Straightjacket Society
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| The Cover of Straightjacket Society |
This book is phenomenally hilarious, insightful, and very articulate in its depiction of life inside bureaucratic Japan. Dr. Miyamoto brings an uncanny sense of wit and insight to the way Japanese work, conduct themselves, and survive in some of the most tightly organized areas of Japanese life. As a psychiatrist who had lived and practiced psychiatry in America for eleven years, Dr. Miyamoto took a post with Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1986. This book is a real insiders look into Japan's governmental structures from the perspective of someone with all the language and cultural access, but profoundly dissatisfied with the codes of silence, groupism, and pathological methods of control in the Japanese workplace.
Dr. Miyamoto is able to pull it all off with a great sense of humor too. For me, that is a major bonus. Having had some experience languishing in group offices in Japanese high schools, I am not new to the common themes of unpaid overtime, weekend work, coming to work early, long hours of doing nothing in the office, after-work drinking parties, and enduring meaningless meetings. Miyamoto has had enough, and sensibly so. He is one of a very few dissatisfied Japanese people who actually stop participating in some of the things that most people simply passively accept.
This book is wonderful in giving readers an inside look at the bureaucratic world, as well as a peek at how government works in this county. This is a must read. And although Miyamoto is very much a pariah in his own culture, his insights are tremendously valuable, even though they must sting his countrymen from time to time. He is a rebel with a cause, and a champion against bullies, a common Japanese office fixture.
Read this book. It is excellent.
Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
December, 2002
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