My favourite archetype

There is one particular type of Japanese person that is universally reviled and despised; the old geezer, the “oyaji” salaryman. Usually well into their 50s, they wear ill-fitting thread-worn suits, have appalling manners and bodily odours and move along the streets with all the grace of a cheese-wheel made of toads. Hated by their estranged wife and children, bullied by their bosses they go through life from one day to the next with nothing to occupy themselves with other than getting drunk and letching at young girls.

This post is, in a sense, an ode to these warriors of the urban jungle.

Why sympathise with these odious monsters? Imagine their lives for just a moment: married when still a young and virile man to a surrogate mother-figure, once they propagated their genes their only remaining task for the rest of their lives is to provide. Every month they hand their entire paycheck over to the wife who organizes the household. They work long and tedious hours and climb up the career ladder, if they’re lucky, as high as super-vice assistant under manager, and shuffle paper while a younger and more successful boss breathes down their necks.
Because of their work they never see their children until they are old enough to stay up late enough to catch a glimpse of him as he stumbles home from a mandatory night out with the boss. They don’t know him and are embarrassed by his bad jokes and dress sense.

Never having learned etiquette and now finding there is no need to, they smack their lips while eating, open mouthed. They dispense with showers, deodorant or any other method that combats the effects of body rot. Their waistlines spread out like a grease stain, and they take up golf, often practicing their swings in public with pretend clubs.

In a recent trend older women, just after all the kids have married and left the home, have divorced their husbands, leaving them alone and totally incapable of looking after themselves. Home-ec schools for the mature man have enjoyed a bit of a surge in popularity, as many suddenly single old geezers realise they don’t know how to boil an egg, wear a suit, operate the washing machine or how to make water appear out of a tap.

So the next time you see one of these Gods amongst men hanging from the straps in he train by both arms, looking around him with a bored, dead look in his eyes like a former alpha-male gorilla surveying the band and all the younger females he’ll never get to mate with, think to yourself “there but for the grace of God” and enjoy your youth while you have it; for this valuable lesson we must be grateful and respectful to these empty husks.