A crazy week

When I joined this project, I was warned not to take it as representative of future projects. I was told that this was one of the most laid-back, relaxed, leisurely projects this office has seen. So for a month I would get off at 7 or 8 pm, and go shop in Shibuya for my new apartment. Then everything changed this last week. I didn't get off till 10:30pm at the earliest, and at the latest, I got done at 2:30 am. It sounds like this type of schedule is what I should expect as the norm. Moreover, I learned that this McK lifestyle is much better than the average Japanese company lifestyle. Indeed, in the first market segmentation analysis that I just finished last week (the reason I had to work late every day), I found some very interesting segments within the Japanese population. Let's just say that a huge percentage of the population--around 20%, is what we jokingly labelled "Karoshi".

Of course, the actual rate of Karoshi is quite low. Unfortunately, the other rate that is also low is the birth rate in Japan. There are probably a number of reasons for why Japanese families are not producing enough babies to sustain the population. One, for example, is that Japanese women are widely expected to sacrifice their career ambitions to raise families--an expectation that might keep modern, career-minded Japanese women away from reproduction. Another is probably this cultural expectation around the amount of work a worker needs to put in, regardless of gender. Even if the woman stays home after marriage, she still needs the man to be home in order to conceive in the first place, and then also to help out with child rearing. In this country that has seen a declining household income (in real terms) in the past decade, more and more women are working (at least part-time), thus the necessity for men's help in the house are increasing, but the demanding corporate culture ensures such demand is not met. Result? Decling birth rate.

Perhaps we don't need to protest against cultural practices that we see as bad because they are, after all, unsustainable in the long term. For Japan to survive, let alone to thrive, this cultural expectation will have to change.