Japan: an epiphany of productivity

The tales of Japan can be both motivational and cautionary. I love Japan as a tourist, its culture and its people. In the past, I used to associate Japan with productivity, but now I find it something different. If there is such a thing as working-class aristocracy, I think it can be found in Japan.

The dying empire of the rising sun

Japan is beautiful. Its nature appears to be harmonically used by its people. Its streets look always busy, focused and happy. Everything is clean. Everybody is polite and considerate.

Yet the statistics show a different story. Many buildings are empty. There are not enough children, especially in rural areas. There are a very long deflation and a ghost of the economic crisis that is not very strong, but always present.

The always helpful people often perform flawlessly jobs that probably do not need to be done. Quite often it appears that the state sponsors them to give people feeling of purpose and power, especially the less educated or elderly people.

The beauty ideas of wabi-sabi already assume certain sublime sadness. But Japanese demographics is a much bigger reason for sadness. I simply do not want this beautiful country to decline, yet I do not know what to do except learn from its story.

Ups and downs

Japanese history is full of ups and downs. As the country was late to come out of feudalism during the Meiji Restoration, it embraced everything associated with progress. In 1905 the Japanese empire was progressive enough to build the most advanced weapons and win major victories against such superpowers as Russia. While the production might of Japan was destroyed in WWII, this cleared the path for young and ambitious innovators.

In 1980s Japan was probably the greatest economical superpower in the world, with the most productive factory workers, the most advanced robots, the Nobel prize-winning scientists, and the best quality of service imaginable. Japanese copied the best products of other nations and painstakingly perfected them. Japanese whiskey is more authentically Scottish than many labels found in Scotland. The musical instruments made by Tokai and Ibanez are often better than the Fender and Gibson guitars they were copied from. Japanese cars are more road-worthy than most American and European cars, at the same time being more reliable and cost-efficient.

The world was happily buying and appreciating everything produced in Japan, and Japanese employees perfected the art of productivity. And then the Japanese people could not increase their productivity any more, they even hardly had the energy to make children. The economy was growing very fast between the 1960s and 1980s yet it stagnated and slowly decreases from 1990s to this days. Is the country experiencing a sort of burnout?

The working-class superhero

Japan has comics dedicated to humble employees saving their companies and never discovering their secret identities. The working hours are very long. In fact, they are so long that half of the population cannot be involved in the production. The women need to stay at home, clean and make food, raise children and take care of the family budget. In Israel and to the lesser extent in the US and Europe, women work as well as men between 9 am and 3 pm, then they come home and take care of the children. Then they work into the night as the men take care of the home and the children. Not so in Japan, where men often work from 8 am to 10 pm without sickness leaves and very few holidays.

Being fully invested in their jobs and having almost no time for any reasonable hobby, Japanese workers identify themselves with the companies they work at and the job that they do there. Doing a great job is a motivator, the reason to work hard and invest an extra effort. When you buy a Japanese product, the person packing it will often put inside a small token of appreciation, a sweet, a greeting card or a folded paper masterpiece. The train will always come on time. The waiters will take no tips, in fact, they will be offended if offered tips.

It is not uncommon for a Japanese to work more than 30 years for one employer. The office becomes a second family and the ties between the employees are very deep and significant. Like in every family, conflicts are usually solved quietly via communication, arbitration, and negotiation. There are very few lawyers, very few outsiders and very few unemployed.

Every superpower comes at a cost, and superior productivity is not easy to sustain.

Like the Spartans before them

The story of Japan associates in my mind with the story of Sparta. Spartans were the best warriors of antiquity, who dedicated their lives to the art of war and the battlefield comradery. Sparta had one of the best armies in the ancient world. When Sparta was young it could easily organize an army of 30,000 warriors. During the war with Athens and Phoebs, it could still send 10,000 warriors. In the period of Cartage and Rome, Sparta was a kind of theme park with less than 2000 Spartans showing their grace to the tourists. The decline of Sparta was demographic. Spartans were beautiful people, too busy perfecting their athletic abilities to actually have children. They could not father enough children to populate phalanx decimated by vicious wars.

Is the measured productivity real?

One of the questions I have: is the measured productivity real? Spending more hours at work, men become less productive as they do not have enough rest and new experiences. Instead of going home they have conferences which would be avoided in other cultures. They are less prone to take fewer risks and not to think out of the box, as being fired is not an acceptable option. If a person is not very effective for the company but very efficient and loyal, the company will still try to find him a place to honor mutual responsibility. Thus many great people do the almost pointless job. It is almost like an art form.

It is very easy to fool the measurements. Work every day, get a satisfied boss, build something of quality and you will be highly productive. If your product does not get sold with high revenue margins, it is not your fault. In fact, Asian revenue margins are significantly lower than American or European, because of the companies loyalty to its people and unwillingness to cut production.

Can we redefine aristocracy?

Aristocracy is literally the “power of the best”. Who are “the best”? People who work hard all their life to become very good at what they do, are very loyal to the place where they live and where they work, will do anything for their bosses, yet value their honor above even their lives. In Japan honor, loyalty, politeness, and dedication are common. There are no samurais in Japan, yet most Japanese feel that they live by some code of honor. Japanese take pride in who they are and what they do, love every art they choose and treat everything very seriously and fully. For an outsider, all Japanese appear to be slightly aristocratic.

Doing something for the honor of doing it properly is a great motivator, yet when the task itself becomes meaningless nobody has the heart to simply stop doing it. And this is the ultimate catch of the productivity-centered culture. Unless something terrible happens, the people will be too busy in what they do to embrace the latest trends, too careful to try something that can lead to ruin but can also build new industries, too loyal to cut lose the less profitable structures. Japanese are afraid to have children because raising children properly is a huge responsibility. Every train comes on time and all the roads are clean in Japan. All the things built in Japan appear to me as a sort of an art form. Yet this perfectionism does not allow for growth. Japanese have the best science and technology, the best art and food the money can buy, yet the new and exciting inventions come from other countries.

What can we learn from Japan?

From the statistics I read, Korea is very similar to Japan 20 years ago, at the top of their economical power and facing a demographic crisis in the near future. China’s communistic regime is trying to invert similar trades, and it can be successful with some luck. Europe is in no way an example of productivity, yet it is aristocratic and its population is aging. The countries with successful growth are anything but aristocratic. They have no respect for the elders. The young people change jobs or relocate every couple of years. The women are integrated into the workforce. Immigration and foreign workers efficiently supplement changing markets. The current era belongs to young and agile, but this may change in less than a generation. Nobody knows what the future holds.