Ethnographic Analysis - Japanese Freeter Culture

29 January 2018 - 4 mins read time
Tags: Capstone

Freeter (フăƒȘăƒŒă‚żăƒŒ furÄ«tā) is a Japanese term for young individuals (18-35) who pursue only temp jobs, part-time jobs, or are jobless, and describes a unique subculture that exists in Japan of people who intentionally stray away from the traditional career paths of ‘salary men’.

I finished my B.S. in Informatics while abroad, and completed an anthropological analysis of this subculture as a final project.

You can read the paper HERE

Here’s an exerpt to pique your interest.

Freeters (フăƒȘăƒŒă‚żăƒŒ) define a unique work subculture in Japan. Originally they represented a small group of young working age Japanese citizens that intentionally did not pursue full-time employment (FTE) in order to obtain the personal freedom that came with part-time employment. In this essay I will argue that what was once an intentional choice for a small group of young people has quickly become the only option for many, leaving them unfulfilled in work and systematically trapped in poverty.

To understand Freeters and their hesitance to pursue full-time employment, we must first understand the system they are running away from. Japanese companies are notorious for overworking their employees to dangerous levels of exhaustion, so much so that karoshi (death by overwork) has entered the public lexicon. According to a 2015 Japanese Government survey of businesses, “23 percent of 1,743 companies surveyed said they have employees who have worked more than 80 hours of overtime a month”, with “12 percent that replied that some of their employees clocked more than 100 hours of overtime in a single month” (Japan Times, 2016, #1). At these levels workers are at risk of brain and heart injury or failure, not to mention untold psychological stress that can often lead to suicide.

These are not merely statistics, but people’s lives. In the case of Eriko Fujita, it was not uncommon for her to work 17 to 20 hours a day (seven days a week) at IBM Japan. This kind of work left its toll, with her being quoted as saying “I had a mental breakdown, I was working so hard and not sleeping well. Physically and mentally I got so tired
 I was crying for no reason. I didn’t know why my tears are coming out” (Underhill, 2015, #2). She eventually had to take a three month leave of absence for mental health.

This brutal work culture has left many in Japan deeply unhappy. Despite the post-war economic miracle quickly making Japan into one of the largest economies in the world, Japan is not an exceptionally happy place. A 2013 Gallup poll found Japan to be around the middle of the pack when it came to happiness, ranking far below nearby countries like Thailand and the Philippines. The Japan Times stated that “top of the list to improve Japan’s level of happiness is higher rates of employment and better quality of work. The focus, though, should be on quality of work, rather than just income.” (Japan Times, 2013, #3).

It’s no secret that work is the leading cause of unhappiness in Japan. A 2016 survey conducted by Japan’s own government found that people were exceptionally happy with certain aspects of modern japan, rating “food (88.0% satisfaction), housing (81.4% satisfaction), and consumer goods (75.3% satisfaction)”, but found only “48.1% reporting satisfaction” when it came to income, and “only 42.0% who were satisfied” with their property & savings level (Harris, 2016, #4).

Perhaps it is the low-level workers who have it the worst in Japan, with one company-wide survey finding a “significant difference in the mean score among four groups divided by the job satisfaction level”, with “unskilled manual workers [showing] significantly higher job dissatisfaction” (Kawada & Otsuka, 2011, #5).

With low-level workers finding little satisfaction in typical full-time employment, a unique subcultural alternative arose. Around 2005 the word ‘freeter’ (フăƒȘăƒƒă‚żăƒŒ, furittaa) entered the popular Japanese lexicon. Many high-school and college graduates began to intentionally choose part-time work over full-time employment, such as one high school graduating class where “of the 185 graduates, 34 found regular employment [
] But of the 34, 12 had already quit. Half of those who had quit had become freeters.” The high school guidance counselors stated that the “work atmosphere at Japanese companies has made young people cynical about joining the workforce” (Keiji, 2005, #6). Given what we have heard of FTE positions so far, this does not sound so far-fetched.

You can read the rest of the paper HERE