Although this is a novel translated from Japanese into English, the writing is of such good quality that it makes very good reading, even if perhaps not the same reading experience as in its original language. Nevertheless, it imparts a lovely portrayal of Japanese workplaces, not glamorous ones, but more mundane workplaces, and gives tantalising glimpses into Japanese workers’ daily lives. We see interaction with colleagues, with shop ladies, how much a yakisoba roll may cost, mugs of hojaica and mate brewed, cans of kelp flavoured sour plum, bento boxes for lunch, and other trappings of ordinary Japanese daily life, with lovely little details casually included, but thankfully not exoticised.
Our protagonist has had over a decade of work experience, but developed burnout syndrome, “I’d left my last job because it sucked up every scrap of energy I had until there was not a shred left” (p7), and had returned to living with her parents to recuperate. However, when her unemployment insurance expired, she returns to looking for another job although she is “pretty confused about whether I wanted to go back to work or not” (p7). She communicates her ambivalence to a most empathetic, patient, understanding recruiter, Mrs Masakado, who when told the protagonist wants a job close to home, ideally sitting all day in a chair, manages to come up with a perfect job: the protagonist is to watch over in real time, endless hours of surveillance videos of an author who is suspected of having contraband in his house.
The details of the job, the day to day mundanities and routines, the characters she meets, the trials and tribulations and also the rewards of the job, are beautifully detailed in an understated way. This is a novel about different jobs, and the next one Mrs Masakado finds our protagonist is a job with a transport company, writing advertisements to be played on the Albatross bus service. Although this job also goes successfully, the protagonist wishes to leave it after her contract is completed rather than accepting a permanent staff position, just as she did for her first job too. She goes to a Japanese rice cracker company who gets her to write the interesting trivia on the packaging of their products, and once again the reader gets to see how differently each company functions, with different cultures and practises, different bosses, etc. After this job, the protagonist asks Mrs Masakado for an easy and outdoor job, and takes a job replacing public-facing posters in a given neighbourhood and providing some competition for another company’s posters.
It is hard to say what lends this novel its quiet, understated charm. Maybe its seemingly factual way of narrating, which nevertheless gives great insights into the kind of personality our protagonist is – curious, perceptive, but also apathetic, very responsibility-averse. She has quite a good understanding of her own shortcomings, and knows she has some angsts to work through, and yet at the same time, is managing to function reasonably normally and to keep up working relationships and engage quite well with her surroundings and her colleagues. Certainly there are no histrionics and self-pitying laments, mostly, she is matter-of-fact even when discussing her suitability for each job and running away from anything that potentially looks like long-term commitment. For someone who does not want to get too involved in work anymore, she chalks up a number of successes quite quickly.
The last job our protagonist takes on is a job in a park, manning one of the booths, combining both outdoors and a desk job, as she asks of the miracle-performing Mrs Masakoda. In this job, she solves another little mystery, as she also did in a couple of other jobs, and then again when offered permanency, decides not to take it up. This protagonist seems very adept at fitting into new roles and new companies, but then not wishing to continue with them despite the good fit they regard her as being.
The novel ends on a very positive note:
The time had come to embrace the ups and downs again. I had no way of knowing what pitfalls might be lying in wait for me, but what I’d discovered by doing five jobs in such a short pan of time was this: the same was true of everything. You never knew what was going to happen, whatever you did. You just had to give it your all, and hope for the best. Hope like anything it would turn out alright.
p399
This optimistic end is the only part of the novel which seems just a little out of sync with the rest – the protagonist has not undergone any particular epiphany, so why this sudden change of perspective? She is usually a character given more to pessimism than optimism, so why all this sudden talk about hope? There is nothing wrong with the novel ending on a positive note, but after following this very consistent protagonist nearly 400 pages and through 5 jobs, the reader should at least have an understanding of the thinking process that led to this sudden change around in mind set, to the point in fact that she is about ready to resume her previous position as social worker, from which she had been burnt out. It is marvellous she seems to have recovered, but it is just not clear how and when this happened. But this is a very tiny gripe indeed, and right at the end of what had been otherwise a consistently very amusing, charming read, full of interesting observations and insights of working life of a young Japanese woman.
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