There’s few more universal experiences than the youthful thrill of cutting class. Sure, willfully missing out on school or work isn’t exactly a recipe for personal success, but it is something most people have been tempted to engage in from time to time. Nowhere is the sense of freedom of truancy better expressed than in John Hughes’ seminal 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, about a Chicago teenager’s glorious day skipping school with his girlfriend and best bud. Perhaps the more regimented and repetitive the setting, the stronger the desire to sneak away; school, conferences, meetings, all inspire attempts at a bit of slacking off, even if in the form of a cheeky smoking break or a few rounds of a smartphone game. This is true all over the world, and is certainly true in Japan, where the term for slacking off or playing hooky is well known: Saboru (サボる).
These days, saboru is a pretty straightforward concept. As a verb, it can describe anything between full truancy and just taking it a bit too easy at work/school. Example sentences could be something like this: 「ちょっと数学サボって、ゲームしようか？」(How about we skip math class and play some video games?) As a noun, it’s sabori (サボり); skipping out, procrastination. It’s such a common, basic word that it’s on the vocab list for level four of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test – the second-easiest level for that infamous exam series.
Saboru: Intriguing Origins
Pay attention to the way サボる is written, however, and you may notice something interesting. The first two kana phonetic characters that make up saboru aren’t in the usual hiragana system, nor are they kanji logographs. Instead, they’re in katakana, the Japanese phonetic writing system usually reserved for words of foreign origin. And yet, there’s a hirgana ru (る) character appended at the end of the word. Not only that, but the verb is conjugated like one would a yamato-kotoba verb – a word with origins in ancient Japanese.
In truth, saboru is indeed a word with a foreign origin – something even native speakers of Japanese might not be aware of. But it’s not your standard loan word. Its origins come in the early 20th century, during an age of labor protest, modernization, and the fight for increased civic rights. For such a ubiquitous, slangy word, its origins are surprisingly revolutionary – and directly related to the creation of the first 8-hour workday in Japan. These days, saboru might be used to express cutting class – but in the 1910s, it was something a bit more intense. It was sabotage.
Land of Foreign Words
Saboru is far from unique in being a Japanese word borrowed from a distant language family. Just as the language you’re reading now, English, is made up of a Germanic base filled with borrowed words and roots from French, Greek, and numerous other languages, Japanese consists of more than words grown from the Japonic soil. In Japanese, foreign loan words are called gairaigo (外来語). Indeed, Gairaigo is one of the three main categories of Japanese word origin; the aforementioned Yamato-kototoba or wago (和語) are words that originate in Japan, while kango (漢語) are older words originating from China.
Chinese loanwords and written characters began entering Japan in the 4th century, and their influence on the local language cannot be overstated. Something akin to 60% of all Japanese words and 19-20% of those used in daily speech are kango, often using Chinese characters and associated sounds to create new Japanese words. The two versions of the phrase for native Japanese vocabulary demonstrate how Japanese-origin words and Chinese-origin words often function in Japanese; Yamato-kotoba (大和言葉) is made up of two Japonic-origin words, Yamato (the old name of Japan) and Kotoba (word or language), whereas Wago (和語) uses Chinese-originating phonetics to express the same concept. Kango words tend to be shorter, often using single-syllable sounds associated with specific kanji characters. (Kanji, of course, having originated from China.)
Kango are an almost innate aspect of the modern Japanese language. While technically foreign in nature, the millennia of usage separate old Chinese-origin words from newer Gairaigo adoptees. The majority of non-kango loanwords now come from English, and are a bit more conspicuous. They almost always come in katakana phonetics, and are very clearly of a different linguistic milieu than yamato-kotoba and kango. Words like コンピュータ (konpyuuta, computer) and ズボン (zubon, pants, from the French “jupon”) stand out amongst words in kanji and hiragana.
The Coming of Katakana
The first European-origin gairaigo arrived with the early meetings between the Portuguese and the Dutch during the warring states era. In the 1550s, the Portuguese began supplying samurai warlords with modern armaments; in some decades, the Netherlands came to supplant Portugal as the main European trading partner in Japan. With Tokugawa Ieyasu‘s victory at Sekigahara in 1600, the entirety of Japan came under the sway of his long-lasting dynasty. Soon, the Tokugawa shoguns expelled most foreigners from Japan, beginning two centuries of relative isolation. The Dutch were allowed to stay on as trade partners limited to the small man-made island of Dejima in Nagasaki; from this point, most foreign words and terminology would come through the Dutch (and occasional returnees from shipwrecks in foreign lands.)
All that changed in the 1850s. Pressure from Western countries, the US chief among them, saw the end to the policy of isolation. With the fall of the samurai regime in 1868-69, an age of modernization and top-down westernization began. As westernized architecture, governmental systems, and dress began to prevail, so too did foreign vocabulary. English words were used to describe the very idea of the westernized Japanese dandy, the “High Collar” (ハイカラ). Such was the fervor toward English and its association with modernization that Mori Arinori, founder of the modern Japanese education system, believed that English should supplant Japanese as the modern national language. (While major standardization of Japanese did occur, English never came close to actually replacing the native language.)
Factoring in the Factories
The Meiji Restoration of 1868-69 ushered in innumerable changes in Japanese society beyond mere linguistics. Japan became a single centralized nation-state, instead of a collection of fiefdoms owing allegiance to the Shogunal overlord in Edo. Class distinctions were essentially made obsolete, and the caste system ended. (Even if old de facto prejudices remained, like those against the former Burakumin underclass.) The economic system changed rapidly, as western-style factories came to supplant older styles of production. Exports of materials like silks called for large-scale industrial employment using newfangled technologies.
In sheer numbers, Japan, like most societies of the time, was one in which the majority of people were engaged in agriculture. While Meiji-era Japan was still more rural than urban overall, major shifts were occurring. Then, as even today, most farmers engaged in by-employment during downtime or the offseason, supplementing their incomes by brewing sake or carving tools. Farmers would also go into cities or ports for seasonal work. Now, though, factories were mass-producing the same goods the farmers used to make for extra money; factories also wanted full-time employees. Farmers had a harder time bringing in extra income, and sons and daughters who went off to work in cities would often simply move to those urban areas permanently as factory employees.
The influx of workers with agricultural backgrounds caused some clashes within working society. Laborers in specific industries had formerly been artisans who had gone through many years of apprenticeship; now they worked alongside country bumpkins fresh from the fields. Other peculiar elements were entering the workplace as well: foreign ideologies, like Marxism.
As the Meiji era ended, and the Taisho era (1912-1926) began, a mix of uprooted farmer culture, Europe-born ideology, and even the concept of saboru itself would spell major changes.
The Roaring Taishos
In 1912, the Meiji emperor passed away following a long and momentous reign. By the time his more reclusive son, the Taisho emperor, ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, much had changed in Japan. The country was now the Empire of Japan, having added colonies in Korea, Taiwan, and Sakhalin to its feudal settlements in Hokkaido and Okinawa. Most men now wore their hair in cropped western styles; many donned suits and ties. (Women, however, would continue wearing kimono for some years to come.) German, English, and French words had entered the lexicon. In fact, Emperor Taisho, who struggled with cognitive issues, was a great lover of foreign languages; while still crown prince, he often bothered his father, Emperor Meiji, by peppering his speech with French words.
The reign of Emperor Meiji may have seen the end of feudalism and the promulgation of Japan’s first constitution, but it was still generally an authoritarian empire. During Emperor Taisho’s brief reign, however, popular movements gained some real successes. This has led to the appellation of “Taisho Democracy” to describe the era. Unionism became more prominent, and factories became staging grounds for mass protests, as workers demanded better conditions.
World War I began in 1914, only two years after the Taisho emperor took the throne. Japan joined on the side of the allies; not only did it capture both a port in China and a large swath of Micronesia from the German Empire; Japan also stood to benefit immensely in economic terms. European trade and manufacturing lay in ruins, with Japan stepping in to fill the global export void. The economy boomed. More and more factories went up, and a wave of nouveau riche – called narikin (成金) – made their fortunes.
In many ways, times were good. But more jobs and stable wages actually served to instill in Japanese workers a sense of class identity – and even more of a desire to press for their rights. From 1916 to 1917, the number of strikes throughout Japan nearly quadrupled to 398; the number of striking individuals rose seven times, from 8,413 to 57,309.
Kobe, 1919
This all brings us to 1919, and the port city of Kobe.
As strange as it may seem now, Kobe was still something of a new city in the 1910s. Although its port had been an important place of trade for a thousand years, the city itself only came into existence in 1889. Previously, the area had been split amongst different feudal domains; the all-important port was the property of the Tokugawa shoguns. The abolition of the Han (feudal fief) system saw the area fall under the jurisdiction of Hyogo Prefecture; soon after, Kobe City was born. It would be a major port of entry for a myriad of foreign cultural artifacts: golf, jazz, movies – and industrial sabotage.
Kobe emerged as a major modern industrial port city during the Meiji and Taisho eras. It also played host to one of the country’s major emerging industries: shipbuilding. By the waning years of WWI, there were 30,000 people in the city employed in the shipbuilding industry. These workers represented 5% of the city’s entire population. Two shipbuilding companies were especially prominent: Kawasaki Dockyard Company, Ltd, and The Kobe Shipyard of Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha. Kawasaki was run by Matsukata Kojiro, a devotee of western art who had been born a samurai of the powerful Satsuma domain and educated abroad.
Shipbuilders were well-paid, at least by the standards of contemporary laborers. Many were former farmers, and had a strong sense of autonomy and awareness of a certain social stature amongst other workers. By 1919, they’d even broken from the national labor union, Yuaikai, forming their own local union, the Kansai Rodo Domeikai, in order to further establish their own autonomy. So, when the company wasn’t treating them right, they often felt compelled to take a stand.
Saboru-tage
In 1919, the wages at Kawasaki Shipyard were still pretty good. Issue was, with the war over, prices were starting to rise across the board. The old stipends weren’t covering the lifestyle of the shipyard worker anymore. Only the year before, a staggering rise in the price of rice had caused mass rioting throughout the country and brought down the government of Prime Minister Masatake Terauchi. The Kawasaki workers had taken part. With the situation still looking grim, in April of 1919, the Kansai Rodo Domeikai held its first convention, setting forth its new aims. Included were the establishment of a minimum wage, democratization of factories, equal pay amongst the genders – and the eight-hour workday.
President Matsukata was aware of the unrest amongst the Kawasaki Dockyard workers. At the beginning of the year, he promised them a special bonus – but six months on, it was still nowhere to be seen. Before long, the workers’ anger was bubbling to the surface. On September 15th, a representative of the laborers turned in a written petition for higher wages. Two days later, Matsukata officially met with the representative to discuss the demands. A firm promise to increase earnings was not forthcoming. The union determined that it was time to strike. One thousand and six hundred Kawasaki Dockyard employees walked off the job.
In Japanese, “strike” is expressed through an English-originating loanword: ストライキ (sutoraiki). This should not be confused with a very similar English gairaigo, ストライク (sutoraiku), which is specifically the baseball term “strike.” But as the 1919 Kawasaki workers went on strike, gumming up the works and purposefully grinding shipbuilding to a halt, a new foreign word came into vogue: sabotage (サボタージュ, sabotaaju). And as their strike went on, their sabotage was getting results.
Sabotage to Success
Matsukata, who had spent much time abroad, was aware of the way the world was going. With pressure from the strike mounting, he decided to take an unprecedented step for Japan. On September 27th, he made an announcement: “From October 1919, an eight-hour workday system will be put into effect, with the same wages being paid out.” For the workers, it came as an unexpected coup. While the Treaty of Versailles which had ended WWI only months earlier had called for an eight-hour workday, it had yet to be thoroughly implemented in any major company in Japan. Union records display enthused worker reactions: “This is amazing! It’s like getting the wage of some bigwig.” The 1919 strike had come to an end; the workers were victorious.
The news caused a stir throughout the country. Word of the successful sabotage spread, and with it circulated another word – sabotaaju. Within the year, more than 200 other Japanese companies had also adopted an eight-hour workday. In 1920, journalist Murashima Yoriyuki published Sabotage: the True Facts of the Kawasaki Shipyard Slow-Down Tactics. (サボタージユ—川崎造船所怠業の真相.) Sabotage had entered the vernacular. Soon, the word was shortened and made the popular verb that endures to this day – saboru.
Multiple hard-won victories emboldened the workers of Taisho-era Japan. In 1921, the Kawasaki and Mitsubishi shipyard workers would go on to unite, staging the largest strike in pre-war Japanese history. In 1925, the penultimate year of Taisho, the General Election Law was passed, granting political suffrage to all men over the age of twenty-five. The Japanese electorate increased from 3,341,000 individuals to 12,534,360. (Perhaps predictably, women were still left without a vote.)
Despite the Kawasaki Shipyard workers’ 1919 victory, the eight-hour workday would not be instituted nationwide for twenty-eight more years, after Japan’s devastating loss in World War II. As the 1930s dawned, the experiment with Taisho democracy came to an end; in its place was an increasingly militarized and totalitarian government with ever-decreasing levels of individual rights. The eight-hour workday was finally written into law in 1947, part of the Labor Standards Act introduced while Japan was newly under occupation.
Taking it Easy
By war’s end, saboru had been a part of the Japanese lexicon for decades. It survived the tumultuous war years, when foreign words were subjected to kotabagari – linguistic self-censorship. Whether striking (ストライキ) or hitting a strike (ストライク) while playing beisubooru (changed to the Japanese yakyuu during the xenophobic war years), you had to express yourself using words that seemed more properly Japanese.
Saboru slowly came to take on a much more casual meaning than its original labor-oriented context. It has endured as a relaxed term for general slacking off and playing hooky – perhaps revealing the association between sabotage and simply not trying that hard. Saboru survived the 1970s-1990s, when many Japanese youths preferred the slang fukeru for cutting class. It also remains one of the few gairaigo to conjugate like a native Japanese word, rather than by simply applying suru (する, to do) to the foreign-originating noun. While others do exists in this rarified category, most are modern slang: Guguru (ぐぐる, to google something), or sutabaru (スタバる, to go to Starbucks).
Official eight-hour workday or no, overwork is still a major issue in Japan. It’s well known that there’s a popular word for “death from overwork” in the lexicon: karoshi (過労死). Over a century on from the Kawasaki strikes and linguistic importation of sabotage, exploitative “black” companies still exist throughout the archipelago. People can spend hours of unproductive work stuck behind their desks, waiting for the boss to head home, lest they be perceived as anything less than team players. So, in a working environment where your personal time is far from respected, people are still going to find ways to get back just a little bit of their own time. As long as workplace and educational drudgery exist, there will still be a place in Japan for saboru.
What to Read Next:
The Last Samurai Vendetta: The Revenge of Usui Rokuro
Sources
Maki, Wilma Jane. (1992). The 1921 Mistubishi Kawasaki Strike: The Past and Present World of the Kobe Shipyard Workers. Masters Thesis for the University of British Colombia, History Department.
Seidensticker, Edward. (1983). Low city, high city: Tokyo from Edo to the earthquake. New York: Knopf
(2017年9月19日). もっと関西 「8時間労働発祥の地」なぜ神戸？ 川崎造船所が初 初代社長の先見（とことんサーチ）. The Nikkei.
