Today's Kikuko Tsumura
In a novella of mine I wrote about crowded commuter trains, and how they transport death in their carriages.
The incident brought it home to me that a train, particularly a crowded subway carriage, offers no means of escape.
They made clear the sheer vulnerability of being on a train at this time of day, when people could not maintain a human distance between themselves – this particular time of day, as opposed to the more peaceable ones when there are fewer passengers.
‘Our company director comes in by car, so he doesn’t understand the dangers faced by employees commuting in on the train,’ my friend says. This state of affairs is not unique to her company, either; many who have the authority to decide whether or not people must come into work by train travel by car.
Maybe viewed from the perspective of the national or municipal government, a company appears as a homogenous body, but internally there is a divergence of interests between directors and staff. Employers say that they cannot pay salaries unless the company is running. Even now, the decision about halting work is deemed as much a ‘personal choice’ as it is at any other time, and so workers must risk harm to come into work.
On top of all this, my friend and her colleagues are being told not to get infected. Infections among employees will affect the company’s reputation, and would be an inconvenience to clients. And if too many people go off sick, the business will have to close.
[...] I don’t get the impression that they don’t value their staff, and yet they are making their employees come to work while feeding them contradictory messages – come to work! don’t get infected! – which together form a double bind.
Until now, the Japanese government has attempted to steer a course through this situation by appealing to individuals: the practice of wearing masks to which the Japanese are habituated, washing hands, and refraining from going outside out of a sense of conscience. Yet its directives are being aimed at groups – groups in the form of companies, groups in the form of households. The government must be well aware that the virus is by nature one that divides people, yet in demanding that individuals socially distance while failing to distinguish between them on a policy level, it leaves many to fall between the cracks.
Those that have no choice but to continue commuting, given inadequate protections or compensation, are not the ones to blame here.
The Water Tower and the Turtle
The moment I stepped out of the temple gate, the thick steam wafting over from the building opposite caught in my throat. I knew the source of that steam well enough: udon. The udon works was right in front of the temple where my parents’ graves were.
Tacked up to the wooden wall on the far side of the steam was a recruiting notice. Experience not required, it read, which was all well and good, but then it said, Applicants should be sixty-seven years or younger, a stipulation whose peculiar specificity bothered me.
The streets were so quiet. In the city, you’d often catch sight of birds, but their song would be drowned out by the noise of the passing cars. In these streets of my hometown, all I could hear were my own footsteps, and the cries of the sparrows, and some caged bird kept in one of the nearby houses.
This really is the countryside, I thought to myself as I listened to her story. When you know the person who runs the delivery company, you know you’re in the countryside.
My body felt lighter. A bike is not like a car. On a bike you feel the speed right there on your skin.
Under a gazebo in the corner of a field was an unmanned stall selling homemade pickles. Unable to resist, I stopped my bike and bought a bag of pickled aubergines and a whole pickled daikon. The money went into a small square wooden box at the side of the stall.
I’m forgetting something I thought, cocking my head, but of late I’d given up hating myself for being unable to remember things, and so I simply told myself that whatever it was, I’d come back for it when I remembered.
Then I remembered the other thing I’d forgotten to get. Resume templates, so I could apply for the job at the udon works in front of the temple.
Tomorrow, I decided, I’d go to the supermarket and buy the templates. I’d cycle there – in the morning this time. I was pretty sure that would feel great.