Japan, a nation so hardworking its language has a term for literally working oneself to death, is trying to address a worrisome labor shortage by coaxing more people and companies to adopt four-day workweeks.
The Japanese government first expressed support for a shorter working week in 2021, after lawmakers endorsed the idea. The concept has been slow to catch on, however; about 8% of companies in Japan allow employees to take three or more days off per week, while 7% give their workers the legally mandated one day off, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Hoping to produce more takers, especially among small and medium-sized businesses, the government launched a “work style reform” campaign that promotes shorter hours and other flexible arrangements along with overtime limits and paid annual leave. The labor ministry recently started offering free consulting, grants and a growing library of success stories as further motivation.
“By realizing a society in which workers can choose from a variety of working styles based on their circumstances, we aim to create a virtuous cycle of growth and distribution and enable each and every worker to have a better outlook for the future,” states a ministry website about the “hatarakikata kaikaku” campaign, which translates to “innovating how we work.”
Sometimes cultures have really toxic ideas on them. Probably all cultures have something. Like in the US there’s a lot of “the only emotion men are allowed is anger”, for example.
How do you fix that? Is there a general solution? Because sometimes it’s like enforced by the very people it’s harming.
But it’s all social. Made up. It’s not like physics. We can’t all decide that acceleration due to gravity on earth is now a nice round 10 m/s². But we could just decide working long hours is bullshit.
This might be philosophical, but I think a lot of people make a mistake, when they assume that just because something is made up, it somehow makes that thing less real, and less of an obstacle to overcome. The quality of being made up says something about a thing’s origin, not about its level of realness.
As stated, that notion might be philosophical, but following it’s own rules, that doesn’t impact the degree to which it, as with any other idea, exists as a thing that has the quality of realness (distinct from truth value) to it.
It definitely changes the options available to overcoming it!
A small club has a bylaw saying they serve no hard alcohol at parties. That’s a real rule that is enforced. But they can change it with an agreement, or just ignore it from time to time.
Something like acceleration due to gravity is going to happen no matter what.
