Hiroshima Mon Amour

Why didn't I know about this film until now?
Beautiful and sad in black and white, this film tells the story of a French woman in post-war Hiroshima, whose love affair with a Japanese man unleashes tormenting memories of her forbidden love with a German soldier, the rejection she endured from her village, and loss. The flashback sequences and image montages certainly seem ahead of their time and capture most engagingly the haze of fumbled memories intertwined with present-day happenings. I'm also intrigued by the pairing of a white woman and an Asian man in a 1959 film, surely this was groundbreaking stuff in its day? Eiji Okada was rather the dish!

A Permanent Part-timer in Distress

During my time in the ol' Nippon, I heard many a woeful tale of the "furiita" or part-time worker: temporary work, low hourly wages, unpaid overtime and no paid holidays or other benefits. In fact, lesson lengths at Schoolhouse Usagi were "revised" so that full-time teachers were instead legally recognised as "part-time", thus avoiding payment of Shakai Hoken (Social Insurance) by the employer. My days at St Hearn's - although generous in hourly wage - did not offer paid annual leave, overtime or sick leave, most part-time staff juggled multiple jobs, and lived frugally during the summer and winter hols. I was always particularly careful not to slip or catch a cold during wet weather - ye Shinto gods only knew what would have happened if I couldn't teach my classes!

A Permanent Part-timer in Distress, a doco filmed by and featuring narrator Iwabuchi-san, chronicles over one year his descent into the despair of furiita living. A temporary worker at Canon assembling printer cartridges, Iwabuchi-san earns around 1,200 yen per hour. With monthly takings of around 140,000 yen, and with rent and a student loan eating up a big part of his wages, he is usually only left with 60,000 yen to last the month. He lives in agency accommodation, even his bike is provided by the agency (this was one of the many disadvantages of working at Schoolhouse Usagi: your job pervaded private space, at times causing a strange claustrophobia that discouraged homeliness). Temporary workers are cheaper for companies to hire. Holidays, always eagerly anticipated by full-timers, are something to dread for furiitas: if you don't work, you don't get paid. Instead of soaking up the summer, Iwabuchi-san heads to Tokyo in search of dayjobs that will keep him going through the holiday period. His coworkers are eager to escape this cycle of temporary jobs: a married man with a kid on the way is too ashamed to reveal his part-time status to peers. Courted by journalists, Iwabuchi-san finds himself a sometimes reluctant media darling in the TV spotlight. With part-time contracts on the rise in Japan and fewer opportunities for full-time jobs, could this spell the end for the cradle-to-grave career model previously lauded in working Japan? What does the future hold for this generation of workers and will the government do anything about it?

A thought-provoking debut, this doco is a must-see peek into the changes currently taking place in Japanese workplaces and society.