Salaryman

Money.

Labor.

Daily life.

Endurance.

Sad.

Slave.

Father.

Someone who should be loved and pitied.

If I were to describe a Salaryman in five words...

Suit.

Laptop.

Rush hour train.

Bar.

Drunk.

You're giving a bad image.

Yes, "slave" is pretty bad.

No matter how hard we work

it doesn't pay to be a Salaryman.

It takes me about an hour to get from my home to my office.

Salarymen are bound by time.

Being a Salaryman means finding something that you want to do

from the slim pickings in the work world.

A Salaryman is someone who makes certain sacrifices

in order to protect something.

Amidst limitations,

and despite constraints,

they still have dreams.

Growing up in Costa Rica, I always

felt New York was the place to make it

as an artist.

Competition there is brutal.

I went to New York to be a photographer,

but I ended up making a living in post-production for fashion.

Retouching.

Working in an office was the exact opposite of what

I set out to do.

After a couple of years,

my work visa got denied and I was forced to leave New York.

So on a whim I gathered all my savings

and flew to Tokyo.

With all this free time, I could just explore.

From day one, Tokyo felt like a city with a purpose.

In the morning you see an army of men in suits

flowing into the trains like a river,

a blur of black and white.

At around midday, they all stream out of the office

and go to the convenience store to grab a quick lunch.

Or you see them lined up eating noodles.

Around 6pm,

again, there's this frantic movement towards trains

with taxis.

As you go down the hill from the Shinjuku station,

you see all these alleyways lit by neon,

little restaurants back to back.

So many smells, beer, cigarettes, ramen.

It's a sensory overload.

So you see this

group of people dressed the same doing the same things.

I started asking about these,

and I always got the same answer.

They're salary men.

It's a term that's used in Japan

for an office worker.

"Corporate cattle"... I think that's the perfect word.

My image of salary men is that they are corporate cattle.

I think the Salaryman culture is unique to Japan

and probably can't be found anywhere else.

Salaryman in Japan.

But we want to say

we are businessmen. - Businessmen...

Best of businessmen!

Construction.

Little bit...

We love businessman.

Love...

Love, love Salaryman.

But maybe you say Salaryman.

Salaryman is not businessman.

It's a very different

species.

Businessman is not replaceable.

Salaryman is replaceable

and disposable.

Their life is based on

work

and company.

Not individually based

but always group based.

My name is Taro Karibe.

Twenty-seven years old.

After I graduated

my university, I started working for a commercial bank

and I worked there for three and a half years.

I was a Salaryman.

And... I used to live in the company's dormitory

so they have announces every morning,

from 6am.

"Please wake up, people!"

"Let's go to work!"

I lived with one hundred salary men.

They were my co-workers.

We ate together

and we took a bath together.

After I woke up

I took a train to get my office.

Normally after I finished my work.

I got back around 10

or 12

or 1am.

Because after work

we had to go to drink with my boss

and co-workers.

That's part of our work.

The work invaded my private life.

I worked at a trading company for 43 years.

I'm part of the old generation.

When I was young,

every day I was ordered around and yelled at for messing up.

Then the boss would take us out to dinner

and provide feedback.

That's the traditional way to train your employees.

That's how I came up.

Actually, I still do the same now.

I make sure to provide guidance after hours.

That's why I took my subordinates

out for dinner twice this week.

They see time spent drinking with

the boss as part of their education.

I've always taken care of my own family on Saturdays and Sundays.

But weekdays were for drinks with co-workers.

I think people still understand that now.

I think people who are serious about work understand this.

The word for "employee" is interesting in Japanese.

When you write the word in Chinese characters

it means "someone who obeys work."

Now people are starting to use a

different word to imply autonomy.

They created the word "jigyo-in."

The characters read, "someone who does his own work."

Fundamentally, the Japanese way of life

prioritizes others over the self.

The self always comes second.

To Japanese, it's a given that you

are considerate of other people.

It's said that the Western concept

of the clearly defined individual,

a modern concept,

was introduced into Japan during or after the Meiji era.

Up until then, there hadn't

really been much of a delineation

between the self and the other.

The culture placed emphasis

not on who did what,

but what was done as a whole.

Consider a village.

It's hard to say where the family begins

in relation to the individual.

In the Japanese language, subjects are often omitted.

Usually we don't explicitly state who did what.

Instead of stating things explicitly,

we read between the lines to determine the subject,

omitting the subject entirely.

We never developed the skill or even have the notion

of delineating things so clearly.

So I think that we've never really made a clear division

between private life and work,

between one's home life and the office life.

We are more collectivist

and emphasize teamwork.

This means we need to complete tasks as a team.

Salaryman is a modern samurai

in capitalism society.

I think there are both aspects of the slave and the warrior.

They might be akin to mercenaries, to hired hands.

I'll be your bodyguard.

I'll show you what I'm worth.

The warrior is a warrior in the company.

Inside the company.

If they go outside, they are not warriors,

only men.

Just before midnight, the salary men

start pouring out of the izakaya.

The last train leaves at midnight

so the people that want to go home

have to run to catch the last train.

And the ones that stay stranded in

Tokyo are stuck here for the night.

There's this generalization that in

Japan people are very polite.

They're very mindful of their space.

They're very respectful.

At least that's what I experienced

when I started hanging out

with salary men on my own.

But, compared to this very structured world

I saw during the day, at night,

everything changes.

I've been a Salaryman for the past 22 years.

For 22 years at the same company.

I'm a computer engineer.