My Thoughts About The Origins of Japanese Societal Rules and Work Culture
Dear Emma,
It is funny for us Japanese to use an endearment to address someone we have never met. We do not tend to use them even with people we know. I hope I have done it correctly.
You have asked me a wonderful question: why do Japanese people work such long hours?
I have thought about this for a long time. The answer is not simple. Please try imagining an onion with three layers. I will peel back each layer to show you what I have discovered.
The Outer Layer: The Economic Miracle and Its Shadow
The outer layer of my onion is Japan's experience of super high economic growth from the late 1960s, followed by super bad stagnation in the 1990s.
There were many reasons for this mega growth. One of the most significant was our intense work ethic. Working hard for long hours increased productivity. Japanese companies became famous around the world. We rebuilt our nation from the ashes of war into an economic superpower. This was called the "Japanese Economic Miracle."
So when Japan's economy started to slow in the 1990s, our seniors became like cats fixated on only one bird. Please understand: our current big bosses were juniors during the economic boom. They experienced working hard firsthand and saw it bring in great rewards. When things began to fail, they could only think of one solution. Work harder. Work longer. Because it worked before, they believe it must work again.
To use an American idiom I like they are "one trick ponies." Their first solution to every problem is to demand more hours from workers. Their second solution is also more hours. They have never learned another way.
But this is only the surface explanation. To truly understand why Japanese workers sacrifice so much, we must peel deeper into the onion.
The Middle Layer: Bushido and the Echoes of Edo
The second layer is Bushido. Specifically, its rules about loyalty, self-sacrifice, and harmony.
Bushido is a word meaning "warrior way" and was the code of the samurai. But the Bushido we know today is not the original Bushido from the battlefields. It was transformed during a very important time in our history: the Edo period.
The Edo period lasted from 1603 to 1867, when Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate. Before this time, Japan had suffered 150 years of terrible civil war called the Sengoku period. When the Tokugawa government finally unified Japan, their primary aim was to pacify the Japanese people so that such wars could never happen again.
To achieve this peace, they created an extremely strict social order. Society was divided into four rigid classes: samurai at the top, then peasants, then craftsmen, and merchants at the bottom. People were told what to do, what to wear, and where to live. They could not change their occupation or move freely. Each class was restricted to their own quarter of the city.
But the Tokugawa rulers needed more than just laws to control the people. They needed a philosophy. They found this in Neo-Confucianism, particularly the teachings of the Chu Hsi school. This philosophy taught that harmony was maintained by a relationship between superiors and subordinates. Superiors must be benevolent. Subordinates must be obedient and observe propriety.
The Neo-Confucian scholars who served the Tokugawa argued that the separation of classes was in accord with natural order, just as there is order between heaven and earth. The central moral ideals became chū (loyalty) and kō (filial piety). But unlike in China where family loyalty was primary, in Japan loyalty to one's lord came first. Orthodox Chu Hsi thought became, as historians say, "a perfect conservative philosophy of statecraft that valued loyalty and order above all else."
During this time, Bushido was infused with these Confucian ethics. The samurai was equated with the Confucian "perfect gentleman" and taught that his essential function was to exemplify virtue to the lower classes. Obedience to authority was stressed, but duty came first even if it meant breaking the law. The famous story of the 47 ronin shows this: samurai who avenged their murdered lord and then were all ordered to commit ritual suicide. Loyalty unto death.
The people had to form groups called gonin-gumi, neighbourhood associations of five households. These groups fostered joint responsibility. If one household broke the rules, all five would be punished. If one person failed to pay taxes, all would suffer. The people were required to watch over one another. This was not friendly watching. This was surveillance.
In this system, the individual had no separate legal standing. The family was the smallest legal entity. This is very important to understand. If one person broke the rules, their entire family could lose their status and privileges. Even unsubstantiated rumors could destroy a family.
So standing out from the group became dangerous. Like white blood cells attacking a disease, a family or clan would pull down anyone who risked attracting unwanted attention to them.
I theorize that the stifling rules and attitudes in Japanese society today are echoes of the coping strategies people developed to survive during the Edo period. This is why we use tatemae (the public facade we show to others, even when it differs from our true feelings). This is why we "read the air" to sense what others expect of us. This is why we try to act and look the same. This is why we fear standing out. This is why we fear what people are saying about us. This is why we fear outsiders. This is why we rigidly follow the rules. And this is why we are so fixated on group harmony.
We have become both the dogs and the masters.
Even the brilliant novelist Ihara Saikaku, writing during the golden Genroku era of the Edo period, offered sharp criticism of this system. He wrote that the samurai were "so bound by social status and moral principles that they could not live a free life." Another great writer, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, wrote plays about the tragic conflict between giri (duty) and ninjō (human feelings, especially love). In his plays, characters cannot resolve this contradiction in life, and so they die by lovers' suicide, hoping to realize their love in the next world.
These artists captured what I believe is still true today: we are trapped between what we are told we must do and what our hearts truly want.
When you ask why Japanese people work such long hours, part of the answer is that businesses twist these Bushido values. They claim that workers owe absolute loyalty to the company, just as samurai owed loyalty to their lords. They claim that workers must sacrifice themselves for the company and for their coworkers. They use the language of group harmony to shame people into working late. "Your coworkers are working," they say. "You must maintain group harmony by also continuing to work." If you refuse, you are breaking harmony. You are the barking dog.
But there is still a deeper layer to peel.
The Inner Layer: The Foundations of Being
The inner layer of my onion is the most difficult to explain. It is the war between individual desire and the desire of the collective. At this level, we are swimming in the sea of our belief systems. The very foundations of how we understand ourselves and our place in the world.
The major belief systems that underlie modern Japanese society are Zen Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism, Neo-Confucianism, and increasingly, Atheism. The key to understanding their influence is to examine how they view the self.
Please let me compare this to Western thinking so you can understand the difference.
Western civilization has a Judeo-Christian foundation. In this tradition, each person has a soul, an immortal central part that exists in the spiritual realm. Because of this, a person is understood as a distinct entity that cannot be melded with anything else. When you have an unmixable soul, there is no "becoming one with the universe." Each individual person is considered inherently valuable simply because they exist, because they believe the creator of the universe decided to make them. In this view, nothing diminishes a person's inherent base value.
Of course, not all Western people actively believe this today. But this concept is so deeply ingrained in Western thought that it forms the foundation of their laws and traditions and how those are applied to people. Even Western atheists tend to value individuals highly, because this assumption permeates their culture. I believe this forms the foundation of Western individualism.
Our belief systems are different.
Zen Buddhism, which is very influential in Japan, teaches that the self is ultimately an illusion. Through meditation and practice, the self should be transcended until it disappears entirely. This is considered enlightenment. The self dissolves into the universe. Zen Buddhists focus much on death, practicing maraṇasati, mindfulness of death, keeping constantly in mind that death can strike at any moment. Some monks even practiced sokushinbutsu, self-mummification through extreme asceticism, entering death while still alive.
Shinto, our native religion, emphasizes purity, ritual, and connection to the land and ancestors. It is beautiful in many ways, but it does not provide a concept of individual inherent worth in the Western sense. A person's value is connected to their spiritual cleanliness, their ancestry, their role in the community.
Neo-Confucianism, as I described earlier, is all about hierarchy and obligation. Your value comes from fulfilling your role in the social order, being obedient to those above you and benevolent to those below.
And many Japanese today are atheists. In atheism, there is obviously no concept of a soul. Our sense of self is simply a useful evolutionary trick that aids survival. If there is no real self that persists, then there is no external justification for the inherent worth of the individual. Ultimately, in atheism, we are just a configuration of atoms interacting with other collections of atoms. No more valuable than rocks banging against rocks.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that Japanese people do not value themselves or others. We naturally do, to some extent. What I am suggesting is that our belief systems do not provide a strong foundation for valuing the individual the way Western belief systems do.
When there is no foundation for individuality, and this is combined with the Confucian rules about obedience, loyalty, hierarchy, selflessness, and submission to authority, and Shinto fidelity and patriotism... we arrive at a strong justification for treating workers like expendable parts of a machine. Since there is no deep foundation for their individuality, there is no ultimate justification for their worth as individuals.
Then, as the rotten cherry on top, we also use our shame culture to keep people in line.
What I See Around Me
Emma, when I ride the school bus each morning, or walk through Goshogawara, I observe something troubling in the faces of the adults around me. There is a weariness that seems deeper than simple tiredness from work. I see people who appear hollowed out. As if something essential has been quietly removed from them over time.
I wonder sometimes if we Japanese have forgotten how to be genuinely happy. Not the polite happiness we perform for others, but the real kind that comes from within.
I notice how many of us retreat into fantasy worlds. Computer games, manga, anime, pachinko, alcohol. These things are entertaining, of course. But why do we need so much entertainment? Why do we consume these escapes with such hunger? I think it is because something in our daily reality has become unbearable.
Consider how our anime characters often have wild hair colors: pink, yellow, blue, green. Meanwhile, our schools strictly forbid any hair color other than black. Is this not strange? We dream in color but are forced to live in monochrome. Our fantasies reveal what our reality denies us: the freedom to be different.
The self is diminished here. We are taught to dissolve ourselves into the group, like sugar stirred into tea until it vanishes. We are kneaded together like rice into mochi, pounded until our individual grains become indistinguishable.
But here is what troubles me most, Emma. I do not believe most of us truly love this arrangement. We pretend. We perform loyalty to the group because we fear what happens to those who do not. Each of us wears a mask of contentment while hiding our true thoughts. This constant performance, this daily dishonesty with ourselves and others, surely it must damage something inside us.
And now the bargain is breaking down. The group used to offer something in return for our submission: security, belonging, lifetime employment, community. But these rewards are vanishing. Companies no longer guarantee jobs for life. Families are scattering. Neighbors do not know each other. The group demands just as much from us, but gives back less and less.
We are keeping all the costs of collectivism while losing its few benefits.
My Conclusion
So, Emma, why do Japanese people work such long hours?
On the surface: because our bosses learned during the economic boom that hard work brings success, and they cannot imagine any other way.
Deeper: because Bushido values of loyalty and self-sacrifice, shaped during the Edo period to ensure social control, still echo in our workplaces. Group harmony is used as a weapon to force compliance.
Deepest: because our belief systems do not provide a strong foundation for individual worth, making it easier to demand that individuals sacrifice themselves for the collective.
These three layers press down on us. The weight of history. The weight of philosophy. The weight of expectation.
I do not know how to fix this, even though my heart wants it fixed. Perhaps the first step is simply to see clearly how we arrived at this place. The coping strategies that helped our ancestors survive the strict Edo period are still with us, even though the shoguns are long gone. We are still acting like dogs who will be beaten if another dog barks.
Perhaps if we can see the bars of our cage, we can begin to imagine a door.
Thank you for asking such a thoughtful question. I hope my answer, though very long (forgive me), has helped you understand our situation a little better.
With warm regards from Japan,
Miko Nishimura
