Straitjacket Society - Masao Miyamoto
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Straitjacket Society (An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan) - Masao Miyamoto, M.D.
A non-fictional book you wish was fictional. When we lament the "bureaucracy" everywhere, we can read this book and thank God that we do not have the kind of bureaucracy in Japan.
Funny, yet at the same time tragic, in this book, you will see how messed up the all-pervasive bureaucracy is in Japan. And within it, is a microcosm of the Japanese culture and psyche. Where people stay in the office to insane hours of the night even when they do not have anything to do. Where watching TV on the job is an accepted part of working. And more... simply because the one rule in the office is: do not rock the boat.
The author was a Japanese expatriate who returned to Japan and found himself facing all kinds of hardships in his workplace, simply because he wants to work during office hours and go home after. He finds that in Japan, there is no difference between office hours and personal time, and that the Japanese people are, in his words, unable to function without their roles and would be lost and unable to control or face anything outside the ordinary themselves without extreme behaviour.
An eye-opener of a book, which serves also as a warning to all about not looking further than the surface, 4 out of 5.
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argh... what could be worse than pretending to work when there is really no work to be done...