Yumiko Nakayama

The Violence of shûshoku katsudô

How can the distinction of the self, other, and society be clearly defined in the Japanese context? This paper argues that no clear boundary between the subject and the object exists in Japan, that there is no “self” and “other” in Japanese society. Neither the “self” nor the “other” makes a decision, and as a result of this the present situation in Japan is very complex. I would like to address here the nature of shûshoku katsudô, the institutionalized practice of job-hunting by fourth-year Japanese university students, as an example of problems that this lack has caused. Job hunting is not an individual problem that only fourth year Japanese university students face. It is rather a social and structural problem in the society itself.

At first I would like to clarify how I use the word “Japanese” in this thesis. Edward Said argues in Culture and Imperialism (1993 160) that “if you belong in a place, you do not have to keep saying and showing it.” In this paper, I assume “the Japanese” to be those who belongs to Japan and do not have to keep saying and showing it.

“In Japan, companies hire collectively that year’s university graduates as regular staff, and after that most of the major companies continue to employ them until their retirement age” (Ôta 2001 18).* Therefore, for university students, job hunting is a very important thing. Job hunting is an important step on the path to becoming “shakai jin” (Chuo University Careers Office 2002a 4). In Japanese-English dictionaries, “shakai” is translated “society,” and “jin” as “man.” “Shakai jin” as a whole is translated “adult.” Therefore, students who do not take part in the institutionalized job hunt are not considered adults or members of society. In the practice of job hunting, the society admits the students into society. This idea is taken so naturally that it is difficult for any student not to take part in the practice. Though students should find a job after university graduation, the Japanese practice of the job hunting is dangerous because it systematically assimilates the students into “shakai” (society) and inhibits any deviation from the norm.

After finishing my third year at Chuo University, I spent a year in Syria to study Arabic and to experience life outside Japan. Afterwards, I found myself feeling strange toward many things in Japan, in particular the way I was expected to participate in the ritual of job hunting.

After starting my fourth year at Chuo University I felt a strong pressure that pushed me to participate in organized job-hunting activities. The obscure and invisible but very strong power constantly told me that I should take part in the practice. As I started thinking about where this pressure came from, I realized that the relation between “self and other” or the “individual and society” is the prime cause. Although the practice of job hunting is understood as an individual act (Chuo University Careers Office 2002a 5), it is not.

In order to know what “shakai jin” (a member of a society) is, the concept of “shakai” (a society) must be clear. According to Abe Kinya,

When the word society is used in the West, there is a premise that individuals make a society. Yet, even though [in Japan] we made the word “kojin” (an individual), the concept of an individualdid not exist in Japan at that time. Therefore, we started to use the word “shakai” without an understanding of what it is. Especially scholars and journalists used the word “shakai” in writing, and this caused an illusion, as if a society in the Western manner existed also in Japan as a matter of course. . . . But ordinary people were not so insensitive, and they rarely used “shakai” in their conversations. Instead, they continued using the word “seken” or “yononaka” [which had been in use before the word “shakai” appeared] in their daily life (Abe 1995a 28-9).

The word “shakai” emerged around 1877 as an equivalent for the word “society,” and the word “kojin” in 1884, to mean an “individual” (Abe 1995a 27). With the Meiji Restoration and the opening of Japan to the world, Abe explains, new words such as a “society” and “individual” were introduced into Japanese from English. Abe insists, however, that although we used the word “society” in Japan, the meaning of “shakai” was not equal to “society.”

In the Japanese compulsory education system is a subject called “shakai ka” (social studies). In newspapers, one finds a section called “shakai men” (the local news page), and journalists often use the word “shakai” in their writing. These are examples that show the way the Japanese use “shakai.” However, “shakai jin” (a member of a society, an adult) is used differently. Japanese use “shakai jin” mainly in conversation, but not often in writing. But Japanese do not use “shakai” in daily conversation. This is because what Japanese call and regard as “shakai jin” differs from the Western definition of “society.” In “Samurai and Self-Colonization in Japan,” Yoshioka Hiroshi demonstrates the meaning of “shakai” in the Japanese context.

Japan has colonized itself and . . . in the course of modernization and the drastic transformation of its culture [in the middle of the nineteenth century], the Japanese have played the role of the colonizer and the colonized at the same time. What has been basic in this process has been the fusion of the subject and the object of domination. This has made the structure of this culture unbelievably complex. . . . By creating a completely superficial sign, by sharing a pure signifier, the difference between subject and object is eliminated (1995 106).

Kobayashi Nobutake, the head of Chuo University Careers Office, gives a definition of “shûshoku” (employment) in Placement Guide 2003. “‘Shûshoku’ is a reformation of one’s life from a student to a worker, from a university to a workplace, from study to work, that is, a transformation from the ‘student’ who is under the protection of society to a responsible ‘shakai jin’” (2002a 4). This implies many things. First, university students do not have responsibility in society. Second, “shûshoku” is not a part of the sequence of school life but a complete “reformation” of one’s life. Also, the society into which the students go after graduation is cut off from the university. This is why job hunting is such a significant event in Japan. The institutional practice of job hunting is not merely the process of getting a job in Japanese society, but is a stepping-stone for students to become an adult, a filling in of the gap between two separate worlds.

One example is in the curriculum. At the Faculty of Policy Studies at Chuo University in 2002, 24 courses include “shakai” (society) in their titles. So many of the students at this faculty are supposed to know a lot about society, but are not taken as members of society. This contradiction is not even considered by Japanese. The one sense of “shakai,” which the students study in the university, is a “society” in its original meaning as in the West. And the other, which the students are to go into after graduation, is “seken” in meaning, even though the word “shakai” is used superficially.

Another good example is this graduation thesis itself. My friends asked me what subject I was working on for the thesis. I answered “job hunting.” Whenever I said this, the person who was asking looked at me in astonishment and said “Really?” The next word from many of my friends was “How?” or “Where do you get references?” As you can imagine from their reactions, job hunting is not regarded as a suitable topic for a graduation thesis. Interestingly enough, most of them had done job hunting themselves but did not see it as something that could be dealt with in academic writing. Some of them even made sure that there was no problem if I worked on the topic.

I spoke with one of my friends who graduated from my university last March and now works for an English conversation school. She said she wanted to belong to “shakai” (society), but did not know exactly what kind of job she wanted. Although she was not clear about what to do in the future, she started the job hunting at the end of the third year at University. This is the usual case (see Appendix 1, figure 1). I asked her if her parents said to her anything about job hunting or her future. According to her, her father said nothing and her mother did not actually say, “You have to do job hunting.” “But,” she continued, “When I look back, I thought about how my mother would feel if I did not do job hunting.” Then I asked whether she thought about options other than the job hunting. She told me that she did not think of not doing job hunting. “Not doing the job hunting is not taken as natural, is it?” (Personal communication with Katô Aiko). In this example, nobody forced her to do job hunting. She took it as natural to do so from the beginning, and she did not ask herself why she was doing it. There is no subject or object in her decision, and as a result, she does not even feel that she decided it. Karatani Kôjin states in his “Hihyô to posuto modan” (Criticism and the post modern),

Generally speaking, in Japanese organizations a decision or an order is not seen to come from a higher rank one-sidedly, but it is “naturally become.” . . . In reality, somebody has decided. However, it is made to look as if no one decided, and, at the same time, everyone decided. We must not forget that this kind of “naturally born” thing has the same or more compelling power than an apparent power structure or a system (1996a 169).

As for myself, I applied for the staff at Chuo University. The personnel department held a “guidance,” and there I submitted the papers that the university had asked for. Two days later, the candidates, including me, took a written examination. Fortunately, I received a phone call from the university staff saying that I had passed the examination. The next step was the first interview, on May 14th (Chuo University Personnel Department 2002a). Three interviewers and I were in the room. One was female, probably in her early thirties. The others were male. I assume that one was in his late fifties and the other in his middle thirties.

After I sat down in front of them, the oldest man told me to relax and then to recommend myself in a few minutes. After my words, he began to run through the resume and the application form. I could answer all the questions they asked and the interview went smoothly. Then the younger male asked: “You wrote in this paper that you are not applying for any other jobs. Is this right?” I said, “Yes, it is.” Then he continued, “While many other students are applying for many places in the present recession, are you really applying only for Chuo University? Are you in such a wealthy, privileged environment? Or do you have such confidence in yourself?” I answered, “There is no doubt that I am privileged if I look around the whole world. But I do not think I am wealthy enough by the Japanese standard of living not to get a job.” The interviewers seemed unsatisfied with my answer and said: “What if you fail?” I said, “Then I will think.”

Strange to say, I got an invitation call for the next interview. The second interview was on May 20th (Chuo University Personnel Department 2002b). This time, there were five interviewers in the room. One was female and the others were male. At the beginning of the interview, one of the middle-aged men sitting on the left said, “Could you recommend yourself in English, including why you chose Arabic to study and why you would like to join us?” I was about to speak when he added, “though I would not be able to notice if you make mistakes since I am not good at English.” He looked at the other interviewers and said, “Go ahead.” I talked for a few minutes about myself and said, “That’s all.” The one who asked me the question asked the others, “How was it?” The person sitting next to him began to speak. “I understand that you are fluent in English. With that English ability, why do you want to join us?” Nobody said anything about the content of my speech. Even though I felt I had done a thing for no purpose, I explained that I would like to open up the communication between people in the university. Although there are students coming from many other parts of the world, very few Japanese students are actually communicating with the foreign students. Even among the Japanese students or the professors, we say hello to the same people, talk with the same people, and say good bye to the same people every day. I said that this seemed a serious problem that we should solve. Of course these are among the things I said in English at the beginning. Then, the interviewer said to me again, “If you have that English, there must be other options except Chuo University. You are still young and have many possibilities. Why do you want to join us? There is no problem if your vision about yourself and Chuo University in the future and the vision of Chuo University are in the same direction.”

Although he did not say so, I could easily understand that he was saying, “But the directions of you and us are different.” If I had passed this interview I would have had a final interview. However, they did not call me, which meant that I did not pass. I could imagine that I would fail because the interviewers looked unsatisfied with what I was saying. I was also unsatisfied with what they said.

According to the Chuo University’s guidebook, the year 2010 will be the 125th anniversary of the university. Therefore, the university has announced “The 5 objectives for the renewal of the university”:

1. To bring up persons with humanity and an international way of thinking.

2. To bring up professionals who can play an active part in the world.

3. To send and exchange the results of the world-level research.

4. To create and use intellectual properties in cooperation with the regions.

5. To provide what is necessary in order to carry out the objectives mentioned above (Chuo University Information Department 2002a 11).

The university guidebook publicly states that “we need communication with others.” Yet that was not necessarily true. What I suggested in the job interviews completely matched the guidebook.

My friend who had spent two years in Syria and studied Arabic applied for a job in Mitsui Sôko, a distribution company. In the final interview she was asked what she would like to do in the company if she could join them. The company had many branches abroad, including in the Middle East, which is the reason she applied. So she answered that she wanted to work in the Middle East. She reports that the interviewers laughed and said, “Are you going to the Middle East?” She did not understand why she was laughed at. But after that, while she was talking with another female student who had applied for the same company, she found out. The female student said to her. “The interviewers told me that they were not going to hire female students from the beginning.” Until she reached the final interview, she had frequently been to the company for an orientation, a written examination and several interviews. These were all a waste of time if the company had decided that she would not join them. She talked about this with her mother. Her mother told her that this is the actual condition of the Japanese “shakai,” and she had to accept it (Chigono 2002).

There is one characteristic common in all the cases that I dealt with. Nobody says anything from his or her own position. One of the interviewers at Chuo University asked me “What if you fail?” Another interviewer asked me “What would you do if you were assigned to a section you are not interested in?” In my friend’s case, one of the interviewers asked her “What do you want to do if you can join us?” Yet, they never said, “What will you do if we do not accept you?” or “What will you do if we put you in a section that has nothing to do with your interest and skill?” or “What do you want to do in our company if we accept you?” If I fail to pass the selection, somebody is deciding it. If I am assigned to a certain section, there has to be someone who decides that. Yet, everything is taken as a thing that is going to be decided.

Who decides things in Japan? Kimura Bin, a psychiatrist, answers this question this way:

In the Japanese language and in the Japanese way of seeing and thinking, who the subject is or who the object is is decided according to the relationships between people. Before an individual is identified as an individual, the human relationships exist in the first place. That is to say “between a person and a person” is always the beginning. The way I am right now is not decided “inside” myself, but is constantly decided “outside” myself (1972 142).

Kimura furthers explains that

what we must not mistake is that “outside” the self does not really mean “the other.” “Outside the self” is at the same time, “outside the other.” It is not “inside” for anybody, that is to say, “between a person and a person.” Besides it is “inside” the self, in the sense that the self depends on it (1972 76).

Neither the “self” nor the “other” decides anything, but something such as “between a person and a person,” which does not physically exist, makes a decision. Therefore, nobody is free in making a decision.

The absence of the subject in the interviewers’ words is not a special case. We can see it in many other situations that we face in Japanese “shakai” (society). As an instance, I had many English writing classes through my junior-high school, high school, and university education. The teachers always told me not to use the passive voice too much because the sentences become clearer when we use the active voice instead. As a student, I took it as good advice and tried, as best as I could, not to use the passive voice. However, no teachers explained why I always tend to use the passive voice. The tendency of using the passive voice is not a grammatical mistake. Japanese do not use the active voice because there is no clear distinction of the “self” and the “other” in their mind.

This “mind” frequently appears on the train. According to Mukai Kaori, East Japan Railway Company (JR), one of the largest railroad companies in Japan, received 3,275 complaints about “manners” from the passengers of the train, and many of them were troubles about mobile phones (2002). Moreover, in the opinion research done by Yomiuri shimbun (2002), 90% of those surveyed said that they felt the Japanese people’s manner recently got worse, and 89% said that the education on manners and courtesy was not properly done in the present “shakai” (society).

In order to improve manners, there are many signs on the train. As an example, I did an investigation on the Keiô line that runs between Hachiôji and Tokyo. I chose specifically the one I use every day from Hashimoto Station to Tama Center Station to go to the university (Appendix 1, figure 2). There are several signs about manners. One says (Appendix 1, figure 3), “Please refrain from using mobile phones. Hold your baggage. Please sit close to others.” And below that it says, “Thank you for your kindness.” Another is the sign of “Priority seat” (Appendix 1, figure 4), which gives us five examples with pictures: “Elderly. Pregnant woman. Those with infants. Disabled. [Those with] Medical Appliances.” Others are “No smoking,” “No sound outside a Walkman” and “This seat is for 7 persons. Please sit with care for others” (Appendix 1, figure 5).

I counted the number of all the signs on the train. Each car had six “Thank you for your kindness” signs, four “Priority seat” signs, two “No smoking” and “No sound” signs, and six “This seat is for 7 persons” signs. The train consists of eight cars, and so, the numbers in one train amount to 48, 32, 32 (16+16) and 48. The total is 160 signs.

My purpose in counting signs is to show the fusion of subject and object, in other words, self and other, in the Japanese mind. With the numerous signs, voices and complaints from the passengers to the railroad companies and letters from the readers to the newspaper companies criticizing ill-mannered people, a large number of people still feel that Japanese manners have got worse (Yomiuri shimbun, 2002). In my judgement, all these signs and criticism that tell us to keep being good mannered are the real obstacles for the improvement of manners.

Asahi shimbun introduces a letter from a 17 years old high school student about the manners on the train:

The ill-mannered young on the train often attract people’s attention. In fact, I see young people sitting in front of the doors and making trouble. However, adults around them say nothing. They look at the young with annoyance or pretend not to see them. Critical comments about those “sittingdowns” frequently appear on the newspapers. In my opinion, the adults who criticize indirectly [as in the newspapers], not speaking directly to the young at that time, look dishonest. Many of the young students, including me, are selfish, and so we do not realize things until they are pointed out to us. But adults who are supposed to be in a position of pointing out have stopped saying things. . . . I suppose not only we the young but also the silent adults are responsible for the problems around us (Sakamoto 2002).

I agree. The adults are silent. This does not mean that the adults do not care about manners. A letter to Yomiuri shimbun from a 30-year-old office worker can be an example. According to her,

I know that I should make allowance for children shouting since it is almost their job to make noise. Yet, I wrinkled my brow when I saw a 4-5-year-old child with his mother on a train the other day. As soon as they got into a car, the child began to shout, “I wanna sit!” Then a middle-aged lady stood up and gave up her seat to the child. To my surprise, the mother smiled and made her son sit on that seat. A few minutes later, the same child began shouting again, “Pick me up!” The mother did not even scold him, and sat down with the child on her lap. Although the decline in the children’s levels of learning is taken as a problem, parents’ upbringing is, I think, a more important and basic problem (Yokobori 2002).

She is a typical silent adult. She said nothing to the mother or the child, probably with a look of annoyance. Did the mother and the child bother her? The child’s shouting must have been quite noisy, yet she says she can tolerate that. What made her angry was the lack of manners of the mother. She is saying that the mother should not have let her son sit down, let alone the mother. Yet this has nothing to do with her. She is not the one who gave up the seat to the child and the mother, but she sympathized with the middle-aged lady and wrote this letter to the newspaper.

According to Nakajima Yoshimichi, people complain not because they directly suffer damage but rather because “it is unpleasant to see someone doing the things that are forbidden.” He says further that they complain “for the sake of others.” “Yet,” he continues, if somebody complains about things that the majority of the people do not take as unpleasant, the person is regarded as “selfish” or “lacking in kindness” (1999 195).

Japanese adults are silent on trains. Even if a high-school student is sitting on a priority seat in front of an elderly person standing, they say nothing. Even if people are using mobile phones, they say nothing. Even if they find a person with a noisy Walkman, they say nothing. Even if a man is occupying a seat for two persons, they say nothing. But adults put strong pressure on those bad-mannered people by means of their eyes, or even the pretense of not seeing them.

On March 18th, 2002, I took the Keiô Line from Shinjuku to Tama Center. I was standing next to a middle-aged woman probably in her fifties. She had an evidently heavy bag and passed it from one hand to the other. Since she was short, it was impossible to use the baggage rack. So I asked her, “May I put your bag on the rack?” She looked at me and said with a smile, “No thank you.” Since I did not understand, I said, “But it looks so heavy.” “Well, it is going to be a trouble [(if you put my bag on the rack)] when I get off since this bag is too heavy [(for me to bring down)].” At first, I did not understand why she refused my offer and thought that anyone could help her with such a little thing. Then I looked around and noticed that everybody was trying not to be aware of our conversation. After all, she continued passing her bag between two hands (Unknown lady 2002).

I am not saying that people around us should have proposed to help her. My point is that she felt impudent to ask people to help her and hesitated to use the rack. I told this story to my friends and many of them told me that if they were on the scene, they would have helped her. It is probably true that they would help her if they were asked to do it. Yet, what I want to emphasize is that she is not going to ask them.

This kind of silent pressure that made the woman give up using the rack is the very thing that I felt strange upon returning from Syria. In Syria, it is very natural for the aged and women to sit down on a bus. (Trains are not a common means of transportation in Syria). If a woman gets on a bus and all the seats are occupied, she tells a young man sitting in front of her to stand up. Even if she does not speak, other people will tell him to move. When I told this story to one of my friends, he asked me one thing. “Well, what would happen if a young lady and an old man got on a bus at the same time while there is only one seat left?” (Izumi 2002). I answered, “One of them sits on that seat, and a young man already sitting stands up and gives the other his seat.”

As has been explained, the Japanese take it for granted that we must have good manners and we must be considerate toward others. However, Nakajima indicates that this is the root of all evil.

There is a saying that “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.” This is taken as the basic rule in Japanese society. Yet, what I want to insist is that this is the very thing causing “The unthinking society” and “The speech-suppressed society.” There exists a premise that “people’s ways of thinking and feeling are almost the same.” This rule functions as supporting the majority and excluding the minority. . . . As you can see, this rule is useless or even becomes an obstacle when we want to change the society or to reform the consciousness of people (1999 196).

This paragraph reminded me of a teacher of social studies at my junior high school. His motto was that the things that we do not want others do to us are the things that others do not want us to do. Neither the teachers nor the students posed a question about this. I myself took for granted.

This dangerous rule goes unchallenged at home, on a train, in a school and also in the job hunting. Chuo University Careers Office tells us in Placement Guide 2003,

“shûshoku” (to get a job) is your individual problem, but the job hunting is a path to go out into the society and is a social act. Therefore, there are rules to obey. . . . If you disregard those rules, you might cause trouble not only to yourself but also to a wide range of people, such as those at companies, the university, the seniors and the juniors in school. So, in order not to make trouble for others, please understand the rules well and proceed in the job hunting (2002a 5).

This “consideration toward others” rule seems to be haunting Japanese “shakai” (society). My father told me an interesting story about this rule (Nakayama 2002). He has been working for the same company for thirty-two years. A few years ago, the company decided to divide the employees into two categories. One is the “global” staff who can be transferred to other branches, and the other is the “local” staff who is going to stay in the same branch. This year, the company said that employees with a certain TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) score are the only ones to be promoted and that all the employees had to take a TOEIC test. So my father told the head of his section that it was ridiculous for him to take it since he had never needed English in his work for more than thirty years in the company and would never need English in the future as a member of the local staff. Moreover, even if he cannot be promoted he did not care. Therefore, he said, he did not want to take the test. After listening to my father, the head of his section said, “I think so too. But this is an order from above.” Father told other employees around him the same thing. Everyone agreed with him and complained, yet they took the test saying that they had no choice but to take it.

After a few weeks, one of the executives of the parent company came to my father’s office. He encouraged the employees to take the TOEIC. Then my father raised his hand and said, “I am not going to take it since I do not need it in my work. I admit that English is an important tool, but I do not think it necessary for me. People who need it should take it. If you tell me that I have to take a test about things related to my job, I am willing to do it. But TOEIC is not.” After he finished speaking, the boss of his section came to his place and scolded him. “Why did you say such a thing? Even if the company says every employee has to take a test that does not necessarily mean that you have to take it. You just say that you are going to take it, but nobody knows whether you have a headache or a stomach ache on the day of examination. Why do you have to ruin the atmosphere in front of the executive?”

The reason my father was scolded is not because he did not take the test. It was because he was not silent and was selfish since he insisted on his opinion and did not have a consideration toward other employees and bosses, those who did not feel it unpleasant to take it. Yoshioka indicates that an illusion of the company as a family functions efficiently in the Japanese society. Although it cannot be always a bad thing, “harmony” in Japan represses individual ideas and inhibits open communication (1995 110-1).

There is an idiom in Japanese “ma ni ukeru.” “Ma” means “true,” “ni” “as,” and “ukeru” “to receive or to take.” So this idiom as a whole means to take something to be true. We often use this phrase in our daily life when a person believes what another person says without suspicion. This expression implies that we never know what a person really wants to say if we judge only his or her words. According to Abe, the Japanese frequently put in question the speaker’s real intention or its implication. To put it the other way around, we never trust what a person says (1995b 269). If this is so, a question comes to mind: How do we know the speaker’s real intention? Nakajima argues that

As a tool of communication, we [Japanese] send a huge number of signals, instead of spoken words, such as motions, a gaze or a look. So the person who is sent those signals has to decode them on his or her own. Moreover, nobody teaches nor will teach that person the way to interpret the codes. The most important thing [in Japan] is to have the ability of decoding these codes. To actually “say” what we really mean to someone who lacks this ability is useless. It is too late if the person does not understand until he or she is “told” (1998. 145-146).

With this in mind, my father failed to decode the code while other people knew the real meaning of the order. Even though they knew that they did not have to take the TOEIC, they did not say that they were not going to take it. It was my father’s fault that he did not understand until he was told.

In the example of the job interviews, I was selfish, since I did not take other students iton consideration. I was supposed to say that I applied for many other companies or universities, since most of the students were doing the job hunting very seriously applying to many places.

In the present Japanese “shakai” (society), job hunting is not a target of a question. In Shûshoku no tebiki (Placement Guide), Suzuki Kôji, the former president of Chuo University, encourages students to do job hunting. According to Suzuki,

companies are in need of the young highly motivated talent as a central core of the coming generation. And for those who studied in this university, a lot of expectations are placed in them by companies. I hope you work hard in order not to fail to come up to the expectations. What kind of job you choose or how you contribute to the society is a very important subject that dominates your life (Chuo University Careers Office 2002a 3).

If we admit that job hunting is a path to get into “shakai” (society), and that to become “shakai jin” (an adult) means coming up to expectations by companies or society, our society continues to exclude unwelcome students whom society does not need. If the Japanese keep saying “do as you would be done by,” we will not allow others to have different ways of thinking. As long as Japanese society gives importance to the harmony inside “shakai” (society), expressing a free opinion is impossible. Furthermore, the most important thing is that nobody intends to do these things. In the present situation, no Japanese is either the subject or the object of these problems. Yoshioka accurately characterizes this lack of the subject and the object in Japan in his argument that “every Japanese is a colonizer of his own mind” (1995 107, see also Appendix 1, figure 6).

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Edward Said answers the question of what we should do to understand the “other” (Shimizu 2000). “The most important thing is never to give up. Facing difficulties, and giving up feeling that ‘this is my destiny’ and not doing what one can do, is the worst choice.” The Japanese are worse than the worst. If we do not even know we are giving up or that there are things that we can do, nothing will never change. In order to realize a society that is kind to everyone, not only to the majority, the Japanese have to stop using the words that we do not mean or that we do not know the meaning of. This will help us to create a boundary between the subject and the object. Without this distinction, we can never talk about who is responsible for what. Japanese people should discuss the meaning of the job hunting, which encourages the existing violence of a “shakai” (society) in which nobody really decides anything. What makes it difficult for me to convey my opinion in this thesis is that this paper also consists of “words” that Japanese do not regard as important. Yet, I believe, we must not remain silent.

*All translations from Japanese sources are mine.

Appendix 1, figure 1. The job-hunting calendar (Chuo University Careers Office 2002a 26).

Editorial note: The photographs that are figures 2-6 are not at present available. They will be added soon.

Works cited

Abe, Kinya. (1995a). “Seken” towa nanika [What is “seken”]. Tokyo:
Kôdansha.

----------. (1995b). Yôroppa wo yomu [To read Europe]. Tokyo: Sekifûsha.

Al Hayat. (2000, July 2). “Hewâl israîlî falastînî” [Conversation between Israel and Palestine]. Beirut: Al Hayat.

Chigono, Sachiko. (2002, November 10). Personal communication.

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