>Japan has a great and unpretentious grey collar culture.
but I disagree on:
>There's a way in which all work is seen as equally essential and managers aren't above anyone else.
The latter I've seen to not hold true at all, and this assessment can be derived with equal weight from the very "top down, respect your seniors" culture of Japan that you're taught as early as elementary school over and over again.
I've seen this go in to effect so bad that clueless managers that are by no means an expert, overrides expert assessment, and people including the expert reluctantly budge to the pressure of "your boss/manager is always right".
The more realistic take would be "all work is seen as inherently valuable and should be taken seriously" to be the general mantra in the Japanese society, often associated with ikigai [0].
This societal pressure of "finding ikigai in your work, and strive for perfection" combined by "respect(unconditionally) the decision of the elder/boss" is probably an contributing factor to why Japans "Job satisfaction" level is around 42% [1]
Quote from [1]:
"Only 42 percent of Japanese said they were satisfied with their work and, to add insult to injury, 21 percent said they were dissatisfied, both the lowest and the highest outcomes in the survey, respectively."
>Japan has a great and unpretentious grey collar culture.
but I disagree on:
>There's a way in which all work is seen as equally essential and managers aren't above anyone else.
The latter I've seen to not hold true at all, and this assessment can be derived with equal weight from the very "top down, respect your seniors" culture of Japan that you're taught as early as elementary school over and over again.
I've seen this go in to effect so bad that clueless managers that are by no means an expert, overrides expert assessment, and people including the expert reluctantly budge to the pressure of "your boss/manager is always right".
The more realistic take would be "all work is seen as inherently valuable and should be taken seriously" to be the general mantra in the Japanese society, often associated with ikigai [0].
This societal pressure of "finding ikigai in your work, and strive for perfection" combined by "respect(unconditionally) the decision of the elder/boss" is probably an contributing factor to why Japans "Job satisfaction" level is around 42% [1]
[0] https://bit.ly/3585zVr
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/job-satisfaction-glob...
Quote from [1]: "Only 42 percent of Japanese said they were satisfied with their work and, to add insult to injury, 21 percent said they were dissatisfied, both the lowest and the highest outcomes in the survey, respectively."