Opinion Frugal Fashion By JOHN GATHRIGHT	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
貧乏がはやり あるコンピューター会社が新作ゲームの開発のために「貧乏体験」を募集した。若者から寄せられたたくさんの体験記を読んで、筆者—

Recently, a Japanese computer company in Tokyo ran a promotional campaign asking for participants to send in letters with personal bimbo stories, that is, stories and experiences about being poor. They planned to use these true stories to create a new computer game.

Thousands of letters poured in telling humorous stories of struggling students scraping to make ends meet. There seemed to be no stigma against being poor. In fact, among youth it seemed fashionable to be self-sacrificing, struggling and frugal. All this, even though the Japanese economy has taken a downturn.

Considering the relative nature of the word, perhaps some people feel that these students are not really poor. I am positive that very few of the participants are actually starving or truly destitute. However, having said that, I would like to focus on the themes of struggle and frugality displayed in their letters.

I myself was a struggling student in Japan. The fact that I was very poor was not born out of circumstance but rather was self-induced. I wanted to work for a Japanese tatami shop instead of taking a more lucrative part-time job.

The work was hard and the pay was almost nil, but the experience was worth its weight in gold. The shop owner had a very hard time making ends meet, so I was often paid in goods rather than cash. My paycheck would consist of some miso, daikon, tsukemono, rice and an envelope with coins and a few thousand-yen bills every week. This made paying tuition and rent very difficult. New clothes or fancy things were out of the question. But every day was so rich with learning and opportunities. My job was to remove old tatami mats and bring them back to the shop by wooden cart for repair. The work was dusty and dirty, the mats, heavy. I would come back itchy and stinky, but every trip left me bubbling over with excitement about the people I had met and the places I had seen. Most of the homes and buildings with tatami mats were hundreds of years old, full of history and culture. The owners were kind and happy to share stories and experiences with a Canadian tatami worker.

As I worked at the shop, my Japanese flourished, as did my love of Japan. Unfortunately, some of my classmates, both foreign and Japanese, felt that it was disgraceful to be walking around pulling a wooden cart in tattered and torn, traditional Japanese clothes. "Where is your gaijin pride?" They labeled me a Japanese wannabe.

I lived in an old dilapidated Japanese house, so run-down that when a typhoon came I lost part of the roof and my front door. One day I even crawled into bed to find a new-born litter of mice.

I may have been poor, but I was far from lacking in pride. And I still have great pride in the wealth of experiences that my tatami shop job gave me. The lessons I learned there were ones no university could ever teach. It is these lessons that build strength of character, positive personal power and a deep love for Japan — and make for great stories to tell in later years.

I think that in every cloud there is a silver lining. The downturn in the Japanese economy may presently appear as a dark and gloomy cloud. But if because of it, frugality, hard work and self-sacrifice become fashionable among youth, there is definitely a silver lining. If the new fashion trend among youth is being poor, I'm all for it.

Shukan ST: June 5, 1998

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