Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Even Japan could be about to embrace remote working

Workers leave the Toshiba Corporation headquarters (photo: Getty)

A Japanese banker once told me that his company had opened an expensive showcase office block in the centre of Tokyo. The building had a rare employee-friendly additional space and large balconies on the upper floors, where staff could relax and enjoy the views. Despite this apparent sensitivity to their employees, in every other way the bank was a typical Japanese firm, expecting staff to work punishingly long hours in a highly-pressured environment.

After a few months, it became clear the balconies might not have been such a good idea after all. Four people jumped to their deaths. Rather than reviewing their employment practices, such as the hours worked and conditions endured by their clearly suffering workforce – or even bringing in a counsellor or two – the company did absolutely nothing. Except for one thing: they removed the balconies.

As the world emerges nervously from lockdown and new modes of safer and more convenient working are being trialled and assessed, it seems unlikely that big companies anywhere will now be splashing cash on expensive office blocks for huge numbers of staff, with or without balconies, if cheaper and more flexible options become available. But will this suit Japan, where the idea of being physically present in an office is absolutely central to company culture, and ‘presenteeism’ regarded as a virtue?

Office workers in Japan are renowned for their quasi-devotional relationship with their employer, for whom they sacrifice their temporal pleasures (including most of their holiday entitlement), in exchange for a peaceful and satisfying afterlife (retirement). They suffer in silence on gruelling commutes in clammy proximity to hundreds of others, and toil for endless hours in cramped, joyless workspaces. There are rules for everything, even communication with colleagues – you must use the stiflingly restrictive keigo (formal Japanese) language that rigid office hierarchies demand, and there is no chatting.

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