Japanese humanity and Australian heartlessness in the COVID19 crisis

As the world falls into economic depression, strangled by the terrifying grip of the coronavirus, I am reminded once again of a huge cultural difference between Australia and Japan. It is predicted that almost 2 million Australians will lose their job in the coming weeks, bringing the unemployment rate to an unprecedented 15%. As I drive past the long lines outside of Centrelink, the social welfare office, and read post after post on social media about friends and acquaintances losing their jobs, I just can’t help but wonder if the scale of this issue can be attributed to culture. How quick bosses are to fire employees who have worked for them for years and years when the going gets tough. Do we really value profit so much that we don’t consider the profound effect that firing an employee will have on their livelihood? Is there really no other way?

When I was living and working in Japan, there were numerous aspects of Japanese work culture that annoyed me. One of these was the valuing of relationships and loyalty to a company over actual skills. It is not uncommon in Japan to find people in higher positions who got there simply because they were the oldest in the room at the time the position became available, or because they had the best relationship with the boss. It would frustrate me to no end when my superior was seriously lacking in what I would consider the bare minimum skills required to do the job. A rather amusing example of this is when in 2018, the Japanese Cyber-Security Minister Mr. Yoshitaka Sakurada admitted that he had never used a computer in his life. Like, who thought that was a good idea? But, in the light of the COVID19 crisis, I have come to see the positive side of this cultural quirk.

Japanese companies will do almost anything before they resort to firing their staff. Even in the face of an international crisis and economic downturn, they value the relationship they have with their workers and show incredible humanity in doing everything they can to keep their employees. We can blame our current unemployment crisis on the coronavirus as much as we want, and yes some of it is unavoidable, but I think if we looked a little more closely, we would come to the conclusion that if only a few more Australian business owners showed this kind of humanity and care for their staff’s well-being, perhaps we wouldn’t be heading down this path quite so dramatically. I think it is sad that so many people in our society value money over people. Are we really so heartless?