Comment by johnnyanmac
3 days ago
> Japan is infamous for a certain kind of work culture that demands being in the office even when it's lot necessarily productive to do so; so onerous that it harms domestic life, among others.
I think that's the opposite. They care too much. That collective school cleanup example above has a similar extreme. If you literally live to work, you'll forget about caring for yourself and collapse.
Tokyo Government just introduced a 4 day work week for its workers. You'd be surprised how much friction there has been to this, by the workers.
They care about the wrong things. Ultimately everyone cares about something and then there is tons of things no one or that anybody doesn't care from simply because you have limited amount of possible care to give.
It's another country's culture. It's really hard to holistically judge what is right or wrong. If people want to be a workaholic, then I can't really judge their lifestyle.
That said, yes. If this is pressure from their society, they probably should revisit those mindsets. Especially when the birth rate right now really can't afford a higher mortality raet. Fortunately they are starting to in some sectors.
I can't find the link now but I read a post by an immigrant to Japan who attended one of these school cleanups at their child's school. They said basically that they seemed to be the only one really scrubbing / actually cleaning properly rather than just putting in a performative effort to wipe something down.