Jake Adelstein

“You idiot! You bought a funeral suit! Not a reifuku but a mofuku!”

“What’s the difference?”

“Mofuku are black. Nobody wears a black suit to a job interview.”

“Nobody?”

“Well, maybe a yakuza.”

“Well, could I pretend I just got back from a funeral? Maybe I’d get sympathy points.”

“That’s true. People sympathize with the mentally challenged.”

Aoyama chimed in, “Maybe you could apply to be a yakuza instead! They wear black! You could be the first gaijin yakuza!”

From the station, I followed the throngs of Japanese young people in navy blue suits and red ties, the classic “recruit look” of the day. In 1992, that also meant that all those who had followed the popular styles and dyed their hair brown or red had dyed it black again. There was a smattering of women in the female equivalent of sober navy blue suits.

this stuff from America is damn close to porn. Maybe arty porn, but it’s porn

The moral of the story: do it, but don’t watch it.”

Once hired, you were never fired. Lifetime employment in Japan has always been a bit of a myth, but in the nineties several major corporations implicitly offered that kind of hiring.