Freeter and linglei
Feb. 11th, 2004 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIn 1958 Mao Tse Tung asked for the intelligentsia of China to suggest improvements and constructively criticize the regime (Tony Blair is doing the same thing right now with his Big Conversation). 'Let a hundred flowers bloom,' said Mao, 'let a hundred schools of thought contend.' It's a lovely image of pluralism, but, as Ben Hammersley points out, 'after a few of the flowers started to bloom, Mao really didn't like being told he was wrong, and soon it became apparent that the Hundred Flowers movement was really just an exercise to see who didn't support him. Many people died, or were exiled, and the resulting cracks in society led to the Cultural Revolution, the destruction of much of China's ancient cultural artefacts, and the deaths of millions.'
(The Cultural Revolution was in fact launched eight years later, in 1966.)
I thought of Mao's phrase when I read an article in the New York Times entitled This 21st-Century Japan, More Contented Than Driven. In this article Norimitsu Onishi puts a considerably more positive spin on Japan's current mood than, for instance, Time Asia did in their article Japan: Rising No Longer. Rather than seeing a Japan losing 'the battle to be number one', she sees a Japan concentrating on diversity, pleasure and self-expression. Quality of life, in short.
'The feeling is noticeably strong among the young. If the icon of the 1980's was the salaryman who sacrificed his private life for his company, today's icon is the freeter — the young Japanese who take odd jobs to make just enough money to enjoy their personal interests or choose their way of life. The stress of competing inside Japan, let alone as part of a country competing against a visibly, and to some, frighteningly, hungry China, is furthest from their minds... The annual New Year's Eve "Red and White Song Contest" television show provided a clue. SMAP, perhaps Japan's most famous pop group, closed the show with last year's best-selling song, Only One Flower in the World. The song was popular among antiwar demonstrators, but more than anything else it struck a chord here by asking, "Why do we want to be No. 1 when each of us is different?"
Why be number one when there are so many flowers -- so many equally legitimate ways of being -- blooming? This respect for pluralism has always been a Japanese theme thanks to shinto, the animistic national religion in which a thousand micro-gods co-exist in diversity, not only with each other, but also with Buddhism.
The new China -- hungry, ambitious, successful -- is often held up as a contrast to this laidback Japanese attitude. But in fact young Chinese and Taiwanese are following in the footsteps of young Japanese, putting the emphasis on quality of life and self-expression. In China they're called linglei. In its February cover story Breaking Out, Time Asia explains the term:
'This year, the Xinhua New Word Dictionary , which serves as one of the Communist Party's official arbiters of what is linguistically acceptable, amended the definition of linglei to just mean an alternative lifestyle, without an accompanying sniff of disapproval. Unlike countercultural movements in the West, which often germinate in protest activities, most linglei are not motivated by economic anxiety or political dissatisfaction. Growing up in an amnesiac era where Tiananmen is increasingly just a square, not a massacre, they feel little need to push for governmental change. Instead, their rebellion against conformity is largely an exercise in self-expression, a mannered display of self-conscious cool. "People born in the 1970s are concerned about how to make money, how to enjoy life," says Chun Shu, another young writer who dropped out of high school. "But people born in the 1980s are worried about self-expression, how to choose a path that fits one's own individual identity.'
The Taipei Times last June ran an article making a link between the Chinese linglei and the Japanese freeter:
'Freeter, a term coined by the Japanese by combining the English word free and the German word Arbeiter, is defined as "people with college diplomas who engage in menial employment." They seek a free lifestyle and consider leading a carefree life to be more important than their careers. According to a recent survey in Japan, the number of freeters aged between 15 and 34 there now accounts for about one-fifth of the population in this age group, or roughly 4 million. Japanese socio-economists have warned that freeters are a hidden worry in Japanese society as they will have difficulty finding a decent job when they pass 30 and become a burden on Japanese society when they become old and have no savings or relatives to depend on. In Taiwan, young men and women are less likely to become freeters through choice, as there are simply fewer jobs for them upon graduation.'
Today, February 11th, Japan marks an important shinto festival, National Founding Day. This is the traditional date on which the first mythical emperor Jinmu ascended the throne in 660 BCE. It also happens to be the birthday of the world's biggest gaijin linglei freeter: me. As a freeter way the wrong side of 30, I'd advise those socio-economist square dudes to chill. Forget 'decent jobs', forget 'savings', that's what made our parents so damned tired and sad. We'll be fine as long as we keep finding new synonyms for 'beatnik' and selling them to Time magazine. Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Wong?
(The Cultural Revolution was in fact launched eight years later, in 1966.)
I thought of Mao's phrase when I read an article in the New York Times entitled This 21st-Century Japan, More Contented Than Driven. In this article Norimitsu Onishi puts a considerably more positive spin on Japan's current mood than, for instance, Time Asia did in their article Japan: Rising No Longer. Rather than seeing a Japan losing 'the battle to be number one', she sees a Japan concentrating on diversity, pleasure and self-expression. Quality of life, in short.
'The feeling is noticeably strong among the young. If the icon of the 1980's was the salaryman who sacrificed his private life for his company, today's icon is the freeter — the young Japanese who take odd jobs to make just enough money to enjoy their personal interests or choose their way of life. The stress of competing inside Japan, let alone as part of a country competing against a visibly, and to some, frighteningly, hungry China, is furthest from their minds... The annual New Year's Eve "Red and White Song Contest" television show provided a clue. SMAP, perhaps Japan's most famous pop group, closed the show with last year's best-selling song, Only One Flower in the World. The song was popular among antiwar demonstrators, but more than anything else it struck a chord here by asking, "Why do we want to be No. 1 when each of us is different?"
Why be number one when there are so many flowers -- so many equally legitimate ways of being -- blooming? This respect for pluralism has always been a Japanese theme thanks to shinto, the animistic national religion in which a thousand micro-gods co-exist in diversity, not only with each other, but also with Buddhism.
The new China -- hungry, ambitious, successful -- is often held up as a contrast to this laidback Japanese attitude. But in fact young Chinese and Taiwanese are following in the footsteps of young Japanese, putting the emphasis on quality of life and self-expression. In China they're called linglei. In its February cover story Breaking Out, Time Asia explains the term:
'This year, the Xinhua New Word Dictionary , which serves as one of the Communist Party's official arbiters of what is linguistically acceptable, amended the definition of linglei to just mean an alternative lifestyle, without an accompanying sniff of disapproval. Unlike countercultural movements in the West, which often germinate in protest activities, most linglei are not motivated by economic anxiety or political dissatisfaction. Growing up in an amnesiac era where Tiananmen is increasingly just a square, not a massacre, they feel little need to push for governmental change. Instead, their rebellion against conformity is largely an exercise in self-expression, a mannered display of self-conscious cool. "People born in the 1970s are concerned about how to make money, how to enjoy life," says Chun Shu, another young writer who dropped out of high school. "But people born in the 1980s are worried about self-expression, how to choose a path that fits one's own individual identity.'
The Taipei Times last June ran an article making a link between the Chinese linglei and the Japanese freeter:
'Freeter, a term coined by the Japanese by combining the English word free and the German word Arbeiter, is defined as "people with college diplomas who engage in menial employment." They seek a free lifestyle and consider leading a carefree life to be more important than their careers. According to a recent survey in Japan, the number of freeters aged between 15 and 34 there now accounts for about one-fifth of the population in this age group, or roughly 4 million. Japanese socio-economists have warned that freeters are a hidden worry in Japanese society as they will have difficulty finding a decent job when they pass 30 and become a burden on Japanese society when they become old and have no savings or relatives to depend on. In Taiwan, young men and women are less likely to become freeters through choice, as there are simply fewer jobs for them upon graduation.'
Today, February 11th, Japan marks an important shinto festival, National Founding Day. This is the traditional date on which the first mythical emperor Jinmu ascended the throne in 660 BCE. It also happens to be the birthday of the world's biggest gaijin linglei freeter: me. As a freeter way the wrong side of 30, I'd advise those socio-economist square dudes to chill. Forget 'decent jobs', forget 'savings', that's what made our parents so damned tired and sad. We'll be fine as long as we keep finding new synonyms for 'beatnik' and selling them to Time magazine. Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Wong?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-15 11:29 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-15 04:05 pm (UTC)Bloody hippies.