Take a Good Look: The Efficiency-Free Life of the Efficiency-Free Youth | 100 Big Questions About Life

The Efficiency-Free Youth accept that they are washouts, and believe the road to happiness runs not through turning a washout into an elite and then collecting the joy, but through working out how to live happily as a washout.

Were people born just to work without stopping?

Does a good life have to be bought by killing yourself to make money?

Why do we have to have a big apartment, a sofa that expensive? Why do we need fine dishes and wine glasses just to eat at home?

Why must a person always get higher, faster, stronger?

The Efficiency-Free Youth are usually born out of a string of questions like these. And out of a series of small despairs:

"Up at 7, out the door at 7:30, at the office by 9, overtime as a matter of course until 9 at night, home in the middle of the night. I don't dare keep a cat or a dog — I'm afraid I couldn't look after it — never mind a child."

"Day after day, month after month, year after year. I'm run off my feet and barely growing, I can't find any sense of my own worth, and the pay is pitiful."

"I'm afraid I'll be doing the same thing five years from now. I want to quit but I'm afraid I won't find a better company, so I'm permanently stuck between quitting and not quitting — slacking off and feeling guilty about it."

"I want to rest but I'm afraid to rest. I hate being busy but I want to be busy."

Work was supposed to be a tool for making something of yourself; now you are a tool of your work. Money was supposed to make life easier; now life exists to make more money. A job was supposed to buy better leisure; now a day off is just enough to restore your labor power for the coming week. Come across a prison timetable — when the inmates get up, when they line up for roll call, when meals are served, when they are dismissed — and rounded off, it isn't far from your own day. You don't believe a word of the pie in the sky your boss draws for you, but if you don't hype yourself up now and then you sink into serious self-doubt. Everything points to some "maybe it'll be better" future: read a few more books now and after ten thousand hours you're bound to become wise and worldly; keep working out and one day you'll be able to play a game of Othello on your six-pack; manage your money and invest in yourself properly and you'll catch the next wave and escape this dull job. Everything you do now is preparation for "the future." The now is only a tool on the way to the future; the now is forever preparing, and never satisfying.

You can't work out why, when technology has advanced and people ought to be able to hand the work to machines and keep the time for a comfortable life, you can't even hold on to nine-to-five. You watch society boom while your own drive for work and career drains away, leaving confusion and no visible hope.

Just as you can't say whether walking upright freed humanity's hands or shackled its feet, you have started to distrust your own work, life, spending, and entertainment.

That distrust of the idea that everything should chase efficiency, that busyness is an honor, that labor comes first, has produced a group of "Efficiency-Free Youth." Efficiency-free is not the same as inefficient; it only means efficiency is no longer the standard they act by. They accept that they are washouts, and believe the road to happiness runs not through turning a washout into an elite and then collecting the joy, but through working out how to live happily as a washout.

In Lower-Class Society (《下流社会》), Miura Atsushi writes: "Why do people keep climbing dangerous peaks? Because they expect an astonishing view at the summit. But if you have already climbed seven-tenths of the way, and you know for a fact there is no view at the top, while the spot at seven-tenths is covered in wildflowers with clouds racing overhead, lovely beyond words — then nobody wants to spend the effort on the last stretch. The lower stratum's lack of ambition works exactly like mountain climbing." The gap between rich and poor is widening, classes are hardening, people have enough to eat and wear but less and less money and time they can dispose of, stress and anxiety pile up and confidence sinks. The Japanese have lost their enthusiasm and, of their own accord, no longer want to move up into the upper class; Chinese people want to move up but can't. In both countries part of the population has slipped into this "lower stratum."

Miura's lower-class society is marked by a general loss of enthusiasm for life. The "Buddha-like youth" popular on social networks carry a whiff of timid self-defense. The "Sanhe god" freeters scrape together odd jobs to fund video games and get by. The NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) neither study nor work nor train, and pass the days doing nothing. The "Efficiency-Free Youth" discussed here are none of these: they still have the drive to pursue happiness, but instead of holding on to a ready-made better life, they have turned to looking for a personally better life. The ready-made better life is the consumption-upgrade "ideal life" — more expensive, newer, more distinctive, more advanced — and, on the strength of comparison with other people, more elegant, more cultivated, more artistic, higher up the ladder, richer. Pursuing a personally better life is not about accumulating authoritative symbols to vouch for you, nor about a self-absorbed "be yourself, live your own way." It is about "making deeper connections with the world outside as an individual."

To unpack that rather inspirational-poster-sounding slogan, we'll try to show, through food, clothes, work, spending, and love, how the Efficiency-Free Youth try to escape the trap described at the top of this piece.

How the Efficiency-Free Youth Eat

Individual psychology holds that most of the anxiety that troubles us comes out of a self-feeding loop of emotion — anxiety about anxiety. If you can't sleep at night, you can simply fall asleep later; but the moment you think "am I having insomnia?", that thought alone can keep you turning over until morning.

The Efficiency-Free Youth have not stopped caring about eating well. They still study healthy recipes and exercise to cut down their trips to the hospital. They just think that too much self-protection makes it impossible to enjoy food with a clear conscience. If "eating fried chicken freely" turns into "eating fried chicken guiltily," if "tearing into a hotpot" turns into "eating hotpot against your better judgment," if cola has to come with a couple of red dates and whiskey has to be cut with goji berries, if every bite arrives wrapped in a worried calorie count — then you may as well "eat what you like and live a shorter life."

As with learning to appreciate classical music or art, the relationship between the Efficiency-Free Youth and food means picking ingredients that suit their own taste and nutrition, and also trying to understand the complicated ways of cooking and eating behind them. And if a little effort shows it's all too much trouble, there's nothing wrong with stopping at whatever sounds good, looks good, or tastes good.

But for a meal with friends, rather than a refined Italian restaurant that calls for careful dressing and a low voice, and wine that tastes bad but looks tasteful in imitation of elegant socialites, the Efficiency-Free Youth would sooner pick a cheap dive where you can shout and laugh as loudly as you want. If a high-end French restaurant is no more fun to eat in than a Northeastern barbecue joint, the Efficiency-Free Youth won't take friends to the French place for the sake of appearances.

How the Efficiency-Free Youth Dress

In The Fourth Consumption Era (《第四消费时代》), Miura Atsushi divides Japan into four periods of consumption:

The First Consumption Era: a Western-style commercial society gradually takes shape, and department stores, electric light, and office buildings appear;

The Second Consumption Era: Japan's economy takes off, home appliances go into mass production, people want mass-market, standardized goods, and the bigger the better — a bigger apartment, a bigger car, a bigger color TV than the next person means more happiness;

The Third Consumption Era: people chase individuality, turn up their noses at standardized mass-produced goods, and want to buy distinctive things that show they are not like everyone else — a different occasion calls for different clothes, different shoes, a different watch;

The Fourth Consumption Era: most of this era's main spenders grew up in homes that already had everything they needed, so people are less interested in filling desire with material things; they believe connecting with other people brings more happiness than buying, and lean toward filling the emptiness inside with good experiences of every kind.

By Miura's scheme, most young Chinese are still in the Third Consumption Era, using what they buy to say they are not like everyone else. The only difference between one person and another lies in which brand they buy. Turning up in the same outfit or with the same bag as someone else, or wearing the same clothes two days running, makes people frown.

One question worth asking: why can't we be the same as other people?

When we use the lens of comparison to approve of this brand and dismiss that one, we build an extra wall of brands between ourselves and everyone else. The demand for individuality ends up putting distance between people.

The Efficiency-Free Youth don't give up on looking good, but rather than mind what version of themselves other people see, they would rather start from what makes them comfortable and pleased. They want to live on equal terms with their clothes, treating clothing as an extension of the body — neither the master of their clothes nor hostage to them. They don't buy clothes beyond their means, in price or in character. Spend three months' salary on an Issey Miyake bag and you'll worry about it being crushed on the subway, worry about scuffing it when you go out, worry that it draws too much attention at work, and worry about running into the same bag at a party.

The Efficiency-Free Youth want an easy, cheerful relationship with their clothes: they can serve as the hanger that lets a garment show its texture, and the garment can serve as decoration that plays up their strengths and covers their weaknesses.

They don't pick clothes by any brand hierarchy. See something they like, buy a dozen of it. They feel no shame in wearing the same thing every day, and see nothing wrong with head-to-toe Uniqlo.

How the Efficiency-Free Youth Work

The Efficiency-Free Youth hold people who work hard in high regard — those who put in 12 hours a day, six days a week, make life much easier for everyone else. But a life with labor above all is not what the Efficiency-Free Youth are after. "The minimum amount of work needed to sustain a life of leisure" is what they choose instead. The Efficiency-Free Youth don't find their worth in great achievements, and they have given up on reaching happiness by killing themselves to make money.

Whether they pick freelance work or odd jobs, the Efficiency-Free Youth build up their work skills while turning their attention to a poor but full way of living, one built around the question of "how to make a 'high-end' life out of cheap or free things."

How the Efficiency-Free Youth Spend

They aren't against consumerism; they just don't want their lives drowned in it. Unlike the generation before them, who kept saving right up to the moment of death, they don't cut spending on purpose — if saving means suppressing your own desires, saving has no point.

The Efficiency-Free Youth think that what passes for pursuing individuality is mostly the individuality of brands. As long as you can get online, bloggers of every stripe have a tasteful selection ready for you, and owning something distinctive no longer says anything about your eye or your taste. You are simply buying something newer, pricier, or rarer to catch other people's eyes and satisfy your own vanity. And spending alone can never cancel out the new desires that sellers keep manufacturing for you. Rather than put money into endless one-upmanship, put it into experiences, into "good times." Miura Atsushi describes this view of spending in detail in The Fourth Consumption Era. Young people are starting to look for happiness somewhere other than material things. They don't care about brands and pay more attention to price and quality. Instead of getting satisfaction from buying, they lean toward experience-based spending: travel, seeing people. By now, the belief that life isn't good enough without the money for luxury goods is probably held only by people getting on in years.

How the Efficiency-Free Youth Love

They say out loud that they don't want to go on blind dates, then quietly send a submission to some matchmaking account like Save the Aging Otaku Coder or One-Week CP (with a note attached: "this is a friend of mine, not me"). When someone strikes up a conversation, they find chatting too much bother and go cold. Every month they are pulled back and forth eight hundred rounds between "I really want a relationship" and "actually, single is better." The quality they look for most in a partner is "whether they're friendly to waitstaff." When they meet someone they like, they hold that things should take their course, leaving enough time for the feeling to ferment. They don't ask love to last unchanged like a diamond; they care a great deal about the other person's feelings, and pay attention to the relationship and the distance between them. Being together is good; being alone is fine too.

In the course of being together, the Efficiency-Free Youth don't chase what's called a "result" in a relationship. Whether they are "a couple," whether they are "husband and wife" — the Efficiency-Free Youth don't dwell on these titles. Words like "mistress," "one-night stand," and "cheating" don't apply to how the Efficiency-Free Youth handle love.

The rules thought up by clever people — truth, philosophy, faith, gods, morality, formulas — are not what they act on. Caring about other people, and looking for an easy state of mind, is where their attention goes. As in: "I don't cheat, not because cheating breaks some moral rule, but because if I did, my wife would be badly hurt."

They don't treat precise transmission as the point of communication, and they are in no hurry to define the goodwill between two people. They don't weigh what meeting this person means for them in the long run, or whether it will benefit their future selves, and they don't think, "we'll see each other again anyway, so today is close enough." They treasure every moment of being together now, and even when a relationship ends they usually don't know how to break up: "I can feel this relationship has more or less run its course. Since it's going to end sooner or later, let it take its course — no need to go out of my way to speed it up."

Cover image and illustrations by Zheng Shuya