The ubiquitous word "productivity" last summer acquired a new meaning — or at least a new twist. Members of the LGBT community, wrote Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Mio Sugita, "do not reproduce. In other words, they are unproductive. I wonder if it is appropriate to spend taxpayer money on them." So naked a linkage of reproduction to production, of birth to manufacturing, of an intimate private matter to the supposed services a citizen owes the state, clashed so jarringly with the temper of the times that Shincho 45, the magazine in which Sugita's musings appeared, surrendered to public outrage and ceased publication.
Japan is as obsessed with productivity as most advanced nations; more so, if long working hours and exhaustion are the measure — as indeed they are, of obsession if not of productivity itself, defined in terms of gross domestic product per hours worked, in which category Japan ranked 20th as of 2015 among the 38 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
As the Heisei Era draws to a close, Japan gears up, somewhat uneasily, for rest — a 10-day release from productivity. Not for everyone, certainly, but for many people, April 27 will be the last working day of Heisei, and May 6 the first of a new era. The uneasiness arises from a tendency, or instinct, to equate productivity with life itself. If we're not productive, what are we? At rest — but as the Asahi Shimbun observed last month in a feature tellingly headlined "Relaxation reform," rest is an art Japan has yet to master.