Now, From Japan--the Company Dorm
At 27, Kazuo Tachikawa has started a career handling energy affairs for a major Japanese trading firm--a yuppie in every respect, except that he lives in a dorm.
The rules bar him from entertaining women in his room, but he and thousands of other young Japanese businessmen gladly sacrifice convenient courtship for the cheap rent, laundry service and noodle machines in a company dormitory.
Many bosses applaud company dormitories, in the belief that hallway camaraderie contributes to company success.
Education, Inspiration
“Dorms are for educational purposes,” said Kyosuke Mori, an executive at Mitsubishi Corp., where about one-sixth of the 6,000 men in domestic offices live in dorms. “Employees who live together inspire each other and make handy connections in other departments.
“It’s fun too,” he said in an interview, recalling that his own nine years in a dorm were full of pranks and songfests in the communal bath. “Just like the movie ‘Animal House.’ ”
But Tachikawa, who works for the C. Itoh trading company, said dorms these days are not always so social.
“Basically, on weekdays I work and only work, and weekends I want to play with people outside my company,” he said in an interview at C. Itoh’s new dormitory for 250 single men in the suburbs of Tokyo.
Few Chances for Friends
“I have few chances to make friends here anyway. A lot of guys get back after midnight, drunk in a taxi after going out with colleagues or clients.”
Most get to bed around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. and skip breakfast to catch up on sleep.
Dorm facilities--from cafeterias and tennis courts to subsidized laundries--lighten such grueling schedules, and residents say the price is right. For the Japanese yen equivalent of $15 a month--about 2% of starting salaries--they get a room measuring about 6 by 10 feet, and sometimes get a roommate.
Women, however, are not allowed past the lobby. Residents must also sign in and out when they come and go.
Some Have Curfews
The rules have loosened since World War II days, however, when company men had to go to bed, wake up, and eat at the ring of a bell. Some bank dorms still have strict curfews, Tachikawa said, since maintaining a reliable image is crucial.
Most big Japanese companies offer dorms to entice promising young, male employees from afar to cities where it is difficult to find an inexpensive apartment.
Although some companies have dorms for single women, most prefer to hire women who live at home with their parents.
Tachikawa shrugs off the suggestion that men who go straight from mother’s care to dorm to wife never learn to look after themselves.
“In Japan,” he said, “the wife cooks and cleans. . . . Man works for company life, and woman works for house life.”
However, more and more singles may be getting tired of dorm living.
‘Constant Pressure’
Tatsuyuki Uruno, 28, who works in the engineering division at Kobe Steel Ltd., complains that “my company can trace me 24 hours a day.”
“There’s constant pressure on what I do: If I play music too loud, my boss might find out,” he said.
He also complained about his room--”a dirty old thing a cat couldn’t fit into”--and 50 young men vying for use of one of three telephones, as well as the rush hour at the bath before a 1 1/2-hour morning commute.
