TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/090991/0909140.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.0 KB | 107 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 63

Attention: Hurry Up and Relax


Encouraged by their companies to vacation, Japanese are grappling
with working very hard at having fun

By KUMIKO MAKIHARA/TOKYO


    Mtoshi Yamada, 43, a Japanese construction executive, has
big plans for the next 10 years. He wants to pass six
certifying exams in such diverse fields as health and real
estate, read 480 books and buy some land to build a home. After
that, he intends to bicycle around the world, go to art school
and volunteer his services to a government-sponsored Peace Corps
for the elderly. In fact, Yamada's schedule is chock full until
2018, when he plans to buy a grave. All this meticulous planning
is his way of relaxing: once a self-described workaholic, Yamada
was forced by tuberculosis to slow down. "I used to give 100%
of myself to my job," he says. "Now I aim for 60%."

    Like Yamada, many Japanese are belatedly discovering the
joys -- and difficulties -- of relaxing. They still work among
the longest hours in the industrialized world -- an average of
65 days a year more than Germans, and 25 more than Americans --
and take an average of only 8.2 days of paid vacation per year,
but corporations as well as the state are urging them to take
more time off. "The government doesn't want people to burn
out," says Hidehiko Sekizawa, executive director of the Hakuhodo
Institute of Life and Living, a Tokyo think tank.

    A nation of workaholics, however, has found that taking it
easy is no easy task. It requires practice, effort and, like
most things in Japan, plenty of organization. At Mazda Motors,
employees last spring were busy working out their holiday plans.
In an effort to get them to take time off, Mazda holds an annual
"Dream Vacation Contest." Participants describe their ideal
getaway, and the winners have their dreams come true at company
expense. Last year's winner was Ryuzo Yamaguchi, a training
manager, who wanted to enter an international ballroom-dance
contest in Britain. With a $3,500 subsidy from Mazda, Yamaguchi
and his wife waltzed and tangoed at London's Royal Albert Hall. A
year later, he proudly displays his name emblazoned on a copy of
the contest's program, but is still not fully reconciled to the
idea of extended vacations. "Two weeks off was a long time," he
says.

    For some workaholic Japanese, ignoring vacations is no
longer an option. Jusco, a supermarket chain, has ordered a
mandatory month-long annual holiday for workers at
middle-management level and above. Hitoshi Murakami, 36, a
Nagoya store manager, spent his enforced leisure time hiking
around his local prefecture, visiting his 90-year-old
grandmother in Osaka, and for the first time since joining the
company 14 years ago, taking a trip with his wife and her
family, to the seaside town of Toba. Murakami also attended the
Japanese equivalent of a PTA meeting, his first ever, and
discovered that his eight-year-old son, often scolded at home
for being absentminded, was seen by his teachers as a
conscientious, responsible student. Until last April, Murakami
had never taken more than five summer days off each year. Says
he: "I never made any plans, so I never felt the need."

    When the electronics firm Omron told plant manager Junichi
Yoshikawa, 43, that he had to take a three-month sabbatical, he
set up a vacation schedule with the same thoroughness that he
shows at the office. He decided to travel overseas (to San
Francisco and Los Angeles), practice golf and start his own
consulting and sales firm in Japan -- and tackled each task with
determination. "After two months off, I felt different,"
Yoshikawa recalls. "I felt that I could be more creative and
break away from reality."

    Japan has experts who advise novice vacationers: the
National Recreation Association of Japan offers classes to train
such "leisure counselors." About 1,200 would-be advisers are
currently studying ways to overcome barriers to leisure,
including lack of time, money or traveling companions. The
Ministry of International Trade and Industry encourages
corporations to have full-time advisers to help employees plan
their free time for maximum benefit.

    Older Japanese need all the help they can get to break
their stubborn devotion to work, a legacy of the postwar
struggle to rebuild the economy. For younger people, untouched
by those hard times, taking time off is easier. Yoshiko Murata,
23, who works in public affairs at Toyota, last year took four
vacation trips, two each to Europe and Hawaii. Last May she went
to Bali and loved it. "My friends and I were reluctant to
leave," recalls Murata, "but we said, `Let's work hard so we can
come back again.' " Her boss, Kimiaki Kuroki, 42, has taken only
two days off so far this year. Says he, despondently: "Now I'm
finally down to 58 days of vacation time left." In the new
Japanese way of looking at things, Kuroki has some serious
relaxing to do.