Essay

Autumn hunting

By Michael Pronko

Autumn is one of the prettiest times of year in Tokyo, with leaves changing their colors and the summer humidity already a memory. The afternoon sunshine feels warm and welcome to almost everyone — everyone except third-year college students. They rarely notice the autumn beauty because they are in the middle of one of the most difficult undertakings of their lives — job hunting.

My third-year students spend their days rushing around the city to attend company seminars, preliminary exams and job fairs. They fill in forms, talk with counselors at the university career center, pore over "hunting" websites and exchange tips with trusted friends. They have removed their extra piercings, dyed their hair back to black, and put on the standard-issue black and white interview outfits. At the age of 21 or 22, neither the clothes nor the worry on their faces ever seem to fit them right.

The worst thing is, with all the pressure from parents, classmates and the university success rate statisticians, their college studies get lost in the shuffle. Traditionally, companies hold their job-hunting activities at exactly the same time as universities hold classes. Students are caught between the rock of school and the hard place of work.

Why companies want to interview a person who has not yet gained experience and not yet completed any course of study remains a mystery to me. But why companies want to preempt the natural course of university education nationwide is even more of a mystery.

When I see my students pinched between studying and job-hunting, I fantasize of being able to interrupt companies in the same way. I would love to drop into a big company and say, "Hey, you company employees, you have an interview about the symbolic structure of Ernest Hemingway's novels at 3 p.m. tomorrow! And don't be late! Wear a T-shirt and jeans! And put some streaks in your hair, can you?" Turnabout is fair play.

I am always impressed at the toughness of my students when job hunting starts. Of course, they were trained to be tough during the entrance exam hell just a few years earlier. But still, it takes over their lives and they take it seriously. It becomes the greeting and farewell each time I see them, "How is it going?" I ask, and everyone knows what "it" refers to.

In class, students cringe if I utter the word shakaijin, a term with no easy equivalent in English, though "member of society" comes close. Just in their early 20s, students seem to already take on the weight of the world, worrying and fretting about what society will be like, and what it will do to them.

Of course, students are already actually in society. Where else could school be? It's just too bad they don't get to finish one thing before they have to start the next.

Shukan ST: NOVEMBER 25, 2011

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