XIV. Yarikata

Suddenly I find myself halfway through my stay in Japan, which is a very strange feeling. I have already experienced so many new things that January feels ages ago, yet I can't believe how fast the days fly by. I try not to think too much about leaving Japan and focus on Golden Week instead. Having worked with Hitachi for 2 months, I feel in need of a holiday, even though I only work 4 days a week and my overtime hours are limited. I must say I have gained a new respect for the salarymen and office ladies of Japan. Granted, the image of the overworked, underpaid and sleep-deprived salaryman is a cliché, but when I observe my colleagues I do think the company makes up a much bigger part of their life than is the case in the Netherlands. For example, when his wife delivered their first child, my colleague only had the weekend off and returned to his desk on Monday, his wife still in the hospital. He had been on a business trip a week before his wife was due. My female colleagues are, naturally, at the bottom of the unit’s hierarchy. Usually they stay longest, often clocking up to 3 hours overtime. Managers, too, stay longer than they have to. Often, their business trips fall in weekends or on holidays, in order to limit the impact on normal business proceedings.

But does all this devotion make the Japanese more productive or better at what they do? Working at a division that is largely involved in information gathering and dissemination, as well as generating a good deal of information in English, I must say the answer is no. Over the years, Hitachi has developed a rather peculiar form of English. In an earlier report, I already mentioned the infamous Hitachi-go: a mixture of business Japanese, technical terms, jargon and a couple of "invented words," that even employees of similar Japanese companies don’t understand. The term "monozukuri" is an excellent example. It means something along the lines of manufacturing, although it can also include design or management of production processes. Japanese from outside the company generally do not know what it means. In fact, the word is so wholly untranslatable that it often appears in Hitachi's English-language texts as well.

This special Hitachi-speak leaves its mark on most English-language texts we produce. In Brussels I received intensive article-writing training, learning to write succinct and accessible articles, often about complex subjects. There are a few tricks of the trade, such as concise, enticing headlines, clear phrasing, and putting the essence of an article in the first few sentences whilst saving background information (that which would usually be put in the introduction of books and essays) at the end of the article. After all, most readers have little time and even shorter attention spans, and getting the correct information across is essential. Unfortunately, all my pieces for Hitachi's newsletter (including some really good headlines) were reviewed and largely rewritten by a Japanese colleague, rendering them as dry and factual (and, frankly, boring) as the articles from previous issues. This confrontation with the "yarikata" (way of doing things) of the company, which is essentially reducing the effectiveness of its own (information) products, was a little frustrating.

At the core of the problem is, I think, the reliance on the company's yarikata. Once a certain practice has been established, it is virtually impossible to change it. And even if you manage to make some changes, your work has to go through such a long chain of people that by the time it comes back to you it’s hardly recognizable. The same thing often goes for top-down instructions. There is a popular children’s game where someone whispers a sentence into his neighbour's ear, who in turn whispers it into the next person's ear, who whispers it into someone else's ear, and so forth, until the last person in the group is reached and he then repeats the sentence out loud. Laughter is the result: the original meaning of the sentence is completely lost. This whispering hierarchy, with instructions trickling down from bucho to kacho to sempai, can form a communication problem even larger than the language, and sometimes results in superfluous work.

Yet, despite these more trying aspects of working in a Japanese work environment, it is still a great experience- not because of the system, but because of the people who are all very friendly and at the same time quite committed to the work we do. Even though I want to work to live, instead of living to work as some Japanese are doing, I do think the devotion of Japanese to their company can be fascinating to watch. If a little impractical at times.

XII. Ghibli

The blossoms have all but gone now and in the office, last month’s frantic activity has been replaced by calmer planning and introduction meetings. Last week, a group of employees was introduced that came to work with us, having previously worked in another part of the company. This morning, I went to a meeting where all Global Business divisions introduced their plans for the coming financial year. Unfortunately, the presentations were rather difficult to follow. Not because of the speakers’ speed or unclear pronunciation, but because of what my colleague termed “Hitachi-go”: too much company lingo. And finally, this afternoon, our new colleague (a real nyuushain, fresh out of university) joined us. After an extensive briefing about the team’s work, we are going out for his welcome party. Although I have been under the weather since Tuesday (flu-like symptoms), I will of course come along- but no sake tonight.

Apart from these new developments, we’ve also begun working on The Caring Tree, Hitachi’s CSR newsletter. Thanks to my colleague who has devised a system of forms people reporting their CSR activities can fill in, only two topics required much back-and-forth e-mailing to get sufficient data for the article. It’s a nice change from the research to be able to write straightforward pieces again- thanks to all the concise article-writing training I received in Brussels, I was able to write the bulk of the articles in one day.

Of course, I had some free time as well, this week. Last weekend I went to the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka. I have seen some of the anime studio’s films before (Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind) but even though I like them, I am not a hardcore fan. Many others are, however, and we had to book our tickets a month in advance. But it was worth it: the museum was built in typical Ghibli-style, with pastel-coloured walls, winding staircases, odd turrets and stained glass windows depicting scenes from some of the studio’s most famous anime films. On the ground floor there was an exhibition of various animation techniques, including a carrousel similar to those used in 18th century Europe. But this one, lit by a stroboscope lamp, showed 3-D animation. This room, as well as the quaint study/library/drawing studio upstairs, with countless Miyazaki sketches tacked to the walls, was my favourite part of the museum. There was a special animated film as well (one that can only be viewed in the museum). The best thing about the film was not the plot, which was a little simple, nor even the animations, but watching it surrounded by Japanese children who really got into the story, holding their breath, laughing uncontrollably and reading aloud all the hiragana that featured in the film. The museum’s motto “Let’s lose our way together” doesn’t really apply to the museum itself, as it is a little small and not quite the Disney-like overwhelming fantasy experience one expects, but I liked it very much. Standing on the roof, taking pictures of (and with) a Laputian robot statue, it struck me once again that Japanese have an imagination and a fairytale-world of their own, less sugary-sweet than Disney, but perhaps even more imaginative.