When it comes to Yoshinoya, I believe that everyone has more or less heard of or eaten their beef rice, although a bowl of beef rice for 30 yuan is relatively expensive in ordinary cities, but from the perspective of prices in first-tier cities, Yoshinoya is definitely the first choice for white-collar workers' lunch. Such a popular fast food restaurant, but recently it has been stalling big things.
On April 16, at a marketing lecture at Waseda University in Japan, the speech of Masaaki Ito, managing director and planning director of beef rice bowl chain giant Yoshinoya, caused an uproar, and Yoshinoya announced its dismissal on the 19th.
Yoshinoya's classic beef rice
"Let the girl become a fan of the Yoshinoya family like a drug addict"
What did Masaaki Ito make? This probably means that he describes Yoshinoya's marketing of young women as a "strategy to get innocent girls addicted" and that "young girls from the countryside who don't even know left and right become loyal fans of the Yoshino family like drug addicts."
This is a statement of obvious contempt for women, and undoubtedly an inappropriate statement of treating women as things. Immediately after saying this, Yoshinoya made the decision to dismiss him, and Waseda University decided to immediately withdraw him from the head of the lecture.
The Internet was flooded with comments about the Yoshino family's abuse of women: "Can such comments appear so casually, indicating that he often has such thoughts", "Is ignoring and disparaging customer comments a matter of directors?" I was curious about Yoshinoya's corporate culture, "I could understand the marketing strategy, but I was stunned that the directors of a public company could only use this discriminatory expression."
The choice of these words and the use of sexual and degrading ways to describe the girl's problems have been pointed out and criticized one after another.
In addition, because Ito Masaaki's remarks were made in the first class of a marketing course for office workers, there are a total of 29 lessons, and the cost of each class is about 385,000 yen (about 20,000 yuan), and the amount involved has also attracted people's attention. Paying tuition fees that are not cheap, but learning how to abduct and deceive ignorant girls, this is certainly unbearable.
Although the incidents caused by powerful men are endless, this matter cannot be discussed from the perspective of insulting women alone, and behind this incident is the deep-rooted view of male supremacy, or elite supremacy, in Japanese society.
Masaaki Ito
Career of Masaaki Ito
Masaaki Ito graduated from Keio University and used to work for daily necessities giant Procter & Gamble. He has worked as a brand manager for Procter & Gamble, also at its U.S. and European headquarters, and as head of marketing for a global team. With his illustrious experience at Procter & Gamble, he became an executive of the Yoshinoya family in October 2018.
"He often appears in the media and lectures as a 'marketing expert,' and this time he speaks in the first class of a course offered by Waseda University for working adults, so at best he may be giving lectures with a sense of humor and will be popular with young people." The Japanese writer Shiko Mizuno thinks of Masaaki Ito.
"My thought was that he was an old man who wanted to be humorous, but this time he lost his hand and failed. He may want to give a rich speech with humor and laughter, but I can see from his speech that he has a shadow of self, pride and narcissism, and he wants to embody the image of 'I am successful' everywhere. By using insulting language, he may want to show off his 'good taste', but I feel it's an example of a template that backfires entirely. ”
In addition to this inappropriate speech to women, Masaaki Ito also said to male customers that "people who have no place in the house will come to the restaurant many times to eat beef rice." Before scorning women, Ito Masaaki had a "condescending eye" in his bones that looked down on customers.
Yoshinoya's female employee ratio is 24.3%
From Masaaki Ito's remarks, we will find that all factors aside, Yoshinoya is racking its brains to attract female customers. On the other hand, this also shows that the number of female users is increasing year by year.
If this incident leads to the loss of existing and potential female customers, it will be a huge blow to Yoshinoya, so there should be no other choice but to fire him.
Yoshinoya has been promoting "promoting women's activities" among its employees. Listening to this signboard, you may feel that this is something that any company is doing for granted, but for Yoshinoya, female employees are becoming more and more strategically important.
Because of the impact of the new crown epidemic, the Japanese catering industry is currently seriously understaffed, in this case, how to get more labor has become a focus of the strategy of various catering giants. It is for this reason that the Yoshinoya family has strengthened the recruitment of female and other laborers.
Yoshinoya is currently in the process of wanting to increase its female clientele, which requires perspectives and ideas specific to female employees. In such cases, statements that seriously harm the motivation of female employees cannot be ignored.
On Yoshinoya's recruitment website, "30% of female employees!" "30% of female managers!" Taglines are everywhere. In addition, there are a series of activities to improve women's rights and interests, such as "raising professional awareness", "spreading ideas to male employees", and establishing the "Yoshinoya Women's Association", where female employees can talk about their troubles together.
On the official website of the Yoshinoya family, the figure "24.3% of the group's female managers" is also displayed.
As we all know, Japanese society is dominated by men, the idea of male supremacy is deeply rooted in their cognition, and the promotion rate of women in the Japanese workplace is very slow. Even the proportion of female managerial positions in the Japanese government is less than 30%.
In this case, the figure of 24.3% of women in the Yoshinoya family is very high.
Percentage of female managers on Yoshinoya's official website
Will the Yoshinoya incident be the beginning of equality between men and women in Japanese society?
From these practices, we can see that the Yoshinoya family is working hard to change the male-dominated social status of Japanese society and is committed to equal rights for men and women.
The Yoshino family has also made great efforts in increasing the number of female store managers, supporting reinstatement, and supporting childcare. Under such circumstances, it would not be acceptable for Masaaki Ito, who spoke about "infecting girls with Yoshinoya beef rice addiction," if it is still a "Japanese-style" form of punishment (bowing and apologizing, and then reactivating after the incident).
After this incident, it is still unknown whether Yoshinoya, which has made so many efforts to equalize women's rights, can regain the trust of female consumers and female employees.