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 When I traveled to Tokyo for my semester abroad, I didn’t think that I’d be sipping on cocktails at a club while watching some American or European brand of DJ, each friend around me dressed crazier than the next, bumping and grinding and chain-smoking cigarettes. Looking around, I realized that Tokyo, albeit across the world, is essentially the same as New York or LA. It was easy to settle right in, and I made a life for myself thousands of miles away while feeling right at home.
I eventually realized that I’d found my way into a tiny subgroup within Japanese society. So small, in fact, that I soon knew everyone involved – even people who are internationally famous for this or that but who, in Tokyo, have no where else to go but this specific subgroup. [I might as well note that this particular group is of the fashion persuasion – mostly stylists, photographers, fashion editors of magazines, or models, with many DJs and club-event-organizers thrown in.] I’m not complaining about the convenient connections I’ve consequently made, or the ease with which I managed to live in Japan – but my atypical experience did get me thinking a bit more about how life is for (excuse my use of the word) ‘normal’ Japanese people in their early twenties. I started paying a little more attention, asking a few more questions, and what I found was… interesting. Traditional expectations for a ‘normal’ Japanese twenty-something are not outlandishly severe, but they are strict. Boys and girls alike complete their high school years of uniform-clad rigorous study, and then enter university or trade school. College is seen as a sort of vacation (i.e. less work than usual) for Japanese kids, who have studied ineffably hard for years to get in and will, upon graduating, immediately enter a lifetime of 9-to-5 work. The last year of college is devoted to the job search, which is very important: Japanese companies traditionally hire a fresh college graduate for an entry-level position, knowing full well that this person will continue in the same company for the rest of their professional lives. The Japanese actually liken companies to families – so much so that businessmen commonly spend more time with coworkers than with their own families, as it is part of work to go out drinking until all hours of the night. Within this context, a boy will become a ‘salary man’ or businessman, while a girl will become an ‘OL,’ short for Office Lady – which means exactly what it sounds like. She is a lady in the office, and she does ‘lady things’ in the office – secretarial tasks, coffee, all of it. Either that, or she will work part time at a local coffee shop, restaurant, clothing or convenience store. But it doesn’t really matter, because that’s only until she gets married. After that, she’s a housewife while her husband works all day and goes out with the office at night. And that’s life for the majority. "she spent months DJing with a baby-bump under her dress and loving it..." Of course, some alternatives to this majority lifestyle do exist. There is the extreme minority that I described earlier – the world of fashion and clubbing – but there is also a more ‘main-stream minority’. The Japanese term ‘furiita’ is short for free-part-time-worker. A furiita is a person (a boy, historically, although it now refers to girls as well) who rejects a career in favor of working part-time jobs. The furiita usually lives with his or her parents— which is the only way to sustain a modern Japanese twenty-something’s lifestyle on a part-time salary. These days, with the number of fruiita on the rise, the word is coming to be treated as though it itself is a career. The furiita lifestyle may at first seem glamorous to post-grads, considering the freedom it offers: no 9-to-5, no company ladder to climb. However, due to the aforementioned workings of the traditional career-building system, it gets more and more difficult to start a career as you age. That is to say, a 30 year-old man will have a hard time getting even an entry-level position from which to begin the climb. And while it is normal for young women to work part-time until marriage, children, and household duties take over, a 30 year-old woman will face similar challenges finding a husband with a career suitable for sustaining her and their family. Thus, a young adult’s naïve decision to step outside the bounds of Japan’s traditional social structure has lasting effects that may not be realized until it’s too late to go back.  Nonetheless, according to the furiitas that I know, choosing this lifestyle is the best decision they’ve ever made. For most of them, it was barely even a decision – it just seemed right; or maybe a 9-5 business career just seemed too wrong. Besides, it isn’t impossible to have a family as a furiita. A close friend of mine, Anita, is now 30-something, DJs, works random part-time jobs and has a baby. She’s raising a family and has no career to speak of. Instead, she spent months DJing with a baby-bump under her dress and loving it. She still goes out after the birth of her daughter, and the lifestyle suits her fine. Nothing could influence her to do anything but exactly what she wants to do -- and that, I would say, is putting the “free” in furiita.
The majority certainly looks down on furiita as a career choice, seeing as it is not actually a career. And personally, I must say the furiita life strikes me as a stressful one: neither the pay nor the positions available are as stable as with an office job, and one risks getting stuck with boring work utterly lacking in intellectual stimulation. My furiita friends wind up in the most random array of jobs, and often complain about going to work– not to mention always just barely making ends meet. And it’s understandable (I wouldn’t want to work in a convenience store, or at a doughnut stand, or as an operator for online video games either). But there’s got to be something about this way of life that is attractive, since so many people our age are choosing to live this way.
That ‘something’ is freedom: the freedom to not wear a suit every day, to move around to different cities, to not worry about a single, straight career path. Incidentally, perhaps there is some sort of connection between the homosexual community and the furiita population – I could imagine the rejection of the business suit as a rejection of all social acceptance, and so on, though I can’t say that for sure. A distinct majority of the futiita I know are gay men, most of who have moved away from their hometowns in the west or far north of Japan and come to Tokyo to do whatever they want. This “whatever they want” usually means going clubbing and hanging out with other gay friends, which makes working part time jobs convenient as it allows them the time to organize club events and stay out all night. To be quite frank, I couldn’t picture most of these people in suits anyway – they are so outside of traditional Japan that gold chains and neon leggings are what they are most comfortable in. For them, the furiita way of life is the most fitting option (no pun intended). "this sort of dependence is a direct product of that child’s pursuance of independence..."  Even more important than how the majority feels about furiita, however, are the repercussions that this growing movement could have on Japan’s society and economy. For one thing, there are few part time jobs that offer health coverage or any sort of pension plan. There’s little to no furiita money going into the system that must support everybody – not to mention that Japan’s pension system already pays so little that most companies have separate saving plans for employees. But most furiita pay no attention to the real-life consequences of abandoning a system which, though at times grueling and less than idyllic, has nevertheless been working for the majority. When accidents happen, there’s no money beyond what the furiita’s parents can afford – and yet this sort of dependence is a direct product of that child’s pursuance of independence. With such a blatant paradox at its core, the rise of the furiita system clearly warrants some critical attention. So what does this all mean for the future of today’s youth in Japan? I would say that most people are still influenced by their parents to remain on the traditional career-track. There is, after all, still a good amount of father-to-son passing of the reigns in Japan, most specifically in terms of company affiliation. For many, a stable job and secure future outweighs the freedom to pursue hobbies and ideals. But it has been theorized that Japan’s aging population (Japan’s birthrate is incredibly low) will cause a labor shortage that will open more and more career choices for furiita. It is also possible that, as the movement continues to grow, companies will loosen restrictions when it comes to starting a career later in life. If so, furita may be finding themselves in 9-5 office jobs after all.
I just hope they’ll still be wearing neon. - Jordan Nassar Photographs by Jordan Nassar |
