I saw this fellow at a simple lunch place at Osaka Station a couple of weeks ago. I’m pretty sure he was a retired “Salaryman.” It was a regular workday, and I was surrounded by a dozen or so Japanese lunch guests in various versions of black suits. Some were presenting PPT-slides, others I think were peddling sales pitches.

In the depths of Japanese urban life lives the salaryman – the eternally loyal, tired, and commuting office worker in a skinny black suit.

He is a young man who enters a company with hopes, dreams, and maybe even ambition, only to emerge many decades later as a demoralized, semi-mechanical cog in a vast corporate labyrinthine contraption. Just like in Marxism, the individual hardly matters – the collective machine does.

I’ve spent the better part of my adult life trying to avoid becoming a cog in any machine. Instead, I chose the wobbly path of freelancing, consulting, and being as creative as each assignment required of me. I’ve written, filmed, and photographed. I’ve designed, painted, and lectured. I’ve been like a multi-tool.

Where the Salaryman has routine, I’ve had improv. Where he has fixed office hours, I have… well… flexible workweeks that often extend into the weekend. Where the Salaryman has stability, I’ve lived with the  existential question: “Will anyone pay me next month?”

That said, being “free” does come with some delicious perks. I’ve always had choices, and quite often I’ve been able to select and even design my own projects. And when given an assignment, I’ve enjoyed tremendous creative freedom to reach a client’s goal (and budget).

Also, if I choose to spend all of Friday morning photographing reflections in a pond or writing about salarymen in Japan, nobody stops me. I can chase ideas and inspiration wherever and whenever they appear. Like when I saw the retired Salaryman above, whom I encountered in that simple restaurant at Osaka Station. He got me to write this post. Looking at him made me reflect on how different our lives are. None is better nor worse than the other. Just different.