A Lateral View. Donald Richie
that such have had of themselves. Thus, the Japanese, taking over this image and making it theirs, now insist that they are a hard-working people and are more flattered than wounded when called workaholics. Such a role means rising at dawn, rushing to the office, putting in long hours, racing home and going to bed early to rest for the next fulfilling day.
Since this is the official version, it is officially supported. And since everyone has nominally gone home, buses stop running at ten-thirty; the subways stop at midnight, and the trains shut down half an hour later. Unlike that of New York and Paris, shameless night-owl abodes, Japanese civic transportation does not run all night long.
Yet, the populace is no more off the streets at twelve now than it was in old Tokugawa Japan. The entertainment districts are filled with people long after midnight. These are not at home resting for the next busy day. They are getting around the night spots by taking taxis.
Nor do the Japanese actually get up at dawn. Indeed, nowadays, a majority does not get to work until ten o’clock, also the hour when the bazaar at Rangoon opens. To be sure, some attempt an earlier arrival. Being first into the office in the morning supports, and in part creates, the modern idea of the Japanese as being very hard workers.
And the last out as well. One is supposed to hang around even though one’s work may be finished. Being one of the group is considered important and rushing out to conform to an egotistical timetable is bad modem form. Rather, one subscribes to the group timetable. This has nothing to do with working hard. It has to do merely with attendance.
Indeed, as one looks more closely at the manner in which modem Japan structures the business day, one becomes very aware of the differences between modem and traditional timekeeping and how these intermingle.
Once the modem rush to the office is over and the business day is actually begun, the time scheme becomes traditional. There is lots of discussion, lots of stopping to drink tea—and nowadays lots of visits to the ubiquitous coffee shop to talk some more. Nor is this talk confined to work in the narrow Western sense of the term. Rather, work is socialized, and social talk can serve as work because its larger purpose is the cementing of personal relations.
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 absence of intermural conflict, lots of intramural competition, and an ideological solidarity which is almost beyond the comprehension of Europe and America. 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 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 which then go out on the town, to favorite pubs and bars, to continue the social amelioration which 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 rhythm of her spouse.
She may even encourage the event. I know of one young office worker who would like nothing better than to leave his company confreres and return to wife and child. But this she discourages because if he were seen by the neighbors coming home early they would certainly gossip, and the rumor would spread that he was not properly getting on in his company career.
In places where day and night are divided strictly according to the needs of actual work—I don’t know, let’s say, Chicago—the pattern may be closer to the ideal of which Japan brags. As it is, Japanese temporal reality is something different—far closer to that of Bangkok orJakarta, the rest of Asia, places where time is almost by definition something which is spent together.
That a good deal of time in Japan is wasted (endless tea and coffee breaks, lots of after-hours in cabarets) is a Western, not a Japanese criticism. Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.
Yet, for a culture as time-conscious asJapan (one sees mottos on office walls: 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 here 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 non-member you can also be late because it is not so important whether 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
Shinjuku’s Kinokuniya Bookstore, in front of Ginza’s Wako
Department Store, in front of the Almond Coffee Shop at Rop
pongi, and at Shibuya in front of the statue of Hachiko, famous
loyal dog who waited years there for its dead master.
Most waiting Japanese are in the position of Hachiko. It is rare
to observe anyone being on time. Indeed, it appears as though
one portion of the nation (smaller) is punctilious and that the rest
(larger) is flagrantly errant.
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 about) or those who want something from the late arrival. Time is money, indeed—but then, come to think of it, the motto is written usually in English and in a Japanese situation only Japanese is operative. 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, must be compared to legal tender, how then can it be so wantonly wasted? Well, it is not one’s own time that is being wasted, to be sure. It is the other person’s, he or she who is waiting. In fact, one’s own time supply is somewhat 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 mortally insulted to be kept waiting, let us say, an hour. Yet many Japanese would wait an hour, standing by store, coffee shop or bronze dog. And is this not perhaps then the largest difference between the time concept of East and West? Time is not moral in Asia; it cannot be used as a weapon. (Do you realize that you have kept me waiting for fifteen minutes?) And it cannot really be used to indicate virtue (hard-working, 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 its modernization, still subscribes to this ancient tradition. Dig down through company minutes and office hours and there, firm, eternal, is time itself.
—1984
II
Tokyo, the Impermanent Capital
THOUGH THE CITIES of Japan, particularly Tokyo, appear to the foreign visitor to be reassuringly (or distressingly) Western, acquaintance with these modern-seeming urban complexes indicates that they are not Western nor, indeed, in any Western sense, modern. There are the high-rise structures, the elevated highway networks, and the proliferating suburbs all familiar to the West, but the city functions in a completely un-Western manner. Tokyo may look like Los Angeles but, as the visitor soon discovers, it does not act like it.
The first indication of this occurs when the Western visitor attempts to find his way about the city. He assumes that any city is planned and that there is a logic, however obscured, to be discerned in its structure.