You know the Japanese "salaryman," though you may not have been formally introduced to him. In any Japanese city, factory, showroom, hotel lobby, sushi bar, fancy restaurant or "private club" (where he's wearing a cummerbund), office building, the Emperor's Palace or even just driving a taxi ... There he is. He's the one in the dark suit and white shirt with a boring tie which doesn't stand out, wearing sensible, rubber-soled shoes, smoking heavily, wearing eyeglasses, rarely sunglasses, has too-long jet-black hair, carrying a newspaper or a soft-core porno manga comic, one might be hidden within the other, for his train ride to and from work and texting on his cell phone (but rarely talking on it) and has tiny ear buds connected to the latest version of the Walkman, which was invented by Sony specifically to allow people to listen to their favorite radio host or music without disturbing anyone else on the train, standing in the line or waiting for a cab. Just like America, right? Anyway, you can't miss him! He's all over the place!
He is the hard-working, and after work, at the (unofficially) mandatory late-
night heavy-drinking session with his boss and comrades from the office, the very backbone of the entire Japanese "economic miracle". And since "employment for life" is not the case anymore, he has been dying from overwork at such a rapid and still-increasing pace that they came with up with name for it: Karoshi; literally, "Death by overwork".
This evening, we found a very interesting and insightful June 11, 2008, New York Times story detailing one man's semi-successful battle against McDonald's, and also how one brave woman went after the gigantic Toyota juggernaut, which is almost a shadow government in Japan (and elsewhere) and she dared to do this in the company's hometown of Nagoya, no less, where the number of people driving a Toyota is close to 50% ... and she won a real court victory, in the name and dear memory of her ... dead salaryman husband, Kenichi Uchino, who died while employed as a 30-year-old quality control officer, which we find somewhat ironic, at Toyota.
And what were these people probably first told when they approached the companies, hoping for fairness? "Shikatanai!," which means, "It can't helped," sort-of the Japanese version of the English-language, "You can't fight city hall!"
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