23 June 2022, Thursday — Coronavirus Digest from Japanese Morning TV News Part 1 (of 1): Headlines and (yesterday’s) numbers
Day 787 of doing these daily posts continuously.
See photo captions for stories.
Photo 01
Japan covid-related topics in NHK’s 7am news bulletin today:
The mental anxiety of working foreigners in Japan amid covid
Photo 2a
[Taken from the NHK website]
17285 new cases confirmed [so this is solidly up vs….]
[vs. 16592 for the same day last week. (18416 the same day two weeks ago.)]
47 out of 47 prefectures reported cases yesterday.
No new daily case records (probably).
Nowhere with five digits
Quadruple figures in 3 prefectures:
Okinawa, Osaka, Tokyo
33 prefectures in triple figures
11 prefectures in double figures
Nowhere in single figures
Tokyo on 2329 [vs. 2015 same day last week, quite a bit up]
Osaka on 1414 [vs. 1320 same day last week; Osaka up too]
The number of positives at immigration testing was 15
[Border testing was relaxed even as double the number of people are being allowed into the country from June 01.]
Photo 02b
[Taken from the NHK website]
The total of current active serious cases stands at 36, up 2 vs. the previous day.
15 deaths announced yesterday, for a total of 31091
Total recorded cases at 9194082
Recovered cases at 9007060 (around 7,000 recovered cases up from the previous day, and topping 9 million recoveries)
Total active cases are at 155,931 (up around 3500 vs the previous day).
Percentage of active cases as a percentage of the grand total of cases is 1.69%.
Photo 03
So apparently over 1.72 million foreigners work in Japan, the highest number ever.
[And this piece was prefaced with how they are essential to Japan’s economic well-being.]
Photo 04
According to this graph of the increase rate of mental health consultations, while Japanese employee consultations rose by 49%, the rate for foreign staff rose by 141%.
[I find the choice of axes for this graph to be a bit odd. Couldn’t they have dealt with actual numbers of people so we could see the pre-pandemic base rate and the actual proportion of inquiries, etc.?]
Photo 05
Here we see a “Japanese Brazilian” woman who works at a factory via a dispatch company:
I work at the factory from 6 in the morning to 9 at night; I don’t even know if I’m alive.
[Funny how working a 75-hour week and being well over the MHLW’s monthly excess hours standard for “death by overwork” is characterized as HER mental health problem.]
Photo 06
Issues such as “unstable employment” and long working hours have an impact on mental and physical health.
[Again, surely the malaise here is late-stage capitalism rather than poorly wired brains…]
Photo 07
Consultations from foreigners are often about:
“I was laid off due to covid.”
“I feel isolated amid the uncertainty of covid and being unable to speak Japanese.”
Photo 08
Doctor: Even if they are having a problem at the company in Japanese, they don’t really speak up to ask questions…
[This line is a little bit open to interpretation – could be having problems understanding Japanese at the company, or could be having problems at the company and not really able to ask questions in Japanese. The positioning of “in Japanese” tends to suggest the former.
And the なかなか質問しようがなくて… Well, I would usually go with something like “they find it difficult to (speak up and) ask questions.” While I don’t think the doctor is intending any criticism, for me his particular choice of words does imply a certain nuance of passivity.
[I guess when you are the 15-hour shift badly-treated dispatch worker, you might well find it hard to speak up at work…]
Photo 09
“…so [due to the language barrier] more foreigners than Japanese have problems, and feel down about them.”
[While I am sure more foreigners have problems due to the language barrier, I really wonder whether in terms of actual numbers, more foreigners have problems than Japanese (which is a potential takeaway of a careless reading of this guy’s words).]
Photo 10
Next part of the piece:
But even when Japanese conversation is not an obstacle, [foreigners can still feel] isolation
Photo 11
Meet Sophia (not her real name, European, in her 30s) and a full company employee.
Photo 12
“I fell in love with Japanese culture when I was young and I thought I wanted to live in Japan.”
Photo 13
She studied Japanese at her alma mater, then did Informatics at grad school in Japan.
Photo 14
Due to covid, she was shifted from her work with foreigners visting Japan to being in charge of the domestic market.
Photo 15
However, she found using keigo (formal polite Japanese) to be a stumbling block.
Photo 16
When dealing with people outside the company (such as clients, etc.), you have to be able to use keigo properly.
Photo 17
Work became very stressful indeed.
Photo 18
Furthermore, it became more difficult to return home from time to time.
Unable to meet friends and family, her mental state crumbled.
Photo 19
Sophia in her consultation: “I feel that I am a little overfatigued.”
[Doctor asked, “So how are things at the moment?” and then went straight to writing notes without eye contact. Got a feeling this guy sucks.]
Photo 20
“I want to live (in Japan) for a long time, but working here is very hard.”
Photo 21
“Most of the time, if I have a problem I have to figure it out for myself.”
Photo 22
Last month, a consultation agency was launched last month by an organization that has JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) as its secretariat in joint cooperation with eight private companies.
Photo 23
The companies which include 7-11 and Toyota auto underwrite the consultation agency, and the foreign workers of these companies (and companies connected with them) can consult the agency.
The agency provides support [including connecting people up with doctors and lawyers] and provides feedback to the companies [such as via seminars on general problems and issues of foreign workers – they were at pains to say that personally identifying information was not provided to the companies].
Photo 24
JICA guy: Companies need to recognize the problem, improve the problems and reduce the incidence of cases.