In search of justice
A newcomer encountered an unreasonable event. To bear it unwillingly is all that is needed.
April 26th 2010 | Ryo Kubota
In spring does a new season start in Japan. With cherry blossoms are flowering across the country, the new recruits are hoping to survive menacing waves of difficulties of lives. But often life is cold like winter.
One new recruit man encountered an unreasonable event when working the other day. The 23-year-old man works hard in the service industry. Being ambitious, he even managed to dramatically change his lazy life: he used to get up in the late afternoon but now before seven am. Left home early in the morning that day, never did he imagine he would be in trouble later because of a wrongdoing of a truck driver his company hired to deliver some goods demanded by his customers from a storage of the company to them. No sooner he retuned home in the evening than he said with an angry face ‘I got yelled by my customer at for being late to schedule.’ It was, however, not his fault: the driver had been 30 minutes late.
Nothing annoyed the newcomer more than that. Nor did the driver looked care it, which made him furious further. ‘I can’t bear the impertinence of the driver’ complained he.
The state of the traffic industry in Japan may be contributed to the incident for several reasons. First, it is robust. Logistics are vital in sustaining the economy. Particularly, trucks are more important than other shipping transports such as trains and ships. According to the Japan Truck Association (JTA), whole trucks carried over five billion tons in 2007, compared with 233 thousand millions by train. The next year it accounted for 90% of the whole industry. Eichiro Nakanishi, president of JTA, see trucks as ‘Japan’s lifeline.’[*]
That said, the second reason is pressing. The truck transport industry is in decline. The recession hit it severely. JTA reckons the number of traffic firms went bankruptcy rose by 12% in 2009. Salaries of truck drivers fell by 3.8% from a year earlier. They feel an amount of goods traded in the country decreased. Worse, the price of gas oil went up.
‘Nowadays, in front of the storage wait some trucks for any jobs they could get from the company’ says the new recruit. These two mixed feelings may have been hidden in the arrogance of the driver, though the former could be reasonable.
Meanwhile, the newcomer resisted an impulse to express his anger. This reaction may be based on some Japanese characters. In his mind, he may either have wanted the driver to realise the situation and offer apology to his customer or have decided to keep harmony between the driver and he peaceful. In short, he said nothing to the haughty man then.
The truth, nonetheless, is not much about any of those but the current position of the newcomer in his company. His career is much shorter than the driver who had ten years in carrying goods for it. Besides, never can he disturb the long relationship between his firm and the driver’s, which is minor.
Having heard what happened to her son, his mother showed him a little sympathy. Then she said ‘that is life. Just get on with such an unreasonable event. Much more of it is coming.’ Both of them shared an idea of threatening against bad truck drivers by suggesting they can easily find alternatives. That is right. A shakeout appears to be happening in the industry: both small and medium-sized firms are much more likely to disappear than large counterparts. So the impertinence is risky. Still, acknowledging the reality, the newcomer says ‘if only I could.’â–
memo
[*] Mr Nakanishi said it in an interview with the Weekly Economist.
http://www.jta.or.jp/coho/ikenkokoku/economist/pdf/interview1.pdf