Cover news reporter Zhang Jie
When the majority of "hit workers" are helpless to laugh at themselves in the face of pressure, when employees of large companies are unable to complain in the face of the "996" work system, in order to continue to live, many people still cannot easily give up their jobs. However, there are also people who have a deeper reflection on the work and put it into action to change.
Emiko Inagaki, a Japanese woman living in an era of rapid economic growth, like many Japanese, has never doubted the golden formula of "good school", "good job" and "good life". Born in 1965 in Inagaki, Kemiko Inagaki, she graduated from Hitotsubashi University with a major in sociology and joined asahi Shimbun after graduation. While working at Asahi Shimbun, Emiko served as an editorial board member and editorial board member of the Osaka Head Office's Social Affairs Department and weekly Asahi Editorial Board. Have a steady income, a job, and a generous pension that comes with it. But at the age of 40, she suddenly had the idea of "quitting at the age of 50". After this idea came to mind, she began to rethink the relationship between "money" and "work" and life, and prepared for resignation. Finally, in January 2016, when she was 50 years old, Ms. Inagaki resolutely left the Asahi Shimbun agency where she had worked for 28 years under the puzzled eyes of those around her.
After leaving the corporate system, Ms. Inagaki, who did not have various benefits from large companies such as high salaries, social status, and pensions, re-examined life and work from the perspective of a free person. From being husbandless and childless, she became unemployed again. She began experimenting with a life of saving electricity without using appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners, and spending only 200 yen a month on electricity. What she saw and heard in her life made her think about a series of practical problems in Japanese society, such as "the way of life without jobs, husbands and children", "Japan is a corporate society", and "the disappearance of personal life under the state and the corporate system". By resigning, standing against companies and even state institutions, Ms. Inagaki saw things that she wouldn't have noticed before. Japan, a "company-type society," the struggles of Japanese companies after the bubble economy, the consumer economy that tends to be fraudulent, and the inconveniences of the elderly in the information society, and so on. She wrote a book about what she learned in the process, "Fifty Years Old, I Quit", which was very popular and became a super bestseller on Amazon in Japan.
In 2019, the Japanese drama "Calm Leisure" starring Kuroki Hua in the summer fire caused a great response in China, and the heroine in the drama was a very rare explosive head image, coincidentally, when the author of "Fifty Years Old, I Resigned", Emiko Inagaki, was ready to resign, she also burned the African explosive head. More importantly, in the Japanese drama "Calm Leisure", the 28-year-old natural roll woman played by Kuroki Hua is also a "hit worker": cautious in the company, painstakingly managing colleague relations. But one day she fainted in the workplace due to excessive breathing, which caused her to start rethinking life, she quit her job, moved, ran away from her boyfriend, broke off contact with all her friends, with an exploding head, and moved to a cheap place in the countryside with only a cover to start a new life... This is very much in line with the real life of Emiko Inagaki. The fragments of Life after resignation recorded by Emiko Inagaki in the book coincide with the scenes in "Calm Leisure" in which the heroine abandons the air conditioner to save electricity bills, picks up fans to turn waste into treasures, moves from a large house in the city to a small house in the suburbs, and cooks herself to save money, which is relaxed and humorous and full of life, inspiring readers to think about the personal lifestyle under modern company culture.
In Emiko's view, in the past era of rapid development of the Japanese economy, those driving forces were very good at filling the company's employees with enthusiasm. She entered the company during the bubble economy, so she personally experienced the vitality of the company at that time, the company's performance was booming, and her work was supported by society. Although the daily work is full of failures and fatigue, it is essentially very happy inside. However, once the economy stagnates and things cannot be sold, the feeling that "one's own work can help others" will gradually disappear. In this way, the only motivation to impress the company's employees is "money" and "personnel". Everyone has weaknesses and desires in their hearts, wanting to be better than others, and wanting to live a luxurious life. Once weaknesses are caught, people are easily controlled. The company itself becomes a collection of weaknesses and desires, and soon the meaning of the company's existence becomes only "for the sake of the company's employees", and the end is that the company's employees begin to compete with each other and devour each other.
Although this is the case in Japan, China is also under the Confucian cultural circle of East Asia and has a cultural ideology that is relatively close to that of Japan. There are certain similarities between the current social situation and the role of women in society and the family, and domestic readers are more likely to feel empathy.
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