Urban farming in Tokyo 157Figure 11.1 A consequence of agro-activities found in Kashiwa City, a dormitory
community in Tokyo metropolitan area
Photo by Toru Terada
not as a “company man (or woman)” but rather as an “independent individual”
(Japan Cabinet Office 2007; Kohsaka 2010; Workshift Solutions 2015). These new
lifestyles entail greater free time made possible by flexible work arrangements
such as telecommuting, discretionary work, Small Office Home Office, and work
sharing that can be spent participating in family or community activities or seeking
eventual self-reliance by amassing personal experience, for example, by repeatedly
changing jobs and participating in overseas volunteer activities during between-
job periods (Chikirin 2013; Yoneda 2013). In the context of such flexible work
arrangements, it is possible for individuals to not be tied to a single company or
job category but, rather, to hold several jobs simultaneously. The idea of parallel
careers developed by Peter Drucker, whereby an individual engages in work other
than their main job, if not to the degree of being an actual side business, has been
discussed by the Japanese media and is gradually taking root in Japanese society
(Yanagiuchi 2013; Social Marketing Japan 2014). While it would be a stretch to
say that the majority of individuals and companies presently agree to and actually
implement this style of working, we would argue that it is likely to be a driving
force behind the wave of social transformation that is to come.
Let us consider this style of working from the standpoint of life-work balance.
Can we really escape the Japanese-style employment system of the past simply by
reducing the amount of time spent on “work” and by increasing the amount of time
spent on “life”—by, for example, establishing a system of extended leave (vacation)
similar to Europe and North America and maximizing time spent on “life”? The