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Ryuta Koike was 16 when he snapped. In high school in Tokyo, he was prone to dozing off during class, listening to his Walkman and ignoring his teachers. One day, a teacher ordered him to the principal's office. Ryuta refused to go. He says the teacher shoved him. Ryuta pushed back. "I was so angry. I grabbed the teacher's neck and started shaking him." That got him expelled, which doesn't seem to bother Ryuta much. "I'm much better at real life," he says. Now 18, Ryuta still lives with his mother, but she cut off his monthly allowance and he now works part-time jobs. He dreams of being an actor "to express my complete freedom," he says. "The worst thing in the world would be to be a salaryman."
That kind of attitude may represent self-protective armor for many young Japanese, as finding a job--any job--is getting harder. Several large companies, including Sony and NEC, announced this year that they were severely cutting back on recruiting. Aspiring computer engineer Tadashi Minemura, 22, found out just how tough the job market can be when none of the 20 software firms that interviewed him a year ago came back with an offer. One bank did--but it wasn't the sort of job that appeals to a young man who races go-carts on the weekends and posts his photography on his Internet homepage. "You have to deal with an ATM or some boring job for 10 years or more before you get involved with something interesting," Minemura says. "I don't want to waste time."
Instant gratification is the ideal. "Their motto is enjoy now, pay later," says sociologist Fujiwara. That's a complete reversal of the ethic that motivated their parents. But Minemura is unapologetic. "No matter what company I work for, I don't want to do what I can't enjoy," he says. If he can't find what he's looking for, he's happy to take a part-time job and join the growing ranks of freetas: a newly invented word that combines the English-language "free" and arbeiter, the German word for worker. The term refers to Japanese who deliberately avoid the traditional career ladder for short-term jobs with little possibility of promotion. In the past, these jobs, which include everything from waitressing to truck-driving to washing windows, were the domain of high-school dropouts and kids who didn't go to college. Because of the shrinking economy and the shifting ambitions of youth, they are now popular among college graduates as well. "I look at my friends, they are all wearing suits," says Chisato Yoda, 24, a cashier at a coffee bar. "They all had dreams about what they wanted to do; they all had to compromise. I don't want to do a Japanese-style job search, wearing a blue suit and telling lies." She dropped out of an interior-design school after starting work at the coffee joint last summer. "This is only for now," Yoda says. She plans to quit soon and might take up interior design again. Or cooking. Or something else. "I want to do something I like," she says.
Being impatient can be a virtue, of course. It has driven many entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into companies; it can motivate inventors to build better mousetraps. In Japan, though, it is patience that is regarded as the virtue, which may explain why the country has a dearth of the risk-takers that populate meccas of creativity like Silicon Valley. Ryo Ogawa and Yosuke Shindo are a lot like those prototype computer geeks who struck gold in California. As teenagers five years ago they started a company, Equal Inc., in Shindo's tiny bedroom. They fiddled with a videocamera and digital-editing software, producing amateurish computer-edited movies. That evolved into creating websites, and they soon found themselves in business designing computer-generated advertisements. Now they employ four people and work 16-hour days, often sleeping in the cubicles in their small office. For several years, they lost money and racked up $25,000 in debt. Recently, Equal finally started turning a small profit.
Ogawa, 24, is the creative force of the company. A bleached-blond with two silver hoops in his left ear, he dresses for work, depending on his mood, in everything from suits to kimonos to hip-hop threads. He is also the dreamer, drawing feverishly to illustrate points he wants to make in conversation. "Originality is vital," he says. "I look at computers, commercial design, architecture, and I know that I could improve on what's out there. I want to abandon the mundane." Shindo, 23, is more conservative but no less ambitious. Where Ogawa dropped out of college, Shindo is set to graduate with a management degree next year. He hopes to strike it rich someday, like his heroes Akio Morita of Sony and financier George Soros. "I'd buy a bus or a plane and put everybody in the company in it so we'd always be in a different country," he says. "Why not? There's nothing I can't do."
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THIS WEEK'S TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Sakurako Tsuchiya runs her family's brewery. Tom Wagner--Saba for TIME
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Young Japan Home
The Me Generation:
The country's privileged youth are struggling to define what they want. Their efforts--both frivolous and fundamental--are already beginning to transform the culture
Day in the Life:
What a 17-year-old girl does--and buys
Culture Club:
Tokyo has taken over as the source of what's hip and happening for the rest of East Asia
Sound Factory:
An Okinawa school turns out stars
Talk Talk:
What teens are chatting about online
Not Playing Ball:
A fresh generation is starting to shake up the hidebound world of Japanese baseball
Outside the Box:
Breaking the education straitjacket
Viewpoint:
Actress Youki Kudoh says respect the old ways
Viewpoint:
Parents should examine their own ethics
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