What is SHIGOTO(仕事）
SHIGOTO（仕事）in Japanese means “Job”, more specifically, it means someone devote him/herself to things they’re told to do, so shigoto is slightly different from the word job, because according to dictionary job itself merely equals “a paid position”.
People always say Japanese focus on details way too much, they are too cautious, I have to say, that’s half true and half you don’t know.
When it comes to shigoto, Japanese people are too picky, if they are making a doze of white blank paper, they will recheck it for literally 100 times to make sure of that there’s no single tiny black dot on the paper and every paper looks exactly the same. I used to do a part-time job as a waiter in a Japanese hotel, when I was serving costumers, the manager told me to check all the glasses shall be on one line and each plate shall be placed on a certain position on the table, after all, it was zero tolerance for misplacing. When it comes to making an object, like a tool, a digital device, they will make it over and over til it’s perfect, you must know SONY, you must know “made in Japan” means “it’s perfect in every way”. All thank to the spirit of TAKUMI(匠）, willing to do things til the end regardless time, cost, any difficulties.
However, spirits of TAKUMI isn’t a good thing all the time. I have to point out that 99% Japanese workers are lacking of creativity and entrepreneurship, because they are too busy on doing one thing many times, also, the society of Japan see entrepreneurship as an action of irresponsibility and rebel, which is not so popular to traditional Japanese culture. On the other hand, there are only very few factories were located in Japan, most of Japanese manufacturing corporations making their products overseas, mainly in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippine, where have cheap labor force. So, the Japanese managers simply go to those factories and tell workers to do things like Japanese, which is so annoying to local workers. Yet the final products are extremely good.
Despite there are good or bad things happen when people doing shigoto, most Japanese people are actually enjoying what they are doing, because some of them have told me, that they are proud for their shigoto, they are doing great things for other people and the society, this makes them happy.(But makes some foreigner factory workers unhappy.)
So, whenever I am doing a thing, I always ask myself, am I doing it for great? Am I feeling proud. Is it a work, a job, or is it my shigoto.
