Society Japan's Gen Z 'quiet quitting' work

[thomas]

Deutsche Welle on why Japan's Gen Z is a far cry from their parents' generation, but 20-something Japanese are happy to sacrifice a career and better pay for an improved work-life balance.

Originally a term coined in the United States in 2022 for unproductive staff being reassigned to another role instead of being fired, "quiet quitting" has taken on a slightly different meaning in Japan — one that would arguably make legions of toiling "salarymen" shudder. A growing number of Japanese are choosing to clock in at work exactly on time and leave as soon as they are able to. They are not looking for acclaim for their work or promotion. They appear to be indifferent to greater pay if it means more work and performance-related bonuses mean nothing to them. According to a study of 3,000 workers aged 20 to 59 conducted by the Mynavi Career Research Lab, a Tokyo-based employment research agency, fully 45% say they are doing the bare minimum in their jobs. Significantly, employees in their 20s are most likely to admit to being "quiet quitters."

Why Japan's Gen Z is 'quiet quitting' work – DW – 05/23/2025

It is a far cry from their parents' generation, but 20-something Japanese are happy to sacrifice a career and better pay for an improved work-life balance.

www.dw.com

 

[Ukigumo]

I was lucky to be able to give up work early, encouraged by the machiavellian behaviour of significant numbers of my colleagues and the sheer laziness and unwillingness to engage by the students I was teaching; hell is, after all, other people! It took a long time for me to 'work out' that taking a large drop in income but increasing my time away from those with whom I wouldn't chose to spend time, was a better way of spending this short life.

I think the COVID 19 pandemic and lockdowns have highlighted the triviality, in the mind of young people, bringing them to the conclusions that took me decades to arrive at, that working long hours for a company that makes, distributes and sells…paperclips/printer toner/cardboard packaging or whatever, and that company doesn't really care about your well-being either. Why would they devote their short lives to such entities?

In addition, my friends in Japan tell me that, although Japanese people spend long hours at their desks, they work no more than their Western counterparts and fill their hours 'doing nothing in particular' on their computers. Perhaps they've realised they can spend that time with their friends watching children's cartoons… sorry…anime or reading comics…sorry manga.

Here in the UK, increasing numbers of people are trying to continue 'work from home' because it gives them a better quality of life, since they don't have to spend time and money commuting, buying food at work places etc etc. Company bosses don't like it as they want workers at their desks in a building away from their homes. Thus many are dropping their working hours, going part time or even doing something completely different for money.

The pandemic opened Pandora's box, and workers took the 'red pill'. I think it's going to be very difficult for governments /companies to put this genie back into the lamp.

 

[mdchachi]

It's trickier to pursue one's passions in the U.S. outside of traditional ways of earning a paycheck. Even if you can make enough to cover living expenses, without health insurance you're just one diagnosis away from disaster. Just go to gofundme.com and search for "cancer" and you'll see most of the people begging for money are Americans. Even with insurance there are many cases where it's not sufficient. The system is so bad that health executive killer Luigi Mangione has a large fan base.

 

[Ukigumo]

It's trickier to pursue one's passions in the U.S. outside of traditional ways of earning a paycheck. Even if you can make enough to cover living expenses, without health insurance you're just one diagnosis away from disaster. Just go to gofundme.com and search for "cancer" and you'll see most of the people begging for money are Americans. Even with insurance there are many cases where it's not sufficient. The system is so bad that health executive killer Luigi Mangione has a large fan base.

Yes that's a real issue and some with a 'certain trait' might suggest it's a way to keeping people working and paying taxes. I don't understand why Americans let their health system continue in the way it does. Over here and in the next few months, Mounjaro is going to be given out free to the obese with only one comorbidity.

 

[Lothor]

I was lucky to be able to give up work early, encouraged by the machiavellian behaviour of significant numbers of my colleagues and the sheer laziness and unwillingness to engage by the students I was teaching; hell is, after all, other people! It took a long time for me to 'work out' that taking a large drop in income but increasing my time away from those with whom I wouldn't chose to spend time, was a better way of spending this short life.

I think the COVID 19 pandemic and lockdowns have highlighted the triviality, in the mind of young people, bringing them to the conclusions that took me decades to arrive at, that working long hours for a company that makes, distributes and sells…paperclips/printer toner/cardboard packaging or whatever, and that company doesn't really care about your well-being either. Why would they devote their short lives to such entities?

In addition, my friends in Japan tell me that, although Japanese people spend long hours at their desks, they work no more than their Western counterparts and fill their hours 'doing nothing in particular' on their computers. Perhaps they've realised they can spend that time with their friends watching children's cartoons… sorry…anime or reading comics…sorry manga.

Here in the UK, increasing numbers of people are trying to continue 'work from home' because it gives them a better quality of life, since they don't have to spend time and money commuting, buying food at work places etc etc. Company bosses don't like it as they want workers at their desks in a building away from their homes. Thus many are dropping their working hours, going part time or even doing something completely different for money.

The pandemic opened Pandora's box, and workers took the 'red pill'. I think it's going to be very difficult for governments /companies to put this genie back into the lamp.

I think it's possible to strive for excellence and take a real pride in your work even if it is mundane, such as making paperclips. The high quality of mundanities such as public toilets is one of the pleasures of living in Japan. But it shouldn't be expected of employees whose companies don't value them.

 

[Ukigumo]

I think it's possible to strive for excellence and take a real pride in your work even if it is mundane, such as making paperclips. The high quality of mundanities such as public toilets is one of the pleasures of living in Japan. But it shouldn't be expected of employees whose companies don't value them.

I think it is possible, but I think it's very hard, especially for a disengaged, ego-centric, slightly entitled generation. Getting up at 5am, after spending the previous evening reading about scantily-clad superhero, female sword warriors, with impossibly huge, limpid eyes saving the universe from existential evil, to commute for a stiflingly hot hour, across a a busy city to your paper clip company and sit at a desk for a long hours, in a beige office surrounded with hardware the colour of chewing gum, attending to spreadsheets, marketing strategies to push the sales for the latest, innovative paper clips in neon colours, for a salary that doesn't leave much room for the joys of life but having to be grateful for having that job, all the while thinking about special relativity and the non-simultaneity of events from different reference frames that you read about and having the capacity to understand such things and yet doing 'paper clips'. It's a tough ask!

I saw 'Perfect Days' and appreciated the joys of cleaning porcelain. I love sweeping and am currently happily vacuuming, having mopped the kitchen floor! But would I be happy doing this everyday while thinking about Twistor theory and the absurdity of collapsing wave functions caused by observation by a conscious being ()?

Reductio absurdum, admittedly, but you get the idea. To be satisfied in some circumstances requires one to turn off certain aspects of your brain and that's tough.

 

[mdchachi]

I think he brought up the manufacturing side of making paper clips not the white collar part. If you have a mindless job you can use your brain for contemplating life and mystery even while working. Supposedly Einstein developed many of his scientific ideas while working in drudgery as a patent examiner.

 

[Ukigumo]

I think he brought up the manufacturing side of making paper clips not the white collar part.

I suppose feeding wire into a wire folder is a bit more interesting; the jeopardy of losing fingers adds a sense of purpose to one's existence.

If you have a mindless job you can use your brain for contemplating life and mystery even while working. Supposedly Einstein developed many of his scientific ideas while working in drudgery as a patent examiner.

Yes that's true. The irony is that Einstein actually helped patent paper clip making machines It's the truth, I never lie.