Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Change of season

Oct 26, 2003 15:06 pm / Add a comment

As I rode my bicy­cle along the bank of Tsu­rumi River , once again feel­ing so amazed that sea­sons change, and each sea­son has its own plants that knows to grow and bloom at exact same sea­son in a year. The cos­mos is in full bloom now, its bright flow­ers and del­i­cate stems and leaves. I feel so free and glee­ful when I see the host of Japan­ese pam­pas grass flow­ing in the wind. Fad­ing deep greens, var­i­ous shades of earthy yel­low and brown. I am wear­ing long sleeves and full length pants. Just a cou­ple of months ago, it was so hot, the river reflect­ing the col­ors of sum­mer sky and tall bright green grass and sum­mer flow­ers, the view so very dif­fer­ent from today.

In the last entry, I’ve writ­ten about the tide of change in Japan. It merged with what I read today by Soichiro Honda from his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which said that what goes up, will come down. Every­thing changes, and in terms of eco­nom­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, high price means the price is prepar­ing to come donw, and low price means the price is about to go up. Just like bam­boo has nodes that breaks up tree trunk into parts and that’s what make them strong in wind and in snow, a com­pany will have nodes that is formed when a period of growth is stag­nated. That node is the time a com­pany takes to improve itself when the econ­omy is down, time is tough. With­out these nodes, a com­pany will break when faced with strong wind, heavy snow. Honda says in his book, that tough time is what refines a com­pany, forces it to become bet­ter at what it does. So the sea­son changes. It is inevitable. Those of us who were for­tu­nate to have expe­ri­enced these changes know. And things never stays the same. As my young but wise friend Yuki is fond of say­ing, we descend the val­ley, climb the moun­tain. As we face many chal­lenges, val­leys become deeper, moun­tains higher. So it is in Japan, that we thought we were still descend­ing the val­ley, that it was still deeper. Per­haps it con­tin­ues to be so with some peo­ple, some com­pany. But some­how, we seem to be on a climb again.

At least for me, I no longer feel fear­ful of not know­ing how far we will go down. I feel so exhil­er­ated every­time I hear Sakakida-san answer­ing older Japan­ese mid­dle man­agers sym­pa­thetic “Oh, it must be so tough for an inde­pen­dent archi­tect like you to make the ends meet”, with “No! This is the best time for young inde­pen­dent peo­ple, because we can win projects on com­pe­ti­tion! Dur­ing bub­ble eras, com­pa­nies had enough money to pay expen­sive fees for mediocre designs. Now, com­pa­nies want good design, and they can’t afford to pay the kind of money they used to. So they offer equal chances to every­one, ask­ing less about the age and expe­ri­ence.” How can you lose with such tal­ent, such attitude?

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