How to Invest in the New Japanese Dynamism
YouTuber and Company Employee. These were among the most common answers that I saw Japanese students give to the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
When I was an English teacher in both the central and northern districts of Kyoto, I was lucky enough to visit upwards of 140 different classrooms over three school years.
At the beginning of the year, students would engage in the typical ritual of jikoshokai — self-introductions. Teachers would often give their students a set of personal questions and have them present their answers on a well-designed poster.
Short-Lived Entertainment & Mediocrity
One of my favorite things to do when I’d visit a school was to read the posters decorating the classroom walls. I would, of course, learn about the personalities of my students.
But I’d also glean things about the ideas gripping Japan’s next generation. When asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” my students most often answered with either YouTuber (ユーチューバー) or Company Employee (会社員).
By the look of those posters, either short-lived entertainment or mediocrity had captured the career ambitions…
