• Daily Life

    Watching from the Window

    I’ll never forget how I delighted I was a few decades ago now when I discovered the Japanese term madogiwazoku, literally meaning “the tribe beside the window.” It’s a derogatory term dating back to the country’s postwar economic miracle heyday and used to refer to the usually older workers who’ve been deemed to be beyond their serviceable peak for the company. But, either as a reward for services performed, or more likely strict labor laws that make it detrimental for employers to simply dump workers when they’ve outlived their usefulness, the window-side tribe seemed to have fallen by the wayside…