When I heard the term ’salaryman’ years ago at first I didn’t know what it meant. But I soon found out it’s a term that makes complete sense: It’s a person who works for a salary as opposed to an hourly wage. But it’s not quite that simple. In Japan, the phrase is loaded with all kinds of hidden meaning — referring to someone who is a faceless bureaucrat in a giant corporation working as a slave for their weekly check without benefit of overtime. There’s even an serialized cartoon, or manga, in Japan called Salaryman Kintaro, about a Japanese worker who defies the stereotype of the typical office worker and succeeds anyway.
In the U.S., the term is a little more benign, if it is used at all, and refers to someone who is a white-collar worker, probably middle-class, on a career path, working his way up the ladder to a brighter future and a better salary.
In this recession, though, if you are a ’salaryman’ you’d better watch out: The budget cutters are coming for you.
That’s why there appears to be an enormous upwelling in entrepreneurial spirit in recent months, as unemployed salarymen (and women) are hanging out at home looking for something to do that will make them happy and money. The recession has spurred a reawakening of the entrepreneurial spirit. In the past, that spirit was borne out of the belief that anything was possible in this great land of opportunity.
Today, it is more borne out of desperation, although there is certainly an underlying theme that anything is possible. “Only in America” is a phrase thrown around with sarcasm in recent decades, and the subprime lending crisis along with the Madoff scandal would certainly seem to fit that.
But more recently, “Only in America” has returned as the entrepreneur has made more of a comeback. People are more willing to gamble when they’ve got nothing left to lose. But American ingenuity, led by the entrepreneurial spirit, will likely be what carries us through and out of this recession.
