the factory - hiroko oyamada
The bridge has two lanes of car traffic flanked by wide footpaths. In the time it took our group to cross, we saw at least five buses, three excavators with their shovels tucked downward like the heads of sleeping giraffes, one concrete mixer, five vehicles loaded with some kind of heavy equipment, and too many cars to count. Maybe half of them
... See moreWe learn that there is an orientation hike (‘a training and networking event for new hires’ p9) taking place at the factory which is drawing to a close as it is now the evening. The group is standing on a large bridge near the southern face of the factory. We learn that the bridge is extremely busy with cars and many industrial vehicles. We wonder what the factory could need such equipment for, and what products they are making there, considering the only job that we know of so far involves only shredding documents all day.
The narrator compares the excavators - a tool essentially for destroying the earth - to the gentle image of a sleeping giraffe - mostly friendly, non-territorial creatures. The harsh industrial image is juxtaposed against the tender natural. It is a lifeless and mechanical scene with a little sense of human emotional presence.
At first, I thought the black birds were crows, but I was mistaken. They had to be closer to cormorants, maybe shags. … I could see some of them, clumped together, staring at the factory. They looked slick as oil, like if you wrung one by the neck you’d get black ink all over your hands. They were floating in brackish water, where the river spills
... See moreChapter Two begins with our narrator standing on a bridge watching a clump of black birds near the factory. They struggle to identify the birds or if such a bird should be living in the area. They are compared to ‘oil’, which can be potentially lethal to water birds (https://www.birdrescue.org/our-work/research-and-innovation/how-oil-affects-birds/), all leading us again to feel a sense of unease with the factory’s relationship to the nature, hinting that it is an unnatural and potentially harmful environment.
Some of the details were exactly the same as the permanent position, others weren’t. For one, permanent employees had to have at least a BA, but there were no educational requirements for this position. A permanent job post meant a fixed monthly salary, but the contract job was hourly. Work hours were different, too. … I couldn’t figure out the
... See moreYoshiko is offered a different position than she interviewed for, a contract position rather than permanent. This job is in ‘Staff Support’. When she questions what her role will involve, she is only told ‘support’. She joins what is casually called the ‘Shredder Squad’ ‘at the end of the corridor’ where her role will be to destroy documents using an industrial shredding machine for three to seven and a half hours a day. The name of this position gives a much more favourable (and vague) impression than the actual role itself. It is clear that she is being given an inferior position involving pretty mindless work.
“ … If that sounds good, I’ll bring you down to Staff Support and introduce you to the team. They’re down at the far end of the corridor.”
The far end of the corridor had an ominous sound to it, like the place was reserved for dead-end employees.
p7, The Factory (2013) by Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd (2019)
Yoshiko is offered a different position than she interviewed for, a contract position rather than permanent. This job is in ‘Staff Support’. When she questions what her role will involve, she is only told ‘support’. She joins what is casually called the ‘Shredder Squad’ ‘at the end of the corridor’ where her role will be to destroy documents using an industrial shredding machine for three to seven and a half hours a day. The name of this position gives a much more favourable (and vague) impression than the actual role itself. It is clear that she is being given an inferior position involving pretty mindless work.
It was almost strange how I’d managed to go through five jobs here without ever working for them. Maybe it looked like I was avoiding the factory, but I really wasn’t. I’d always seen the factory in a positive light, ever since that childhood field trip. If anything, I thought, maybe unconsciously, that I didn’t deserve to work somewhere so
... See moreYoshiko tells us that her parents did not encourage her to work at the factory as many other families did, so she has worked five jobs already without working there, none of which she has remained at for longer than a year. However, even her brother began working in the factory offices in the city centre after graduation.
She says that she wasn’t trying to avoid working at the factory, and if she was it was only because she did not see herself as worthy enough to work somewhere so important.
The factory’s marketing to children through the education system has worked on Yoshiko, someone who did not even have parents coaxing her towards it. She sees the workplace as somewhere desirable - a place where only those worthy few can toil. The factory is seen as a ‘real job’, and Yoshiko frames herself slightly in this chapter as having idly taken other jobs that could not be considered beneficial careers in the way that the factory’s could. Not only does Yoshiko think this way, but we learn that society at large and the company does as well, for her qualifications and well-prepared interview do not guarantee her the employment she seeks. Her track record of short term jobs means that she is seen as unreliable.
No matter where you are in this city — the school, the department store, anywhere — you’re always walled in by mountains. But the factory had nothing around it. Or rather, it was as if it were surrounded by something other than the mountains. Something larger, something more distant.
p5, The Factory (2013) by Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd
We learn that the city in which our protagonist lives is ‘walled in by mountains’ - everywhere except the factory, which we can assume is by contrast in a flat area.
Ominously, the factory lies separate from the natural environment visible in the city. The people are residing in a place closer to nature, but working in an unnatural place that is surrounded not by earthly bodies but by the idea of ‘something larger’ and ‘more distant’. It is not a comforting presence, despite this idea perhaps also bringing to mind the idea of a God or higher power, one of the few things people might consider ‘larger’ and ‘more distant’ than nature itself.
At the time, it felt like the factory was enormous, maybe as big as Disneyland. And the souvenirs were as good as Disneyland’s, too. … Seeing the factory again as an adult, it didn’t feel any smaller. If anything, it had gotten even bigger. The factory’s influence over the city was too great to ignore. Everyone has at least one family member
... See moreYoshiko has visited the factory once before in her childhood on a primary school trip where she received little souvenirs including pens and cookies on her visit. She remembers at the time feeling that the factory was on par with Disneyland both in size and quality of souvenirs.
Now she is coming back to the factory as an adult, she feels that the factory is the same size or perhaps even bigger due to its influence over the surrounding area. Its logo is ever present and recognisable, and many local people have at least one family member working there, and thus encourage their children to work there too.
Working a good and stable career at an admirable company is framed as ‘Disneyland’ - something a child would look to for entertainment, awe, and wonder. It is no coincidence that Disney is a massive global corporation with allegations of poor working conditions, underpayment, and union suppression, not to mention their perpetuation of racial and gender stereotypes in its media.
“...I was a liberal arts major at university, where my research focused on the Japanese language. Specifically, I’m interested in how people communicate. While pursuing my research, I became curious about the use of language in print media. I was especially fascinated by the effectiveness of particular expressions and sentence structures. Ideally,
... See moreThe protagonist is Ushiyama Yoshiko, a BA liberal arts graduate. We meet her immediately as she is interviewing for a permanent position in ‘the factory’ to a middle manager named Goto.
She speaks very eloquently in this interview about the interest she has in language used in print media due to the research on communication in Japanese that she conducted during her degree, and states how she would like to use that experience in this career.
She also relates this to a lifelong relationship to the factory and its products, saying how she has seen advertisements as a child that drew her to working for the technologically advanced and ethical company. This demonstrates to the interviewer that Yoshiko has conducted her own research about the company, as well as presenting an emotional argument for her desire to work there, and flattering the company and thus interviewer as she does so.
We haven’t known Yoshiko long enough to understand yet whether these claims are genuine, but we understand her to be intelligent enough to go about her interview in such a way regardless, using multiple persuasive tactics in a relatively short space of time. She is also able to pull this spiel from the top of her head, without any further prompting, so we understand that she has prepared well, irrespective of her actual interests or whether the factory really does have ‘famously high standards, both technologically and ethically speaking’.