The Accidental Office Lady (ペーパーバック)

The Accidental Office Lady (ペーパーバック)
Laura Kriska

Amazon.com
The Japan we see most often is an image of a country teetering on the edge of depression, an economic system that's too hamstrung by its own cultural traditions to fully participate in the global economy. The endless train of trade delegations to and from Tokyo seem to attest to the cultural gap that exists between Japan and the rest of the world--but that's where the explanation usually stops. We're rarely privy as to the nature of the gap itself.
That's why Laura Kriska's book, The Accidental Office Lady, is so valuable. The book is a firsthand account of Kriska's two years in Japan working as a trainee for the Honda Motor Company. As a trainee, she takes on a variety of tasks, from serving tea and taking the coats of senior executives to working in one of Honda's auto factories. Along the way she confronts the rigidity of business life in Japan: "I felt the corporate walls forcing me into a mold as though I were trapped inside a Fisher-Price playhouse, in which each piece of furniture fit perfectly into its assigned space and had a single hole for a peg-shaped doll. I didn't want to be that doll, and the more threatened I felt, the more I wanted to resist." Kriska not only successfully resists, but finds that she's able to fit into the corporate world of Honda. Anyone contemplating the nuances of Japanese life--especially from a woman's perspective--will find this an insightful and entertaining read. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly
First jobs straight out of college are never what one expects. With new degree in hand, Kriska accepted what sounded like a plum assignment as the first American woman trainee at Honda Motor Company's headquarters in Tokyo. Perhaps not surprisingly, her idealistic expectations of fulfilling work, engaging colleagues and authority to make contributions are chilled by standoffish co-workers who view her with confused suspicion and a day-to-day drudgery that starts with donning an ugly polyester uniform that is worn only by the women. Though as a "trainee" she is not on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder (and never holds the title "Office Lady"), this uniform symbolizes for her the very different levels of power that men and women hold at Honda's headquarters. It's not accidental that her occidental background leads to more than the usual trauma of being the newest kid on the block. As Kriska matures and gains the language and cultural skills necessary to begin to understand her work environment, she convinces her Japanese mentor that the work she can do best will take her into the nitty gritty of a company factory in Sayama. Although the precise time of her experiences is unclear, a wealth of details, recaptured from journal notes, make this an entertaining cross-cultural memoir: "I looked at the small entryway that had been filled with a pile of shoes and saw that all eleven pairs had been reorganized in pairs and reversed so that the toes pointed toward the door."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Accidental Office lady.本田の日本本社で働いたアメリカ人女性の手記．気が付いたらいわゆるOLになってしまった，というところでしょうか．女性だけがいわゆる制服を着用しなければならない（しかもポリエステルのを）というのがかなり屈辱的だったようです．制服廃絶運動を社内でやって，最後の最後で制服着用が義務でなくなったのを誇りに感じていらっしゃるようで．それなりにやりがいのある仕事をしたい，独立して仕事を任せてもらいたいと思っていたのに，実際には秘書室でお茶くみしたり，海外から派遣されてくる社員の世話係をしたりと，重要とは思えない仕事をさせられてさぞかしつらかったのでは．日本人女性でも最近はこんな待遇受けたらすぐやめるんじゃない？