The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

The year is ending in Japan, and things are starting to fall apart. I am getting a lot more ready to come home now.

In Japan, there's a very long-standing tradition of enforced transfers, particularly in bureaucratic jobs. The modern-day explanation is that constant transfers ensure that employees have a wide variety of experiences, in a number of fields and with different coworkers and bosses. I suppose that since most Japanese people would never complain about their work environment, it also keeps anyone from getting trapped in an awful place for too long. In the samurai days of the Tokugawa shogunate, when the tradition originated, it was actually designed to keep the bureaucrats - who were all samurai - from formenting rebellion against the state. By shuffling around, no employees of an office gained enough trust and familiarity to plan against their superiors.