Seeking a stable life in precarious Japan

Help Japan (Photo credit: Ray Schönberger)

Note from Editor: Students are reading Anne Allison’s book Precarious Japan, and sharing their thoughts on how their own future plans are impacted by the instability and insecurity that Allison describes.

Anonymous student post.

I hope that I spend my life with a secure job, getting married and giving birth to a child. However, after reading Anne Allison’s book, I thought that we can’t have too much hope. Now, I’ll state the current situation of Japan and how can I draw my future plans.

At first, it is hard to get job because a lot of companies decrease their regular employees with the depression. Therefore, the number of irregular workers have been increasing and a lot of youth are experiencing an unstable life. In this situation, the government perform an increase of the consumption tax. This policy is one of the factors that torment the life of low-income group and spread the gap between low-income group and upscale. Moreover, the government plan more increases tax again in 2015 and the gap is estimated to become more critical.

Also, recently, the non-payment of scholarship is in question. Many people may get scholarships when they are students. Of course, this is the money from the government or organization and we have duty to pay it back. 340,000 people, and 79.7 billion yen. According to the Japan Student Services Organization, this figure is the number and amount of non-payment scholarship. It is said that the half of non-payers spend their life with less than 300 hundred yen in year. Many youth are suffering from paying back the money.

The difficulty of finding employment affects not only unstable income but kakusa shakai. If you want to get a secure job in this situation of difficulty finding work, you need to have income and academic background as your own. Whether you can get the good education depends on the earning of your parents. Therefore, the starting point is different depending on the family resources.

In conclusion, it is difficult to have hope for the future in that society. We need to provide for a lot of money, such as increasing taxes, paying scholarships, child-raising, education expenditures of children, and so on. To have a stable life, it is important to get a job at a better company or to have a stable occupation. Companies tend to make a point of academic background. Therefore, what I can do now for the future is learning and experiencing various things at university. Although Japan’s precariousness can’t be changed by the actions of just one person and I don’t know how to change it, I want this society to change into a better one so that everybody can live peacefully.