UPDATE: This post was a joke. Kind of revealing how all of the “weird Japan” posts get some much attention…and depressing how little skepticism this one received!
Clearly the Japanese recession is now at its most extreme, and the so-called “Abe-nomics” is only making it worse. Now even fresh college graduates are giving up on a good life as soon as they receive their diplomas!
In Japan, university students typically begin job hunting a year or more before graduation through a rigorous multi-step process with the desire of being taken on as the next batch of employees for a large corporation. But with fresh graduate spots at these big companies becoming more competitive many students are finding themselves unable to find the job they desired, or any job at all for that matter.
Japan Jon Fair. Image via Sankei news
Faced with the reality of poor career prospects and uncertain economic burdens many students are searching for alternative ways to make their lives and futures seem more stable to at least create the illusion of the planned life that fulltime employment used to provide in Japan.
According to the Asahi Shinbun newspaper, A burgeoning industry of “life advisors” now specialize in guiding these directionless students and new graduates to plan out the rest of their lives, right up to their funerals. With young people less interested in sex or even dating, and economic troubles ahead, many have simply given up and have accepted their fates.
Owari Made is the first company behind the life advisor concept, started by Shinu Soushiki (pictured above along with his office), an entrepreneur whose family owns several funeral parlours and who himself has over 20 years as a pensions advisor.
“I recognised that many young people today want that sense of closure about their future and I want to guarantee a stable and happy life for them. Retirement is that time in life when you have worked enough to have everything, if we can provide young people with that from the start they can just be content with working.”
Before graduating, students give legal (power of attorney) permission to life advisors to sort out everything from a place to live, to funeral arrangements and what will happen to their belongings after they die. So, essentially (in legal terms) they are already dead.
Japanese Cemetary. Image via gakuranman.com
To begin with these young people move into single room modules in specially-designed complexes that are designed to become retirement homes once all the residents grow old, complete with convertible walls, bathrooms, and fixtures made for the different stages in life. So they will essential be living in the same room for the rest of their lives, but surrounded by peers who have also essentially given up on the type of life their parents had.
As depressing as this sounds, it is actually a very secure investment on behalf of the young person as they will never have to worry about buying or renting properties since this room is guaranteed to them until they die. Staying in the same complex also enables these single dwellers to develop good relationships with the other residents over several decades.
The type of students who seek out these life advisors are those with no intentions to have kids, have no interest in sex, having partners or experiencing any great change or uncertainty in life. In a recent poll commissioned by the firm, a surprising 40% of Japanese college students expressed interest in the idea if they are unable to get a full-time job.
Kazushi (pictured above), a 3rd year economics student from Keio University commented that “This seems like the ideal solution to deal with all the unknowns of the future. My parents knew what track their lives would take, and I greatly desire that kind of knowledge myself. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Mariko Saito, a final year student at Waseda had already received her plan from the life advisor “It’s better than expected! I couldn”t find a job at a good company but know I have a place to live after I graduate and I can relax and just find any job from now on. My salary goes directly to the advisors, but they know much better than me how I should live my life.”
Once you are registered for this service it is hard to opt out as you will need the approval of all the other residents should you want to sell your module to a 3rd party. Also the contract term stipulated by the life advisor, just as a marriage is ‘until death.’ Once you die all of your belongings and any other assets you may own go directly to the advisor, except certain family heirlooms.
Mr Soushiki has already started a pilot residence in Chiba prefecture with last years rejected job applicants, now just freshly graduated from University are about to enter the rooms that they will likely live in for the rest of their lives.
It would be interesting to see how popular the life advisor service becomes in Japan based on the ever more dismal prospects of securing post-graduate employment at a large firm.
