日本之後生可畏

'Curling-type' rookies,awe

'Curling-type' rookies should be held in awe

04/09/2008

Some of this year's rookie company employees must have taken some deep breaths over the weekend before they braced themselves for their second week at work on Monday.

I wonder if they are beginning to get used to their new environment, or still feeling a bit overwhelmed. Even their seniors at work, who may come across as wise and experienced, have had to deal with their rookie year. A profession brings a certain dignity to everyone involved.

The job market favors jobseekers now, and this year's newcomers are said to have "glided" smoothly to gainful employment. Perhaps because of this, they are nicknamed the "curling type" after the wintry sport played on ice where competitors use a broom to guide along a polished flat-bottomed rock. According to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development, which came up with this moniker, these new recruits may feel discouraged and slow down or even lose their motivation to keep going if people around them stop working their brooms, so to speak.

It has been quite some time since a "type" came to be assigned to each year's graduate workforce. For instance, when I was a freshman a quarter-century ago, my contemporaries were dubbed the "mah-jongg tile type." This meant that we were "all uniform in size and shape and therefore easy to align, but people couldn't tell what 'hand' we were dealing them."

We made our elders lament our lack of individuality back then, but we are now nearing that rung on the corporate ladder that puts us on the management level. And I, for one, sometimes catch myself muttering about the "younger generation," just like my seniors used to do about my generation. It's rather sobering to realize that somewhere along the road, I myself have become a runner in the "relay of complaints" that must have been perpetuated since the dawn of human history.

"We should be in awe of the younger generation,後生可畏." warned an ancient Chinese sage What he meant was that since young people are filled with potential, nobody knows what heights of greatness they may achieve, so we ought to hold them in awe and respect.

There's a joke about an old Japanese man who always gushes about the good old days and finds fault with everything in today's society. He blurts out one day, "When I was younger, Mount Fuji wasn't anything like what it is today."

The joke should be a lesson for people who belittle the younger generation. Taking this as a warning, I am cheering for this year's "curling-type" rookies.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 7(IHT/Asahi: April 9,2008)