Japanese Take the Least Vacation

16 Responses

1. JR says:

   September 2nd, 2010 at 12:46 am

   I agree. I used to work in Japan, and we spent more time on meetings than on actually doing something…we had meetings regarding future meetings.

2. Sal Paradise says:

   September 2nd, 2010 at 8:16 pm

   There are two big reasons that the Japanese take fewer vacation days:
   1) They are bullied into not taking them (the managers at my previous company needed to request days off from the president of the company over a month in advance, and were ‘recommended’ never to take more than 3 consecutive days off)
   2) They don’t know how many they have (smaller companies often don’t tell their employees how much leave they have — they just let the employees ask for what they think they deserve, which due to human psychology here, tends to be a lot less than they are required by law to give)

   I also entirely disagree with Dyske about the Japanese being good at looking like they’re working hard. I think they’re very bad about looking like they’re working hard. They’re very good at staying at the office/their desk for exceedingly long periods of time, but that is a far stretch from work to me.

   (Hint: seeing someone spend 4 hours color-coding cells in an excel spreadsheet to be human readable is not a hard-working noble endeavor. Let alone doing it for a week straight because your boss wants different colors)

3. Christopher Carr says:

   September 3rd, 2010 at 7:20 am

   My mother-in-law works at the power company. She gets off most national holidays, but they always make her work on a Saturday to make up for it. What’s the point of having holidays in the first place?

4. BYoon says:

   September 9th, 2010 at 3:26 am

   This post falls right under the angry post about racism, and unfair generalizations. So now it’s ok to make those unfair generalizations as long as it’s against Japanese people? It’s only racism if people offend the Chinese race? Not cool! As they say, ‘Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.”

5. Dyske says:

   September 9th, 2010 at 7:12 am

   Hi BYoon,

   You actually have it backwards. I’m Japanese. But this does not invalidate your argument, and I think it’s an interesting point to clarify.

   There is nothing wrong with criticizing a culture or a nation; it’s policies, customs, philosophies, etc.. In fact, in this particular instance, most Japanese people would agree that this aspect of the Japanese business is a bad thing. In countries with long histories, sometimes it is very hard to reverse certain traditions that almost everyone actually hates because they have a certain momentum.

   I assume you are referring to my latest post about Morrissey, so I’ll explain why that is racism. There is nothing wrong with criticizing certain aspects of the Chinese culture, like human and animal rights. I think the Chinese can also benefit from constructive discussions on those issues. However, Morrissey suggested that their behavior stems from their biology. This is how the white people justified black slavery; they considered blacks as biologically inferior to them, an inferior species of human race. Whites in fact thought that about Asians and all other races too. It was a perfectly acceptable idea at the time. This is why all sorts of racial injustice took place. Morrissey’s way of attributing the cause of a certain behavior to biology comes from that ugly tradition. That’s racism pure and simple.

6. sandy says:

   September 21st, 2010 at 11:16 am

   reply to Dyske,,,whites didnt start the black slavery. Blacks sold their own people into slavery is where it started..check your history…Plus no matter who a person is..they shouldve band together and not let it happen in the first place. whites wouldnt allow themselves be taken into slavery. other races seems to want to sit back and be taken care of and let the white race pull them out of a jam. dont be offended, just look around you. I love all people but I am tired of sitting back and being fingered for those who has nothing better to do..

7. Christopher Carr says:

   September 24th, 2010 at 12:41 pm

   @Sandy

   I think the problem with your approach here Sandy is that you assume that race is actually a meaningful concept. The concept of race just means that we share a common mutation, not that we share a cultural affinity, and certainly not that we have some level of solidarity. For example, genetically, Finns descend from east, central Asia, but culturally they probably have more commonality with Swedes than they do with Tibetans. Also, it’s not like there was an Internet or newspaper in Africa so that the Africans could let the other Africans know what was going on. If you’re gonna harp on the white race taking care of every other race trope, know that Asian Americans have higher average incomes and lower enrollment in welfare programs that whites.

8. Guru says:

   September 27th, 2010 at 10:50 pm

   First off, let me tell you I am Japanese. I don’t have a problem with the article saying Japanese take the least vacations, that they believe hard work. I don’t see that as being racist.

   However, I have a huge issue with the last two sentences in the article; “Now many Americans who have worked with the Japanese know that they are just very good at looking like they are working hard. Not taking much vacation days is a good example of keeping up this façade”

   Here this is about the japanese character, implying that they really don’t work hard they only seemingly acitng as they are working hard. I find that insulting.

   Unless you say it is cultural for a race or nation to fake working, this is racist.

   i.e. A poll says more Mexicans stand around a Home Depot parking lot. Now Americans that have worked with Mexicans know they stand around and talk a lot.

   It is only my opninion, but hope you get my point.

9. Vegas says:

   October 3rd, 2010 at 4:46 pm

   You literally just constructed a logical fallacy Dyske.

   Your introduction was that a legitimate research poll had been taken to determine the percentage of Japanese people who use their vacation days.

   That is raw data. After this you followed through with a statement intended to give the rest of your statement weight, by citing a professional in the field on an entirely unrelated topic.

   Cognitive exercise is entirely different from algorithmic physical exercise, just as the motivations that work to affect them are different.

   Then, you just took one big asshole swing at the entire race of japanese people by stating that their reputation of being industrious is a myth, implicitly stating that japanese people (which is a statement of generalization in and of itself) are lazy.

   Firstly, any kind of information as to the *causation* of their not taking vacation days can only be determined through experimentation, any correlation between some fallacy that you’ve concocted in your mind because of your hatred and reality is false.

   and don’t try and justify this, because I don’t care who you know, where you’re from, or what friends you had growing up. You’re a blatant and open racist if your thought process is “They don’t take vacation days because they’re trying to fool us into thinking they work hard”.

   Also, don’t confuse yourself by thinking I’m just some prideful descendant of Japanese people. I don’t even like them, but at least I don’t try to sugar coat it and make it sound like my racism is something else. I’m a white guy from the US, born and raised, I speak Chinese, and I’m still pissed about WWII, but that doesn’t change your racism.

10. Frank Luo says:

    October 5th, 2010 at 9:28 am

    Well, as an American who has worked in Japan, I agree with Dyske. All of the Japanese I have worked with are quite good at appearing to work hard while not actually doing very much work. The people in my office spent very long hours at the office, but were mostly really just shuffling papers or reading. And those are the people in the open office. Nobody knows what the people with their own offices are doing.

    Carr makes the same observation and thinks that the Japanese are bullied into this behavior. I thnk it’s a little more nuanced than that — it’s a kind of cultural thing where people are expected to put up this appearance whether or not they actually have enough work to fill these long hours. If you do not put up this appearance, you will be passed over for promotions etc. in addition to generally being held in low regard by your coworkers regardless of how much work you actually accomplish. That might be considered bullying. But more important I would think would be the fact that the number of vacation days used and how late one stays at the office each day influences one’s career, including being considered as an indicator in calculating one’s bonuses, which is a very significant part of every person’s salary in Japan — even for public sector employees.

    I do not believe Dyske has been either racist, factually wrong, or logically erroneous to say what he said. He has stated that the Japanese are good at putting up this kind of front. He did not say that the Japanese are the only ones who do this, and he made no speculation as to why, nor did he say that this behavior has some kind of biological origin. In my opinion, from having worked in Japan for several years, and knowing many Japanese people, this is true. It is a cultural thing just like the ticket quota system for the NYPD — a lousy aspect of a culture that is in many ways insular. The observation about athletes is not really reelevant, but as it was not used as a support for his argument, but was just an iobservation, it doesn’t impugn his assertion any more than it supports it.

    *IF* Dyske has been wrong about something in this post, it is only in not noting that this happens in cultures other than Japan. But that’s a really hyper-politically correct thing to do. He did not say that it did NOT happen in other cultures either, but was just speaking from what he himself knows and giving his opinion on it, which is the whole point of having his own blog.

11. Dyske says:

    October 5th, 2010 at 11:18 am

    It’s really a cultural characteristic. In fact, you can observe similar differences among various corporate or institutional cultures anywhere, even in the US. Some of them are rather socialistic (like unionized businesses) where the incentives are designed in such a way that not working hard pays off better. Japan is a very socialistic culture, so overall, their business cultures tend to have similar incentive systems.

    Very subtle differences can actually cause this. For instance, if the company does not keep track of individual performance, and if the compensation is not based on it, it would be in your own interest to slack off and let others do all the work because you will get paid the same anyway. In such an environment, promotion is not based on performance but solely on how your superiors perceive you. It’s not about your actual performance but how your boss feels about you. So, you become very good at appearing to work hard. It’s a skill that you develop over the years.

    It’s a structural problem. If the company would change the compensation system to one that based on individual performance, this can change almost over night. This is why it’s a cultural problem; not about race or biology.

12. Frank Luo says:

    October 5th, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    What confuses me about this is that it’s not even really “fake work” as someone put it. Everyone knows full well that they are just wasting time in the office, reading newspapers and whatnot. From what I can see, 90% of the actual work in any given office is done by the two or three junior people, the “office ladies” and “kids” who do are typically given such amorphous titles as “general affairs division staff” or some such. The office workers know they’re not doing much work. Their bosses know that they are not doing much work. But woe be he who leaves on time, or in any case before the boss does. And since it is expected that the boss also appears to work hard, HE would never leave exactly at 5, causing a chain reaction that ultimately results in many office workers leaving at 7 or 8 or even later every single day.

    Since everyone knows that it’s a charade, this practice has become sort of etiquette, a set of unwritten rules that you should know before accepting employment — you know that you can safely expect bonuses that are a significant part — like 40-50% — of your stated salary, but you also know that you must keep up certain apperances which includes, among these things, not taking time off when you are entitled to. In a way it’s another aspect of the tendency to conform.

    It does result in huge waste though — what is happening, in effect, is that almost everyone is being paid huge amounts of unnecessary overtime.

13. Josh says:

    October 6th, 2010 at 2:51 am

    @ Sandy

    You provided absolutely no evidence for your statement, nor was it logical or factual. I suggest you be the one to research more thoroughly. A quick read of first hand accounts by Bartolomé de las Casas would quickly set you straight. Basic understanding of history and supply and demand proves your statement incorrect. The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean weren’t able to withstand the hardships of slavery and foreign disease inflicted upon them by the European. In advent of this reality it was thought that Africans were better suit for the role of being enslaved and the rest is history. Europeans didn’t invent slavery, but certainly brought it to another level. Throughout Europe America’s brand of slavery was described as the “peculiar institution” because of its extreme depravity. You know so little and it’s absolutely pathetic, you seem like another Caucasian hell bent on screwing with history in effort to make the rest of the world forget your reality asap. So while Caucasians didn’t start slavery they for certain started Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

    It’s not like the African tribes sailed to Europe offering their own for slavery. The Europeans had a demand and Africans the supply. While some sold their own people many where kidnapped and forced against their will. You’re also not addressing how slavery was practiced in Africa and other regions internationally. Often slaves were able to buy their freedom and work off debt. They weren’t raped, beaten, and stripped of culture as prevalent in American slavery. Once again this is where the label “Peculiar Institution” emerges from. Look it up if you don’t believe me and also please stop denying history and reality. It’s pitiful

14. Mark says:

    December 11th, 2010 at 11:15 am

    But doesn’t wasting time in the office eventually backfire make people look stupid in front of their boss? Doesn’t the boss feel his staff are grossly inefficient having worked so many hours but produced so little output?

15. Frank Luo says:

    December 11th, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Isn’t it a little silly — and racist, really — to think of Africans as all the same race, just because they are all dar skinned? They were nations and tribes that warred with each other and enslaved each other. With this nuance in mind, African captives sold to European traders weren’t really “their own” — and the view that Africans sold “their own” simply reflects the rather narrow view that all Africans are the same.

    What irony that this view of all Africans being the same is being taken — by both sides of the argument, no less — on the site that began by challenging the notions that people have of East Asians on the basis of looks.

16. Frank Luo says:

    December 11th, 2010 at 12:55 pm

    @ Mark — it’s a cultural thing. Everything is “baked in” as securities brokers might say. A ceertain amount of work is expected for a certain amount of pay, and the system rewards the appearance of work as much as actual work, leaving little incentive to really put in the work. I believe this is another factor that tends to culturally discourage creativity and innovation — by not rewarding such.

    I think the union comparison Dyske made is pretty much right on in this respect. Union workers tend to operate the same way, except in union shops, those rules are clearly delineated by contracts, while in the traditional Japanese workplace, the guidelines are all cultural, and you just kind of have to learn from having been around how things work.