Those slacker Japanese

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL has an article titled Slacker Nation, describing the recent hodo-hodo zoku phenomenon in Japan, in which more young people are turning down promotions to management positions or not bothering to seek those positions to begin with. (They translate hodo-hodo zoku as “so-so folks”. That’s a bit clumsy, but it’ll do for now.)

In a country once proud of its success-driven “salarymen,” managers are grappling with a new phenomenon: Many young workers are shunning choice promotions — even forgoing raises — in favor of humdrum jobs with minimal responsibilities.

Here’s data point #1

A study this year by the consulting firm Towers Perrin found just 3% of Japanese workers say they’re putting their full effort into their jobs — the lowest of 18 countries surveyed.

What would a newspaper article be without a cry of alarm?

“They’ll ruin Japan with their lax work ethic,” says labor consultant Yukiko Takita. “They’re supposed to be leaders of the next generation.”

And what’s a story about Japan without the obligatory comic book reference?

In a sign of the times, “Otaryman,” a comic-book series about a less-than-driven salaryman, has become one of this year’s surprise hits. In the book, the protagonist passes his days worrying about his colleagues’ files spilling onto his desk rather than trying to impress bosses. “He just plods along (in) life, and has very small ambitions,” says Makoto Yoshitani, the series’s 28-year-old author. “I think people my age find that comforting.”

One wonders if Mr. Yoshitani, the creator of that comic, also “plods along in life”. Plodders seldom create successful comic book series.

Some of the information presented doesn’t quite fit together. Consider this:

Miya Matsumoto…says she’s tried everything…to push her subordinates to be more ambitious. But her team members rarely show interest in bigger responsibilities, she says….The 31-year-old Ms. Matsumoto says she threw herself into her job, often staying overnight in the office to get work done. “Don’t you want to get ahead? Don’t you want to get rich and drive a nice car?”

But then look at some of the supporting evidence:

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, a destination for the city’s elite, says only 14% of eligible employees took higher-level exams for management positions in 2007 — down from 40% three decades ago. The electronics giant Sanyo Electric Co. says it’s having an increasingly harder time filling demanding management positions like supervisors for overseas factories.

Unless the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is radically different from my local prefectural government, I don’t think anyone’s going to get rich working there. And a lack of interest in taking a management position is a bit different than a lack of interest in relocating overseas, particularly if overseas means a less-than-glamorous assignment somewhere else in Asia.

Here comes the academic expert quote blaming those evil capitalists:

Chiaki Arai, who has written about the hodo-hodo phenomenon in newspapers, blames Japan’s economic woes during the long slump in the 1990s and early 2000s. He says young workers saw older generations throw themselves into their work, only to face job and pay cuts as companies restructured. Now, young employees are cautious about giving too much of themselves — even if it means less money or prestige, Dr. Arai says.

Other possibilities that Dr. Arai doesn’t mention:

1. Previous generations were driven first to rebuild a destroyed country after the war, and then to achieve a level of affluence equivalent to that in Western countries. Both of those goals have been achieved. The younger generations do not necessarily have–nor should they be expected to have–the same sense of urgency to work for the national cause. The younger generations have also come of age in the affluent environment their elders created. That means they can live quite comfortably without having to shuffle papers related to zinc bushing production until 10 o’clock every night. There would be even less incentive for putting in that sort of overtime if the employer were in the public sector, such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

2. Japan was/has been a feudal, group-oriented society for more than a millenium. But people now have a degree of individual freedom that previous generations would have found inconceivable. That means they are less likely to think that dying in the service of the feudal lord, so to speak, is a virtue to be cultivated.

3. This phenomenon might also be a response to the practices of some Japanese corporations themselves. I don’t have statistics at hand, but I suspect the salary differential between the talented corporate high-flyers and the drones in Japan is not as great as in some Western countries. Some companies have taken that a step further:

The wage difference between managerial and rank-and-file positions has shrunk over the past decade as companies cut compensation amid restructuring. In 2005, division managers were paid about 2.2 times the rank-and-file worker, down from about 2.7 times in 1985.

And not mentioned is the anecdotal evidence on the Japanese-language part of the web that some less-than-scrupulous companies will pay overtime to regular employees while eliminating overtime payments altogether to management personnel. Those promoted to management positions have complained of losing money by taking the promotion, even if they received a raise to do so.

Further, let’s not forget that some Japanese companies have yet to realize that it is possible to require occasional overtime work without having management-level employees stay until 10:00 p.m. every night of the week and still thrive as a private-sector enterprise. Or that most public sector enterprises really don’t need to have anyone regularly work overtime at all.

People should be suspicious when anyone claims the younger generation’s behavior is driving the country to ruin. They should be doubly suspicious about such articles focusing on Japan. I’ve been reading pieces in American newspapers about crumbling Japanese traditions for the past 30 years. Yet some might argue there has been a greater collapse of cultural traditions and the work ethic in the U.S. during that same period.

Are the younger Japanese taking it easy these days? Undoubtedly, but it’s not just because they’re lazy–their priorities are understandably different. Most of the Japanese I see are still quite willing to exert themselves and devote their time to an enterprise–provided that it’s something they’re interested in and is rewarding to them on a personal level.

Who knows? If things break the right way, the existence of the hodo-hodo zoku might yet cause the Japanese business sector to reconsider from the ground up how to go about treating their employees.