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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Diana who wrote (10841)	11/30/2001 5:19:15 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Diana, Thank you for the excellent laugh. Here's one of Professor Pharr's best "insights" into the new Nippon: "Even seeming hardships may, in some cases, yield gains. As economic conditions worsened and firms, at least until recently, refrained from reducing their regular workforce, young people in particular felt the squeeze. The shrunken number of full-time, entry-level positions has given rise to the so-called furiitaa ("freeter," an odd label mixing the English word "free" with Arbeiter, the German term for worker), a generation of young people who flit from one part-time position to the next. Living with their parents, who rarely charge them rent, they spend their earnings on whatever strikes their fancy, from digital cameras to foreign travel. Japan's many "love" hotels offer them places to go for intimacy, while their mothers, glad to be spared an empty nest, prepare them meals at home. These "parasite singles" (parasaito shinguru), according to sociologist Masahiro Yamada, who coined the term, now number 10 million, and their number is growing. A great many say they prefer their freedom to the dreary, company-centered lives of their fathers. Without their consumer spending, the economy would be in far worse shape than it is, and their more flexible attitudes toward changing jobs may have a transforming effect on the world of work in the long term." Let me get this straight, Japanese 20-somethings, who already have tremendous issues with what we in the West call "maturity" and "independence" thanks to the scalding secondary school system and incredibly competitive college entrance system (which results in very high teen suicide rates as well as freezing the average male's emotional maturity quotient at about age 9), are now "free" to engage in a series of go nowhere part time jobs, live at home and have Mom prepare the rice and natsu, spend their meager earnings not on food and shelter but electronic knickknacks, delight in promiscuity at the Love Hotels most likely a cash drain on Mom 'n Pop's household budget("Okaasan, can you lend me 30,000 yen this afternoon, I need to, um, go shopping with Mitsuko?"), and this kind of activity and consumer spending (many if not all love hotels are controlled by the yakuza) is going to be a liberating force on the workplace and the economy? Who said their mothers were "glad to be spared an empty nest"?? "Oh, good, I just didn't know what to do with that extra 150 square feet," Mom mused to her friends. "You know, I just seemed to get lost, wandering around the vast 600 square feet of our apartment." Ms. Pharr ought to be working the comedy clubs. Kb