Viewed Sideways. Donald Richie
the term. Rather, work is socialized since social talk can serve as work because its larger purpose is the important cementing of personal relations within the working force.
Thus, the amount of time spent at what we in the West would call work is much less than what one might expect. The notorious efficiency of Japan does not depend upon time spent. Rather, it depends upon the absence of intramural conflict (though with lots of intramural competition) and an ideological solidarity that is almost beyond the comprehension of the United States and most of Europe.
This is of use mainly (or merely) in the hours, days, years spent together—in the creation and continuation of the group. This is equally true when the office is finally left. It is often left as a group since no one wishes to break cohesion by leaving first. Then the group divides into sub-groups that then go out on the town, to favorite pubs and bars, to continue the social amelioration that has traditionally been so important to Japan.
Far from early to bed, the upwardly mobile Japanese male is fortunate if he catches the last train home. And often he will stay overnight with an office friend, an event that his wife back home will accept as a part of the normal temporal rhythm of her spouse.
In places where day and night are divided according to the needs of actual work—such as in, I don’t know, let’s say Chicago—the pattern may be closer to the ideal of which Japan so brags. As it is, Japanese temporal reality is something different—far closer to that of Bangkok or Jakarta, the rest of Asia, places where time is almost by definition something that is spent together.
Yet, for a culture as time-conscious as Japan’s (one sees mottoes framed on office walls such as “Time is money”), the amount of real temporal waste is surprising. Here, too, the country shows its ancient Asian roots.
Take the matter of appointments, for example. In the big business world of the West, being punctual is sacrosanct. Again, actuality may be another matter, but all subscribe to the idea that to be on time is to be good.
In Asia, however, this is not so. One is frequently left cooling one’s heels in the great capitals of the Orient. And Japan, despite its Western temporal veneer, is no different. If you are meeting a member of your group, then he will wait and you can be late. If you are meeting a nonmember you can also be late because it is not so important that you meet or not.
Spatially, the Japanese are very efficient regarding rendezvous. There are known places to meet. In Tokyo one meets in front of Ginza’s Wako Department Store, in front of the Almond Coffee Shop in Roppongi, in front of the statue of the dog Hachiko in Shibuya, a famous beast who loyally waited years for its dead master.
Most waiting Japanese are in the position of Hachiko. It is rare to observe anyone being on time. Those who are on time and are doing the waiting are those in an inferior position (in Japan it is the girls who wait for the boys, and not the other way around), or those who want something from the late arrival. Time is money, indeed, but for all this show of making appointments, Japanese standards of punctuality are closer to those of Samarkand than of Paris or London. Still, one wonders. With time so precious that it must be doled out in little pieces, how then can it be so wantonly wasted?
Well, it is not one’s own time that is being wasted. It is the other person’s, the he or she kept waiting. In fact, one’s own time supply is a bit short. That is why one is late, you see.
We in the West, who make nothing like the fuss about time that the Japanese do, would be insulted to be kept waiting for, let us say, an hour. Yet many Japanese would wait an hour, standing by the store, coffee shop, or bronze dog.
And is this not perhaps then the largest difference between the time concepts of East and West? Time is not moral in Asia, it cannot be used as a weapon. And it cannot really be used to indicate virtue (hardworking, efficient) or vice (lax, late for appointments).
It is rather a seamless entity, an element like the air in which we live. To live naturally with time, says Asia, is to pay no attention to it. And Japan, despite modernization, still subscribes to this ancient tradition. Dig down, through company minutes and office hours, and there, firm, eternal, is time itself.
—1984
Japan: Half a Century of Change
When I came to Japan in a cold January in 1947 the first thing that I noticed was change. It was dramatic. Tokyo, like most Japanese cities, had been nearly destroyed during WWII. People were living in the subway tunnels, there was not enough food, and yet already on this burned plane of black ash was rising the lemon yellow of all the new buildings as the odor of burned wood gave way to the smell of fresh-cut lumber.
Every day I saw roads being made and canals being filled as the new city burgeoned. Watching the carpenters at work—sawing through the new wood—I saw that their tools cut as they were pulled, not pushed as they were back in the United States.
I noticed this with understanding—this was something I recognized. For years I had heard that Japan was a kind of topsy-turvy land where everything was done backwards. This had been among the earliest accountings of the country—a model created by early visitors, which had finally reached the snow-covered plains of Ohio, where I had heard of it. So here was something else I could relate to besides all the change: a paradigm for Japan, a model through which I could grasp the metamorphosing place.
Seemingly different, Japan has always seemed to demand a working model for comprehension, as though the place needed an articulated map, or a working metaphor. Here I was, brand new, and already searching around for one.
My viewpoint was that of unchanging Ohio, from whence I, just twenty-one, had come. Topsy-turvy land fit my needs quite well. When fellow Occupiers, looking at the carpenters sawing backwards, smiled and said, “These people have got a long way to go,” I agreed.
That was because these people were by definition trying to catch up with the West. They had been at this for some time now, nearly a century, and taken many a wrong turn. But now, thanks to us, they were finally on the right road.
This is what I thought as I stood at the Ginza crossing looking at the kimono and old army uniforms, hearing the geta and watching Hokusai’s Fuji being blocked out by all the new buildings. They might lose a view, I philosophized, but they were gaining a city.
This was something we Occupiers could understand. The old Japanese military model had proved faulty and the new American economic model seemed to work a lot better. Finding something familiar in an attitude that estimated everything solely by its practical bearing on current interests, we Occupiers worked hard to help put these reversed folks right. There was land reform, the big business cartels were broken up, democracy was introduced, and individuality was being governmentally promoted.
And as I looked at the city of Tokyo growing taller around me, at the Japanese around growing healthier and wealthier every day, I saw that my topsy-turvy paradigm was itself upside down. I had found them reversed only because I came from the other side of the earth. But if I thought about it, at this very instant the people of Ohio were standing on their heads. And, as for my belief that They were catching up with Us: They already had.
*
I left Japan in 1949 to go back to school at Columbia University, and when I returned to Japan in 1954 the Occupation was three years in the past. Land reform was over, the big business cartels were more or less back in place, democracy was being digested away. I saw so much had changed that I did not recognize the place.
What I saw as new was now even more interestingly mingled with what wasn’t. Old Shinto shrines on the top of new high-rises, white-robed acolytes on motorbikes, and ancient zaibatsu executives reclined in their new steel-and-glass headquarters.
On the streets I still saw some kimono but this traditional dress was overpowered by copies of Dior’s New Look. Geta were still seen, and heard, but Western-style shoes predominated, getting ready for the Gucci tsunami to come. And standing on the Ginza crossing I saw that Fuji-san had now entirely disappeared, covered by layer after layer of new buildings. And I remembered my earlier model, the now-vanished topsy-turvy land, as I gazed at the backward people who were rapidly becoming