Office Relations Part 1

If you are from outer-space (or Canada), and you have no idea what Japan is all about, visiting a Japanese workplace might give you the general drift, even though only a small fragment of this outlandish country’s culture may be on display at any given time in a working office. The office workers aren’t wearing kimonos or having sword fights. The women aren’t dressed as geishas, hiding their faces behind colourful fans, and the men aren’t pounding back sake and belting out ‘hits of the 80’s’, somehow still popular in Japan. But, the occasional employee will be wearing one of those unique Japanese face masks, which in itself speaks volumes about these considerate and unwavering people (or is it ‘overly loyal’ and ‘afraid of failing to meet the team’s expectations’?).

Regardless, whether you are deep in the dark bowels of your favourite car company’s office buildings, or in the design rooms of the world’s leading technology companies, where clone-like ‘salarymen’ labour away, inventing revolutionary gadgets, yet are still unable to control the temperature in the room, the Japanese workplace will give you a somewhat accurate first impression of this unparalleled country’s people.

Being that the school staff room is the only Japanese office where I have spent a considerable amount of time, it is this which I will describe to you. The Japanese school staffroom is a small, microcosm of the society in general, complete with an established and unbreakable order of hierarchy, excessively formalized greetings and interactions, and an unwarranted amount of dry, long-winded speeches, much of which I don’t understand, leaving my imagination to fill in the blanks…. “we must fight hard today, team! We must not let our guard down! We will persevere, using strength and spirit to make it through another trying day of labour, teaching our students the knowledge that our forbearers passed down to us, because…. the future of Japan depends on it!”

This is how every morning starts for me at school. On special occasions, the speeches are even longer and somehow more capable of inducing REM sleep; the microphone being passed from one person to the next, each probably re-iterating what the last said until the top of the hierarchy gets his (yes, ‘his’, not ‘her’) chance to address the lowly masses (“uhh… ya, like the last few guys said, we must.. uhh.. use our courage and will-power to make this the best damned children’s play since the Meiji period! The future of Japan depends on it!”). In all honesty, I have not attended a single party, social, or school function in Japan which was not preceded and concluded by a succession of speeches, endless bowing, and an assortment of un-necessary formalities. They can’t even get drunk without first having a little group-think session. “Ahem… I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page here team…we’re going to get really drunk now, aren’t we? Are there any dissenters within our ‘circle of trust’? ”

In addition to the unwarranted abundance of workplace ceremonies, the Japanese school system is quite unlike that of my home country. For instance, it is not the students who move from one class to the other, but rather, the teachers. The result is that the teachers don’t have a cushy desk in their own classroom, but instead share one large office. While Canadian schools have comfortable teacher’s lounges where the staff sit on plush couches and relax, away from the clutter of their workspaces, Japanese teachers have no such place to kick back and take a break. They have only a crowded communal work-room; the walls lined with rusted cabinets containing files which date back to pre-World War II; inspirational phrases, written on tattered and sun-bleached poster-boards, loom threateningly above their heads, serving as a constant reminder of their duty to the team; and, like a complex war-plan, schedules of all kinds are written out in grid-like patterns on the numerous blackboards, outlining, minute by minute, what seems to be the next year of our school life together.

At the front of the staff room, the top members of the staff hierarchy sit in a row, overlooking the teacher’s desks like honourable military generals looking down upon their loyal foot soldiers. From here, the daily morning ‘debriefing’ is given. In the middle of this succession of middle-aged Japanese men (rarely does a woman advance far enough in her career to sit with the ‘big dogs’, but it does happen), sits the ‘kocho-sensei’, a position roughly equivalent to ‘principal’ in North America. However, the ‘kocho-sensei’ has a hell of a lot more power and respect than his North American counterpart.

In Japan, a teacher is a very highly regarded role in society, much more so than in North America. The ‘kocho-sensei’, moreover, gets roughly twice the respect that a regular teacher does, leaving you to imagine how these guys are treated in Japanese society. They are addressed always as ‘kocho-sensei’ and are never referred to by name. “Yes, kocho-sensei… ok, kocho-sensei...,” I can hear the teachers groveling throughout the day, likely agreeing to shine his shoes or light his cigarettes. I however, being an ‘outsider’, don’t have to play by the Japanese rules. After bonding with my kocho sensei at a teacher’s party, where he drunkenly laid his head on my shoulder after a little too much sake, I now just call him ‘the coach’, and we give each other high-fives, ‘bear-growls’ and ass slaps in the hallways. Ok, maybe not the ‘bear-growls’….

Sitting next to the ‘kocho-sensei’ at the front of the teacher’s room are his right hand men; the ‘kyoto-sensei’, or vice-principal, also referred to, not by name, but by status, and an assortment of other ‘executives’, caught in a hierarchical limbo, somewhere between ‘teacher’ and ‘upper management.’ Adjacent to the teacher’s room is the ‘kocho-sensei’s private office. This is a spacious and comfortable dwelling, complete with a curtained-window in the door, which serves to add a certain mystique to the goings-on of this abode; an office so symbolic of success in the Japanese working society; a room with a desk where all teachers (except me) strive to sit. My theory is that the ‘coach’ spends his long days hidden within the office’s anonymity, playing naked tic-tac-toe with the secretary and re-working past, inspirational speeches. Ahhh… what a life when you’re at the top!