only reason japan was allowed to reindustrialize was the soviet threat and the korean war. We needed japan to help seal off the soviets, chinese and north koreans.
It's fascinating stuff. If the communist threat didn't exist and the korean war never occurred, japan might be a more agrarian society today controlled by the US administrators.
Partly this is a recognition that Japan Inc. has historically awarded a blended compensation package which includes salary, benefits similar to most first-world countries, and a host of non-pecuniary terms which are not broadly enjoyed across all W-2 employees in the US. ("Expectation of lifetime employment" is a biggie; there are substantially more subtle terms, too, like "We're going to take care of you , and we si…
This was the example I was thinking of when reading the first part of your message. I'm glad you said it because I feared it would've been seen as an exaggeration if I added it as an example I've heard of.
So to anyone who is reading about this and doesn't trust a single anonymous source, let this second anonymous source add on that I've read about the same behavior, and even more disturbing behavior happening to unmarried female employees (where do you think they source the brides from?).
That said, I've heard about these cases at a few companies. I do not have sufficient evidence to generalize beyond that, only to point out that it does happen (and is tolerated by the legal system, no chance of that in the US), not the rate at which it happens nor if it is a fair generalization of Japanese companies in general.
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> the problem is young people are too smart to take them up on their pitiful 700 yen per hour offers, There's a large population of chinese students in Japan who are very happy to work at such rates.
> There's a large population of chinese students in Japan who are very happy to work at such rates. > which in Tokyo barely cover your transport and lunch costs Is this another of those things where paying a person an non-livable wage is going to be construed as a Good Thing™? How about we raise the prices so the people serving us the food can, you know, live?
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I can appreciate that having work intervene is weird, but that's the culture apparently. Studies have shown having a partner increases wages and helps you live longer. And the Japanese live the longest. Strange coincidence.
Japanese marriage rates are in long term decline. They don't marry all that much.
Running out of people? Most large corporations in Japan have WAY too much staff doing about nothing productive all day long. This is due to the long standing tradition that started in the 70s to keep hiring most university graduates well before they graduate in April every single year, even though there is no such need for hiring (kind of social contract between the Japanese government and the large corporations). If…
This makes no sense to me. Why wouldn't the companies expand their output if they have idle workers? I feel like you described 1/10th of the issue and it's up to the reader to fill in the rest?
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Wow. Choosing your wife for you? Who and where was this company?! My experience with a traditionally Japanese run megacorp/zaibatsu in the heart of Tokyo is much more like a traditional western company. The minutia of HR is very Japanese and hard to get your head around, but the broad strokes of salary/bonus/non monetary benefits (I had to look up what pecuniary means) is basically the same.
I don’t think “choosing” is the right word, it’s more like providing the opportunity to meet someone with drinking events, goukon etc. At least if his company is like the ones I’ve seen.