漂泊無根、辛苦備嘗的日本打工族
2013年04月16日
鏡頭下，日本的工薪族、臨時工和陪酒女郎過着孤獨、絕望的日子。抑鬱症、過勞死與自殺是很多人的歸宿。
拉着窗帘的窗子上掛着一件黑色西裝夾克。上方是一幅照片，照片中的人微笑着，一身企管人士打扮。
他是寺西彰（Akira Teranishi），一名日本上班族，17年前他從京都的一座大廈一躍而下。那天是情人節。
攝影師深田志穗（Shiho Fukada）與寺西彰的妻子笑子(Emiko)在她京都的家裡見面。笑子說，「我送了他巧克力，我問他能不能休息一天。」
深田志穗問笑子，可否看一看寺西彰的遺物。這件夾克是他的工裝，是這件衣服把他從一個男人變成了一個有工作的男人，撐起一個家的人。像他的眾多同類一樣，這件衣服是他的身份。
深田說，「沒有姓名的勞動者，空空的夾克——可以是任何人。」
這張圖片（圖五）是她自2009年開始拍攝的一系列圖片中的一張。這一系列圖片關注金融危機及其對日本勞動者的影響。整個計劃瀰漫著孤獨感，審視上班族的抑鬱情緒及自殺現象；住在網吧里的臨時工；女招待；及年邁的散工群體。
自2008年開始在北京生活的深田在日本長大，現在來往於紐約與中國之間。當她開始讀到有關金融危機的文章時，她覺得自己需要親眼看一看。
「對於我的祖國的形象，我對過去感到非常自豪，」她說，「現在的情況不一樣了。」
三年前，米基·米克(Miki Meek)在紐約時報Lens博客就該系列的第一部分「勞動之城的終結(End of Labor Town)」寫了文章。深田志穗在大阪釜崎區待了一個月。她說那個地方已經變成了「丟棄老年人的垃圾場，酗酒、貧苦、自殺及孤獨橫行。」
深田志穗是獨自一人前往釜崎區的，那裡居住着2.5萬曾經
以打零工為生的人。後來她獲得了艾麗西亞·帕特森基金會(Alicia Patterson
Foundation)的一筆撥款，還從普利策中心(Pulitzer
Center)取得資助，以繼續她的計劃。她說日本是一個從繁榮走向衰落的國度，而她認為大阪的故事只是這種複雜印象的其中一面。
她說，「我想要解釋，為什麼這個群體在這裡，這個群體之外在發生什麼事情。」
所以就誕生了該系列的第二部分，審視日本上班族中的自殺及
抑鬱現象。這些上班族是像寺西彰一樣的人，他們害怕丟掉工作，就在京都高聳的寫字樓里超時工作。被拍攝的其中一名男子中原翔太（Syota
Nakahara，音譯），在和她見面時已經飽受抑鬱之苦多年。他此前在作系統工程師，曾起訴他的公司不支付加班費。
「在心理方面，我很焦慮不安。」他告訴她： 「我無法注意到身邊的景色，不知道今天是星期幾，也分辨不出現在是哪個季節。我唯一能看到的東西就是公司的入口和我辦公桌上的電腦。」
中原翔太目前在接受藥物治療，他已經成為大阪一個工會組織的主席——他在業餘時間履行這份職責。
抑鬱症，特別是自殺，或「過勞死」(karoshi)，在
日本文化中是不光彩的事。在20世紀90年代初，人們開始普遍使用過勞死一詞，當時日本出現經濟衰退，工人們開始花更多的時間來參與全球競爭的搏殺。在日
本，很多公司以前都採用了終身僱傭制，但是經濟衰退出現之後，它們也開始裁員了。
「日本社會還沒有真正適應現狀。」深田志穗說。 「所以人們真的非常、非常想保住自己的工作。」
2011年，日本的非正式工人
——這些人沒有帶福利的全職工作
——在全部工人中所佔的比例從1990年的20％攀升到了大約35％。這個統計數字讓深田把眼光看向了那些賺錢太少、住不起公寓的臨時工。這些人到網吧里
尋求安身之所，被稱為「網吧難民」，他們夜裡租下網吧的包廂，清晨時便離開，因為網吧的費用晚上會打折。一名男子告訴深田，包廂足夠寬敞，他睡覺的時候不
需要彎着膝蓋。
深田志穗在幾個網吧門外蹲守，等着攜帶行李箱的人進去。這個辦法沒有奏效。最終，她花了兩年時間深入一家網吧，那裡的包月折扣價是615美元多一點，背景音樂是輕柔的爵士樂。
酒井忠行(Tdayuki Sakai，音譯)是一名網吧包月者，他在女兒上大學後就辭掉了一家信用卡公司的工作。在做了20年他不喜歡的工作之後，他覺得到了離開的時候。 「結果他成了網吧難民，但他說自己在那裡快樂多了，」深田志穗說。
她問他是否願意搬到一間公寓，他說， 「不，我只是想離開日本。我沒有什麼可失去的了，我對這個國家不抱希望。」
還有一名年輕女子，年僅18歲，在地震中失去家園後，她跟母親搬到了網吧。
「除了沒有高中文憑之外，」深田志穗說，「她說自己身為女性也是生活艱難的一個原因。」
深田說，儘管日本1985年通過了《平等就業機會法》(Equal Employment Opportunity Law)，但高盛的報告顯示，在受過大學教育的女性中，只有大約三分之二有工作。
這種狀況讓一些年輕女性感到氣餒， 開始轉而去作女招待。
法律規定18歲以上的女性才能從事這種工作，但也有一些不足18歲的女性盛裝坐在酒吧里，等待男性顧客光臨。她們不是妓女，這種工作也只是調情，跟性交易
無關。深田說，很多女招待都希望能找到有錢的丈夫 。日本警察廳說，這樣的服務場所在日本至少有7萬家。
深田遇到一名24歲的女子，說她打算滿25歲之後就開始謊報她的年齡，因為她覺得25歲太老，作為單身女子已經不合時宜了。
「我覺得，這種被隨意拋棄的感覺貫穿整個故事的始終，」深田志穗說， 「感覺到人們沒有得到一個勞動者應得的尊重，人們必須在極端條件下工作 —— 不外如此。」
你可在Twitter上關注 @ kerrimac、@ shiho_fukada 和 @ nytimesphoto，也可在Facebook上關注Lens博客。
本文最初發表於2013年4月15日。翻譯：梁英、楊洋
Japan’s Rootless and Restless Workers
April 16, 2013
A dark suit jacket hangs by a shaded window, beneath a portrait of a smiling, well-dressed executive.
The man is Akira Teranishi,
a Japanese salaryman who killed himself 17 years ago, leaping from a
building in Kyoto. It was Valentine’s Day.
“I gave him chocolate,” his wife, Emiko, told the photographer Shiho Fukada when they met at her home in Kyoto. “I asked him if he could take a day off.”
Ms. Fukada asked if she
could see something Ms. Teranishi’s husband had left behind. The jacket
had been his uniform — the clothing that transformed him from a man into
a man with a job, one supporting his family. Like legions of others
like him, the suit was his identity.
“The nameless worker, the empty jacket — that could be anybody,” Ms. Fukada said.
The picture (Slide 5) is from a series she has been working on since 2009, looking at the financial crisis and its effects
on Japanese workers. A lonely mood suffuses the project, which examines
depression and suicide among salarymen; temporary workers who live in
Internet cafes; women working as hostesses; and a community of aging day
laborers.
Ms. Fukada, who has been
based in Beijing since 2008 and currently travels between New York and
China, grew up in Japan. When she started reading about the financial
crisis, she needed to see it for herself.
“This image of my country, I was really proud of how it was before,” she said. “And it is not the same anymore.”
Three years ago, Miki Meek wrote about Part 1, “End of Labor Town,”
on Lens. Ms. Fukada spent a month in the Kamagasaki district of Osaka,
an area she said had become “a dumping ground of old men, where
alcoholism, poverty, suicide and loneliness prevail.”
Ms. Fukada went to Kamagasaki, home to about 25,000 former day laborers, on her own. She later received a grant from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and funding from the Pulitzer Center
to continue her project. She said she thought that the Osaka story was
only one side of a complex account of a country’s slide from prosperity.
“I wanted to explain why this community is here and what’s happening outside of this community,” she said.
And so the second part of
the series was born, looking at suicide and depression among Japan’s
salarymen — individuals, like Mr. Teranishi, logging far too many hours
at work out of fear of losing their jobs in Tokyo’s high-rise office
buildings. One man she photographed, Syota Nakahara, had been suffering
from depression for years when they met. He had been working as a
systems engineer and sued his company for unpaid overtime.
“I was psychologically on
the edge,” he told her. “I could not register scenery around me. I
couldn’t tell what day it was, nor which season. The only thing I could
see was the entrance to the company and the computer on my desk.”
Mr. Nakahara, who is now on
medication, has since become the chairman of a labor union in Osaka — a
task he does during his spare time.
Depression, and especially
suicide, or karoshi, are stigmatized in Japanese culture. At the
beginning of the 1990s, the word karoshi came into common use as
recession hit Japan and workers began putting in more time to battle
global competition. Where many companies traditionally offered lifetime
employment, they began laying off employees after the recession.
“The society hasn’t really
adjusted to the reality yet,” Ms. Fukada said. “So people really, really
want to hold onto their jobs.”
The size of Japan’s
irregular work force — those without full-time jobs with benefits —
climbed from about 20 percent of workers in 1990 to about 35 percent in
2011. The statistic led Ms. Fukada to examine temporary workers who make
so little money that they cannot afford apartments. Instead, they seek
shelter at Internet cafes. The so-called Internet cafe refugees rent
private booths late at night and leave early in the morning, taking
advantage of discounted night rates. One man told her that the booths
are large enough that he doesn’t have to bend his knees when he sleeps.
Ms. Fukada stood outside
several cafes, waiting for people entering with suitcases. That didn’t
work. Ultimately, it took her two years to get access to one cafe, where
a discounted monthly package goes for a little over $615 and soft jazz
plays in the background.
Tdayuki Sakai, one renter,
quit his job at a credit card company after his daughter entered
college. After 20 years at a job he didn’t like, he decided it was time
to leave. “He ended up at the Internet cafe, but he said he’s so much
happier there,” Ms. Fukada said.
She asked him whether he
would like to move into an apartment. “No,” he told her, “I just want to
get out of Japan. I have nothing to lose and I have no hope for this
country.”
One young woman there, only 18, moved to the cafe with her mother after losing their home in the earthquake.
“On top of not having a
high school diploma,” Ms. Fukada said of the teenager, “she said she’s
having a hard time because she’s a woman.”
Despite the Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Law, which was passed in 1985, only about two-thirds of college-educated women are employed, according to a Goldman Sachs report, Ms. Fukada said.
Discouraged, some young
women resort to working as hostesses. The women — who are legally
required to be 18, although some are younger — dress up and sit at a
bar, waiting for men. They are not prostitutes; there is no sex
involved, only flirting. Many hope to find a rich husband, Ms. Fukada
said. Japan’s national police agency said there were at least 70,000
such establishments in the country.
Ms. Fukada met a
24-year-old woman who said she planned to start lying about her age as
soon as she turned 25 — too old, she thought, to be an eligible
bachelorette.
“The feeling of being
easily disposed of runs throughout the story, I think,” Ms. Fukada said.
“The sense that people are not respected as a worker and people have to
work in extreme conditions — it’s this or the other.”
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