せい (sei): Fault
Lessons with the CEO of a food service company are often discussions on his business and society and the interaction between the two. He is Japanese and naturally has a love of his homeland’s history, language and culture. Given that his employees are mostly young, high school and college students as is common in this industry in the States as well, he is full of insights on pop culture in Japan. As a businessman, liability is always of concern.
If have written on how it seems that covid has intensified everyone’s avoidance of fault, sei. In all areas. Two years ago, my matsuri group finally held our once annual cook out, though in a fashion that differed greatly from how it used to be. They had always held it during Sumer vacation and invited anyone, including passersby to enjoy the free food and beer. It was a major recruiting event and played a role in my family eventually joining the group. Our first since the panic began was a small event just for members and our families. We were not allowed to advertise.
As it used to be a big, neighborhood wide, social event and we still held it in the same place, a woman from the neighborhood joined in the preparation and cooking for our cook out. At the time, no one thought anything of it. However, by the time of our next monthly meeting, someone in the group had reflected upon her participation and grew concerned about what would have happened if she had gotten injured in any way, say cut herself while shredding cabbage or got burnt on the massive gas griddle? Did we even have insurance? Whose sei, fault, responsibility, liability would it be in such a situation? This indicates just how new this concern is. The group had celebrated its 45th year several years prior to this, and they are just now for the first time concerned over insurance. The discussion continued; what would be the result upon the group, the individual members and especially its officers if someone did get hurt? Fear grew deeper, evident even in the eyes of those masked, upon the countenances of the old men around the table.
This seemed all blown out of proportion to me. We all have private health insurance here, so what is the problem? I have cut myself many times cooking or doing other tasks with a knife and have gotten burnt at home, work and camping, and I do not recall ever having to even go to the hospital. I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone else for my accidents. But if I did get injured seriously enough to require a hospital visit, I’d just pay out of pocket if feasible or use my private insurance to cover it. Not good enough in this day and age it now seems.
At later meetings, it was reported that be being an officially recognized community organization, we indeed are covered by municipal insurance. Yet, for some reasons that are unclear to me, we decided to contract for event insurance in addition to this. For the last year’s members’ only cook out, all had to sign a waiver to participate. Even though our dues and donations, from us individually to us as a group paid for the beer, we can not give it away to ourselves nor can we sell it, as we do not have a liquor license. We must put out a donation box for us to donate money to cover the cost of the free beer we bought for ourselves with the dues and donations we made to the group. Please, add this bit of”madness to all the rest I report, for it is a piece of the puzzle that they are forcing us to live in, in the very near future. Non members cannot not participate, because “sei” says so.
We are in desperate need of new members. The 8 active members are not enough to man just one of the 4 poles supporting our mikoshi. All 12 of us are not either as several are not physically well enough to carry anything. Yet, when a member of good standing brought up a possible activity in another neighborhood that could help bring in new members, the final decision was “muzukashi”; which the dictionary tells us means “difficult” but in usage it means “Nope”. Sei.
Two days ago, we finally got word via email that the music troop, Ohayashi, will resume practice for the first time since the panic began. The first practice in over 4 years will be this Saturday evening. Why did it take so long to resume? Japan dropped the masking recommendation, reopened it borders and rescinded all of its covid mitigation policies months ago. I think much was dropped a full year ago, so why did it take so long to restart practice. Fear of “sei”. “What if we have a covid cluster?” If that gets out, the troop director could lose his job as his company, a major publisher, still forbid group gatherings. I saw him a month or so ago as I rode past him on my bike on the way to work, he was still wearing a mask. He is obsessed with “sei”.
Sharing this with the CEO student of mine, I stated that I believe the fear over being the cause of a covid cluster drove this recent paralysis over the fear of being at fault, sei. He agreed, as it drove much of his policy with his company during the past 4 years. He hates masks. Yet, he could not be seen in public without when the government was recommending them. As his customers and work force demanded them, he had to implement a mask requirement out of fear of losing both. This fact terrifies me. One who knows is forced to go against what they know not by government action, but by being shunned by their employees and customers. Just one example of have “sei” dictated much of his business decisions these past 4 years.
But he added that he believed social media bear much of the blame. Using my example of the neighbor woman helping out cutting herself, he said before social media, it would have been taken care of between she and the group. Both parties would negotiate a solution and both would be fine with it. Both would just say, “It’s okay.”. Now, with everyone having a camera and a social media site to post pics and comments on, some third party is likely to say it’s not okay and make a big fuss over it and in the most public way possible, much to the embarrassment of the group and the woman. Thus, we have abandoned our yearly summer cook out. We may schedule on later in the year, but at present, it looks like it will never be the grand, community wide, free for one and all, recruitment gem it was before Covid.
Last weekend was a matsuri at one of the shrines in the precincts of the main city shrine. Since we started with the matsuri group, this is one we had been looking forward to participating in, as a family. Due to the 5th grader’s cramschool and swimming schedule this weekend, we were only able to participate Saturday evening. However, a week out, them one who organizes all our interactions with other festivals emailed to inform me that the kids could not participate. Fear of Sei required that all below high school age could not help carry the mikoshi. While I do not know for certain, I have good reason to believe this is new, since the panic.
Would it inevitably have come to this without the pressures brought to bear during the panic due to social media, perhaps. But we would have had more time to prevent it from happening, if we choose to. I remain of the belief that the panic was just a series of events needed to set up whatever TPTB have next up their collective sleeve. That the panic was necessary to create excuses for them to use existing tech and realities to force all of human society into silent compliance. Unsocial media already gave the neighborhood busybodies power they have long fantasized about. They can now film and publish each little “infraction” of what they themselves deem proper behavior to shame any whom they, in their own self righteousness, believe to have committed an impropriety. Covid gave them state sanctioned purpose while creating an increased fear among groups over sei/fault for causing a covid cluster. Combined, the atmosphere is not one conducive to any public interactions. They are killing public events. They are killing social events. They are killing all natural, interactions in public. And doing so without anything we can point to in public policy to fight to stop this.
My new signoff. Enjoy what they let you have while they allow you to have it, comrade. Be seeing you.
Yes! Social media empowers Karens and the rest of us are unable to counter them effectively
Love your new signoff. Soon we will look back on this time, regretting that we didn't fully appreciate what we still had before we lost everything.