Recommendations for an ultra-free society 4: How many pairs of straw sandals are you wearing?

■Recommendations for an ultra-free society 4: How many pairs of straw sandals are you wearing?            

　As digitization and the transition to smart technology move ahead, as well as people’s return to urban areas, we become a mobile society. Kenro Hayamizu’s “Where to Live in Tokyo?” argues that as the concentration of people away from outside urban areas and towards inner-city areas continues, the ability to move and to change one’s location is becoming an important ability.

Richard Florida’s “Who’s Your City?” also suggests that movement between social classes and geographical mobility are closely linked, and one’s possibilities in life are significantly affected by the ability or inability to move.

　This is also the effect of the fact that IT has created a need for direct contact between people, and the popularization of smartphones has meant that the value of short distances has increased. Telecommunications have overcome distance and made closeness prominent. A community and communication close to oneself has come to hold value through the Internet, and as people gather and spend time in real places, they continue moving from place to place.

　In terms of policy, these items are relevant: telecommunications policy (preparing 5G and a digital foundation); urban policy (urban concentration policies - the opposite of regional revival and dispersion); social security policy (basic income); educational policy (relaxation of regulations to support recurrent education, and computerization of education).

　What’s more important is labor policy. The first step to modular work is recognizing second jobs. In fact, what we need is to recommend second jobs. Signs of what’s called “wearing two pairs of straw sandals” in Japanese - in other words, recognizing side jobs - are already appearing in the industry. Moving forward, wearing three or four pairs of straw sandals will probably become a matter of course.

　In the past, in the rigorous job of a bureaucrat, I went through my days with no breaks and with 200 hours of overtime, but ever since I’ve left, I’ve led a life with many pairs of straw sandals, where it isn’t clear what my main occupation is. If you count these as jobs, I have four - a university faculty member, a business executive, a representative of public organizations such as associations or consortiums, a government committee member - which is modular in nature.

　And yet I go to live performances and host drinking parties while calling it work, although an outsider would see me as playing. During the time that I was writing this text, I seemed like I was writing about something that seemed like work, but it wasn’t even for a manuscript fee, so from an outside perspective, it would seem like I was playing.

　It’ll become something like that. In the 20 years since I left government office, I’ve become totally used to this feeling and can’t go back, but if everyone gets used to this, it’ll be this kind of feeling too.

　Osaka University president Kiyokazu Washida has a fantastic essay entitled “Many Pieces of Time”. People lead a polychronic existence in which they live through many blocks of time in a multi-layered way. He wrote that there was another piece of time that was important in everyday life, and he wanted to add the additional dimension of “play” to time.

　People have many different pieces of time flowing within them, and to live a rich life is to not make any of the pieces of time scream. It is better to have many pieces of time, and although alternating between them is good too, it’s better to have them running simultaneously if possible. That is the understanding we’ll have in an ultra-free society.

　Professor Washida was my senior in middle school, high school, and university. I would like to take his understanding as guidance this time.