The Fool is the card of wild abandon and new beginnings

The presence of eunuchs in the Chinese court was a long-standing tradition. These emasculated men served as palace menials, spies and harem watchdogs throughout the ancient world. An army of eunuchs was attached to the Forbidden City, primarily to safeguard the imperial ladies’ chastity.

Confucian values deemed it vital for the emperor, seen as heaven’s representative on Earth, to produce a direct male heir to maintain harmony between heaven and Earth. Not wanting to leave anything to chance during a period with a high infant mortality rate, the world’s largest harem was placed at the emperor’s disposal to ensure enough heirs would survive into adulthood.

A 2,000 year system - Court chronicles record Chinese kings keeping emasculated servants in the eighth century BC, but historians generally date the appearance of eunuchs in court to the reign of Han Huan Di (AD 146-167).
 

The government role occupied by eunuchs meant that over time they were able to exert enough influence on emperors to gain control of state affairs and even cause the fall of some dynasties. The power of the eunuchs endured partly due to the ambitions of the consort families and partly as a result of the secluded lifestyle which etiquette prescribed for the emperor.

The eunuch system came to an end when it was abolished on November 5, 1924, when the last emperor, Puyi was driven out of the Forbidden City, where he had been living since the 1912 revolution.

About an eighth of those who became eunuchs were young children bowing to parental pressure. Families would receive a cash reward for donating their sons, but they also hoped their children would have a more comfortable and prosperous life in the palace.

Some adults, with no economic means to lead an honest and acceptable way of life, preferred emasculation to a life of begging and stealing. Some men, who could only envision a life of futility and hardship, were envious of the seemingly easy lifestyle enjoyed by palace eunuchs.

Emperor Guangwu of Han (reign between 25 and 57 BC) commuted all death sentences to emasculation and successive emperors followed this edict. Bao translates as “the three preciouses” – the testicles and penis. The new eunuch’s bao was put into a container with a capacity of about 24 fluid ounces, sealed, and then placed on a high shelf.

1 Every time a eunuch received an advance in rank he had to pass a strict examination. Promotion was impossible without the bao. The examination process was called yan bao, and was lead by the head eunuch. The inspection was often a source of profit for knifers, because sometimes careless or ignorant eunuchs forgot to claim their “precious” after emasculation. They would then be forced to pay a high price to recover the bao. Bao were sometimes borrowed, purchased or rented.

2 When a eunuch died, he was buried with his bao. If he didn't have his own, he would try to obtain another before his death. Eunuchs wanted to be as complete as possible when leaving this world because they believed they would have their masculinity restored in the afterlife. Tradition had it that Jun Wang, the king of the underworld, would turn those without their bao into a female mule. The ancient Chinese had a great fear of deformity.

Sex in China from imperial times to today explored via nine essays in Sexuality in China - masculation cuts off the supply of male hormones to the body, leaving eunuchs with high voices. It also affected their bladder control, so they often wet their beds and clothes. This is the source of the old Chinese expression “as smelly as a eunuch”. They were also rendered too weak to perform strenuous physical activities.

According to G. Carter Stent, in his article “Chinese eunuchs”, published in 1877, emasculation affected character and could make eunuchs appear much older. They were vulnerable to bouts of extreme emotions, including moments of uncontrollable anger.

Duties and influence - Eunuchs were required to preserve the air of sanctity and secrecy that imbued the imperial presence. Regarding outdoor employment, eunuchs acted as water-carriers, watchmen, chair-bearers, and gardeners; while their indoor duties covered work normally performed by cooks and chamber, parlour or scullery maids. In short, they were involved in every aspect of palace life.

There were 10,000 eunuchs in the palace by the end of the 15th century and 70,000 by 1644. This number was the result of an increasing number of men seeking work in the Forbidden City and undergoing voluntary emasculation. At the beginning of the Qing dynasty the number was reduced to 3,000, because the Manchus were concerned the eunuchs had too much influence in the royal court.

The Qing Dynasty divided the eunuch administration into 48 departments, each with its own particular set of duties. Each department had its own superintendent, while a chief eunuch, or general supervisor, presided over all the departments; this office was usually ranked third grade.  During the late Qing dynasty the salaries of eunuchs varied from two to four silver taels per month (US$49 to US$98), The highest salary a eunuch could receive was 12 taels (US$294), regardless of rank.

The imperial city surrounded the forbidden city, functioning like a maintenance plant for both the government, and the imperial household. Most eunuch agencies were located in the imperial city during the Ming dynasty, which is also where thousands of eunuchs lived and worked The Chinese court and civil bureaucracies were located in the imperial city. Naturally, many rivalries evolved between the eunuchs and other ministers and officials whose offices were located just outside the walls of the imperial city.

 

Eighteen lama priests, all eunuchs, attended to the spiritual welfare of the ladies of the palace. They drew a double allowance as salary. When a vacancy arose among the 18, it would be quickly filled by eunuchs wanting to be priests or those with a spiritual vocation.

The ladies of the palace enjoyed theatrical entertainment. A dramatic corps of 300 eunuchs was maintained, under the control of a chief eunuch, because outsiders were forbidden to enter the palace. This troupe lived in the Nan-fu, in the imperial city, just outside the palace. Their sole duties were to rehearse and perform for the palace.

Since eunuchs handled almost every palace issue, they had access to valuable information which they could use to wield power and influence, even over the emperor. As all rites and protocols were controlled by eunuchs, their power waxed and waned according to an emperor’s strength of character.

In 1655, Emperor Shunzhi issued the following decree: “The employment of eunuchs has been a tradition since ancient times. However, their abuses have often led to disastrous disturbances. They misappropriated power, intervened in government affairs, organised secret agents, murdered the innocent, commanded troops and brought their evil practices to the border regions.

They even engaged in conspiratorial activities, framed those who were loyal and good, instigated factional struggles and encouraged fawning and flattery, until the affairs of state deteriorated day by day, and corruption occurred everywhere …

From now on, anyone who is guilty of interfering with government affairs, misappropriating power, accepting bribes, involving himself in internal and external affairs, associating himself with Manchu and Han officials, reporting on things which are not his duty, or suggesting whether an official is good or bad, shall promptly be put to death, by slicing without mercy. This iron table is hereby erected so that it may be observed from generation to generation”

Eunuchs were subjected to arbitrary punishments, ranging from monetary fines, to execution. Beatings were common, as was the sentence to cut grass (zhacao), sometimes for life. The most common crime to be punished was for desertion.

 

If a eunuch ran away from the palace, his absence was immediately reported to a kind of police corps, whose duty was to capture runaway eunuchs. It was rare for an escape to succeed and although the men working in the force were not eunuchs they knew all the palace eunuchs. The fugitive was tried and punished after he was captured.

Last emperor was 'gay and unable to father an heir' - First time: the culprit was imprisoned for two months. At the end of that period he received twenty blows and was sent back to his palace duties. Second time: he was put into a cangue for two months and would resume his duties as soon as his punishment ended. Third time: banishment to Moukden (now Shenyang) for two and a half years. Once again, he would resume his duties upon completion of the punishment.

Theft was also punished by banishment to Moukden. However, if the stolen object was a curio, jewellery, or other valued prize of the emperors, the offender would be taken to Chin-shan-k’ou, a destination about forty li, or 20km, from Beijing, and decapitated. Laziness, neglect of duty, or other minor offenses were punished by “bastinado”.

This consisted being struck with a bamboo stick on the soles of bare feet. The culprit could receive from 80 to 100 blows. When the punishment ended, the eunuch was sent to a eunuch doctor, who dressed the wounds. In order to render the punishment more severe, the culprit would be flogged again after three days. The second session was called “raising the scabs”

https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/2155959/forbidden-city/life/chapter_02.html
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During my early days in Japan I was working in a typical Japanese company. One fine day I had some more work left to finish at the end of the day and told my boss that I’m going to be working over-time for a bit. At first he was happy to see his sub-ordinate working so hard .
 

The work took usual than longer so it went past 9:00 PM and my boss was ready to leave and told me strictly to not work beyond 11:00 PM. When I asked why, he said some 3–5 years ago an employee worked until next morning 5 AM something without taking any break and died of exhaustion due to which the company got into serious trouble and had to re-write the working hour rules.

And since then if any employee works beyond 11 PM unless until it’s absolutely necessary and with prior approval of his supervisor , the supervisor will be demoted . And I actually saw someone getting demoted from 副統括　( Deputy Division Head) to Manager because his sub-ordinate worked until 11:30 PM something. In fact in some departments the managers used to leave only when all his sub-ordinates left due to fear of demotion.

Unfortunately, in typical Japanese companies it’s more quantity based reward than quality. The employee who has been clocking 12 hours or more a day is preferred more over a employee who works till regular working time for a promotion even when the latter does a better job.
 

I can’t remember how many times I got the weird stare from Japanese colleagues for leaving at 17:35 (work timing was 9:00 - 17:30). According to them it’s very natural to do overtime every day. Lucky me , I always used the gaijin card (foreigner card) and got out with no hesitation. In my opinion it’s not exaggerated at all and there’s a reason why there is a special term for them called SALARYMAN.

At the current private school I’m working at, I typically work 12- to 13-hour days, 6 days a week. About 72 to 78 hours a week - and I’m glad it’s not more. Officially my weekly hours are 42.5.

At my last workplace, I was typically working 80+ hour weeks and wishing to die. My day would start at 8AM and often I wouldn’t get home till close to midnight. Once a week my body would “crash” for 13 hours straight when I finally could let it sleep. I got really sick for 5 weeks during my first year there and lost about 7kg, during which I was still turning up to work.

In the education sector, the more you work the more work they give you. And at all the schools I’ve worked at, all overtime hours are construed as “voluntary overtime”. Yes, I’m working “voluntarily” because I like to imagine what living as a slave would feel like. *sarcasm*

This is not a reality only for the Japanese living here. It’s the reality for many, many people living here. Thank you for all the upvotes, kind Quorans. Reading Quora before I go to bed is my one secret pleasures in life.

Today I was feeling especially tired. Woke up, went to work, routines routines blah blah. Suddenly, during the first period of class, I started thinking to myself, “How odd. I feel a bit more freer than usual…” and went to tug at my top. Suddenly I realized I wasn’t wearing a bra underneath. LMAO. I’m going to be crossing my arms all day today. Luckily, being Asian, I’m not amplely endowed there.

I would say to you such culture is growing in Brazil(!). I work in the electronics industry as a technician, and almost all my coworkers do overtime. We work from 8 am to 5:50 pm, Monday to Friday, this is about 45 hours per week, for a monthly salary of U$ 450,00. I follow this strictly and I NEVER do overtime, except if there is a very urgent repair or assembly to be done. I’m not happy with my salary so I’ll not do my best while our bosses travel around the world once a month while I can’t afford to have a living standard better than SURVIVAL. There’s no way for me to quit as there are no jobs in the market now.

Many of my coworkers do overtime to look ‘‘competent”, but in fact, they spend a lot of time doing NOTHING. I prefer the “smart working” approach, being fast and them able to do the job as quickly as possible. Not everything about Brazilian workers is true, they are not lazy, people in the southern and in the major cities are extremely hardworking because they HAVE, some of them have 2 or even 3 jobs because the pay is very low for people without a degree and Brazil is freakin’ expensive for the wages offered. They also usually work in the holidays as I do very often.
 

As far as I know, white collar workers in Brazil are likely to work less than the regular employees. Workers in the public sector earn two or three times more than the same in the private sector, have longer vacations( at least 30 days per year, and every 5 years, 90-day vacations. Private sector workers also have the right to 30 days every year, but in fact many of then will NEVER have it) and many can’t be fired.

So the ONLY logical choice for us is to enter a public contest after studying some ten hours per day for two years at least. That’s why I think working in Japan would be FAR LESS easy and better for most people than in Brazil. It is much better to work in a country which has infrastructure than in a third-world SHITHOLE/SWEATSHOP.

In reality the long hours are actually understated in the West, because they only report recorded overtime. I've lived in Japan for 7 years and seen massive extremes in this behaviour. Most of my friends work 10+ hours of unpaid overtime per week.

 

Some are told by their bosses to clock out then come back to their desk to carry on working so as not to inconvenience the company with having to pay you. Even though most employers here treat their staff like dirt, they have somehow made them think it's like a family where they are all in it for the good of one another. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In big companies it is common to sign a waiver stating that you are willing to work more than the legal limit of overtime (50 hours overtime per month), and while you are usually compensated for this (because there is evidence that you are working overtime) there is no way you will be promoted or sometimes even keep your job if you don't. It's not uncommon to have a prework meeting (that you can't be late for) at 7:30am, then work till 10pm and have to go out for drinks with the boss till last train.

However there is almost never the expectation that foreigners living and working here should have to do the same. I've worked unpaid overtime but it has always felt like a choice in order to help out and be part of the team, or to benefit my students. So basically, it's worse than you can possibly imagine if you're a westerner, but you won't have to do it if you come here.

It’s interesting that you pick up on Japan, even though they’re halfway down the Telegraph’s list. I’ve lived here for 30+ years. Based on that experience I’d say:

The Japanese work long hours. It’s partly about — as Srinivas says below — showing the boss you have “the right attitude.” It’s partly about inefficiency. It’s partly about obsession with detail. It’s partly about bosses who haven’t been trained in how to lessen workloads. It’s partly about putting too many people on the same task.

 

The hours are not nearly as long as they used to be. The instances of death by overwork have scared a lot of companies into setting limits on overtime. Usually this results in lowering REPORTED overtime, which is monitored on a spot basis by the Labor Industry, but not the actual amount of work being done. But working through the night is far less common than it was in the 1980’s. The West loves “only in Japan” stories, and this is one of them.

At the risk (likelihood?) of sounding insensitive, I’m suspicious of some of these karoshi stories. The most famous one involved a girl who lived with her parents, and could have easily quit. I’m not saying she wasn’t abused, just that the story is almost certainly more complicated than it’s become through retelling.

I’d like to close with an only marginally related story. There was a piece in the newspaper a few years ago about a new employee at a fast food joint. He was given the night shift, and when he showed up for work on the first day, the manager told him “I’m going home, good luck.”

The guy had no idea how to make any of the dishes (beef bowls), so he went online to look for pictures of what the food is supposed to look like, and then tried to copy what he saw.

Okay. There are a couple of false notes here, too. There were almost certainly photos on the menu. The guy had definitely eaten something similar before. But the point of the story is this: the guy didn’t quit. He didn’t insist the boss hang around until he’d learned the ropes. He didn’t try to ring up another employee or ask a customer what he’d been served before. Instead he just put his head down, thinking if he just worked hard enough it would all turn out ok. THAT is why the Japanese work such long hours.

When my dad worked in Japan (over 30 years ago), it was expected for all employees to work overtime, so even if my dad had finished all his work for the day he was expected to stay and help the lagging members or just wander around pretending to work. I heard many companies had the same “untold rules”.

My dad hated that, he wanted to have time to spend with his family, so he packed up and left for my moms homeland, built his own company and I grew up having lunch and dinner with my whole family, dad would be home on weekends and we would go out to walks or camping.

I have friends who their fathers (around the same age as my dad) spent so little time with their families, some of them believed they did not have a father until they started school and were told that the guy who came to sleep over time to time was their father.

Things have changed a little bit now, a lot of people in my generation don’t dally around doing nothing because the rest can’t finish their jobs on time, and we are not going to pick up the load of someone else while having the same paycheck.

It also has become easier to change work places, you can quit and go for a different company without being labeled as a quitter or traitor. The laws have changed, and there are more channels to denounce if you are made to work over time.

So thing are slightly better now, the problem is that the people that took the “untold rules” as a normal and necessary thing, are still in the workforce, even worse a lot of them are now managers (many times being incompetent ones), that expect newer generations do the thing they did because “that is how hard work looks like”. Creating a vicious cycle. I haven’t really read it but one of my favorite manga-essayist Keisuke Sawaguchi recently published a manga related to this theme.

Another thing is that a lot of part time workers, since they get paid by the hour, stay in the office longer to raise their paycheck (to be honest I do it sometimes as well).

There are a lot of factors why someone may work long hours, depending on the field of work, some say things are better, my dad says it is not as bad as it used to, but compared to other countries, things still have to improve much much more.

When you read stories of J workers giving in to depression or actually dying from overwork, please think to yourself, “Cui bono?” Often, mass media in Japan are as proud to talk up their own country as they are quick to point out how other countries aren’t as good. This is nothing different from the old Soviet expression, “We’ve got it better.” The newspapers, magazines and talking heads on TV don’t lie, but they don’t always give the most representative examples, either.

I’m more likely to watch a car chase in Japan, filmed from a camera on a helicopter in a large city in the US, than I ever was to watch a car chase in the US. While I don’t have any statistics about how car chases have increased since the 1990s, judging from how many I can watch on J TV, the numbers must have quintupled, or more, in the last 25 years or so. (Obviously, nothing like this is possible.) These car chases are filmed by Americans for American news- who can complain that Japanese media are offering fake news?

The J media take very rightful pride in their country’s many outstanding accomplishments. But when they have the chance to give factual stories that paint their countrymen in just a more sympathetic situation than outsiders (such as these karoshi stories), most editors have little problem putting forward unrepresentative representations. Please watch for the next 6-month TV series that features non-J and compares them either unfairly better than Japanese, or else unfairly worse than Japanese. These series are all the proof these editors need to show how “balanced” and “even” their programs are. But when unrepresentative stories are presented as representative, two wrongs never make a right.

In order to get to the real truth of this question, you’ll need to get to know hundreds (preferably thousands) of white collar workers and ask them how many colleagues they know who are overworking themselves, willingly or not. I’ve yet to make a 4-degree relationship (a friend of a friend of a friend) with anyone like this- you would think from all the impressions we get online that one would somehow, find someone, somewhere, who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone like this. Can you see how these stories can’t be considered representative?-----

It really depends. There are so-called “black companies” that make their employees work insanely long hours. People do commit suicide because of overworking. There`s a famous case of a new employee suicide at Dentsu (a huge famous company). The girl didn`t see any point in living because she was working non-stop literally.

Normal companies strictly observe overtime. But of course, like I`ve said it depends. My company`s employees have to work each second Saturday for 4 hours or more. Everyone else I know never works on Saturday. The majority of people I know leave work at 6–7pm. But some people try to look like they are very busy and end up staying at work until 9–11pm. It`s not because they actually have lots of work, it`s simply them trying to look like they`re busy.

If you consider “hours” => “hours of actual work”, probably yes. if you consider “hours” => “hours spent in the office showing that you are committed even if you are not really productive and because your manager is probably there because of his family’s status and not because he can properly manage and assess a team”, then probably not.

Being the shame-driven culture that it is, the Japanese one places a strong emphasis on always looking irreprensible, flawless, low-key-kind-of-perfect. Their productivity has been more or less stagnant for years, and if you consider the government proclivity for fiddling with data, that means that the situation is probably much worse.

Conversely, the deaths for over-work are seen as some kind of necessary evil to be competitive (albeit it is quite far from the truth) and often passed with some kind of mourning pride across all media, despite often being related to several other factors (stress, pre-existing diseases, alcoholism, etc).

Finally, there is definitely a selection bias: considering that in a lot of so-called “first world” countries people are much more unionised and “soft” when it comes to work/life balance (I personally think that Germans on average excel at this), this type of stories is quite likely to go viral: knowing that some Asian or South American dies in a sweatshop is not as impressive as knowing the same happens for a relatively comfortable Japanese white collar.

It’s true that if you’re a salaryman, that it can be more rigorous. However, although they may put in long hours, from what I know, they piddle their time and nap, or just hang out. I have a computer scientist friend who spent a lot of time in Japan helping them with their developments in computer science (this was way back in the 70s) and he said that they mainly had to stay at work, but they wasted time, too. He advised various Japanese computer companies, and has some funny stories regarding the difference between Canadian/American culture and Japanese.

Their work culture is quite demanding. My daughter attended Kyushu University, and she had a professor who had “lost” a vial of chemicals and could not find it. For three days he searched fervently. On the last day, he jumped from the Chemistry Department’s 4th story and killed himself. They can be very rigid and their culture is intense. It’s the “shame” factor. (In fact, in her dorm room there were metal “nets” outside the windows; when I asked what they were, she nonchalantly said, “They’re suicide nets.”)

It seems that the work-around to overly-long hours (especially when there is not work to do…) is to start your own company. My daughter lives in Japan now and is married to a Japanese man. He is an entrepreneur, he also studied abroad in Europe, and owns his own English Language School. So, he is not subject to long hours, and he can take more time off. He hires additional teachers. My daughter is probably going to open a second English Language school in a different part of their city, and she would take that one over. That would automatically double their salary. (Salaries within Japan being significantly lower than the U.S. or Canada.)

I think that her husband having lived abroad and speaking three languages sets him apart. The same with my (American) daughter who has studied in Japan, and also lived in China, England and Chile. She speaks 5 languages. I think their plan is a good one because it allows them to escape the Japanese work culture that you described.

And you’re correct about the elderly. And about foreigners. It took her over six months to get her spousal visa - they figured the Japanese government didn’t want to grant it and probably were following them to see if they really had a marriage. Eventually, they hired an attorney to get the spousal visa, and just received it, so they are legally married now!

I have been to Japan and it is not for me. I would never fit into the culture there. But if this is where my daughter wants to be, so be it. (She does speak fluent Japanese, too.) But I do think that she and her husband have found a way to not be tethered to the Japanese way, and to have more freedom with their own companies.

20 years ago, not an exaggeration at all. I can’t be sure of the numbers, but you can’t make such a broad generalization today. Some companies have even put policy in place to ensure employees get a little of that work/life balance. Others pay lip service to union rules - so the white collar employees figuratively clock out and keep working.

There other signs here and there. Designated days where they really do insist everybody is gone by a certain hour. Another - they will turn off the air conditioning in the summer and employees will scatter.

Wish I could be specific. The best answer I have is that perhaps for a majority, yes, the long hours are a reality. It really depends on the industry and company culture. From the perspective here - the Japanese think they’ve come a long way. From the West, it still looks pretty bad.

As compared to the United States, more people are exempt rather than non-exempt, and being exempt comes with a few privileges and a whole lot of downsides.

In the US, exempt workers are typically managers, and while they are expected to be at work during the appropriate hours, they are also expected to deal with “crunch time”. Crunch time is when everyone works long and very intense hours to complete a project on time. Crunch time became an issue in 2004 when “EA Widow” pointed out how Electronic Arts kept its programmers in a state of crunch time. In the US, crunch time generally only affects those directly on a project.

In Japan however, work assignments are such that almost everyone of an equivalent status and / or office is either expected to work crunch time hours OR take part in actual crunch time projects (‘everyone working together to get it done’). The fact is, many employers expect this to be the norm, all the time.

A few things to consider though - Japanese sense of fairness means those that can pitch in and help, should pitch in and help, because of a sense of team loyalty (you may need it one day as well). Those that fall into the ‘exempt’ group tend to get the bonuses and at one time, had an expectation of lifetime employment (that dream is dead though).

Because of these expectations, you also sometimes get some workers that spend the hours but do not always do the work as quickly as they might. You might be surprised at how much tea drinking and newspaper reading goes on.

Also, when it comes to overseas Japanese workers that aren’t based in Japan (the ones that will never ‘return’ to Japan), it is often best to avoid the exempt position because you will get assigned crunch time work but never be able to benefit from the ecosystem that requires you to be able to pick up and return to Japan.

Some do but a lot of it is also exaggeration mostly by the English language media. When I lived in the US I also logged in many hours while working at US firms but in America you almost never hear about this because it is “expected” if you want to keep your job.

The work environment in Japan, however far from ideal, has changed a lot these past few years. In my office most have cleared out by 19:30 (7:30 pm) and except for meeting special deadlines few stay after 20:00 (8:00 pm).

Of course this depends upon the industry and company but take note that even in companies with a lot of overtime the pace of work is much less than that of most Western countries. Younger people today will work faster and leave earlier. This is the trend and will be the norm in the not so distant future I believe.

I remember doing business with a Japanese company once. My contact would typically send me a query at 9 am his time, which was early morning for me. I would write to him (at 9 am India time) saying I will revert back with complete details by EoD, which was usually 7:30 pm India time.
 

And though this was already creeping upto 11 pm for him, he would promptly respond back, thank me for the details and promise to come back in two days time. The two days he took was to translate my English answer to Japanses and then translate a response back :-) I was simply amazed by the number of hours this man put in. I haven’t seen any other nationality (including Indians) do that.

An exaggeration although the reported hours used in the Telegraph article are not to be trusted. Some white collar workers in some industries put in very long hours. Whether they are actually working is another question. Anyone who has worked in a white collar will tell you that there is an immense amount of wheel spinning, naval gazing, and just plain diddling around.
 

Blue collar jobs are generally very different. Virtually all the cases of karoshi (death by overwork) are white collar. As an illustration of how poor foreign press coverage, note that on the one hand it continually claims “Japan works some of the longest hours in the world” while at the same time claiming that 40% or so of the jobs in Japan are “part time.”

If so many jobs are “part time” how is it that “Japan” (headlines usually say Japan rather than Japanese) can have such long hours? The answer is that generally foreign correspondents are morons and many have a very strong notion of cultural superiority with respect to the Japanese, what is called cultural racism.
 

Employment in Japan is divided into a number of formal and informal categories. 正社員 or 正規雇用 full regular employment. This is like tenure in American academia, civil service employment, or being in the military. You cannot easily be fired and you have numerous benefits. Very few people in the US enjoy such employment; most are government employees. In Japan perhaps 30% of those employed have this kind of employment both in the government and private sector.

非正規雇用　契約社員　派遣労働 irregular employment, fixed contract employment,　dispatched workers. There are differences among these but for simplicity, I will lump them together. Generally, you don’t get benefits or at least not the benefits of full regular employees. Your hours may be short or long. Your pay can be good or bad. I had a three year contract at 70% of my previous pay plus full benefits. That was quite good but that is not typical either.

part time - what students, housewives, and older people do in large numbers. Hours are short and usually there are no benefits. Most employment in the US is like my second category. It can be good, it can be bad, but you don’t have the near absolute employment guarantee that regular workers in Japan have. Blue chip companies in the US including Microsoft regularly dump large numbers of workers at short notice. You can’t get away with that in Japan in the case of regular employees.

Almost all companies in japan are black companies wherein many workers commit suicide due to job fatigue.They are overworked.Just like my 23year old daughter who works from 10to 7 but overtimes until 10　and for those long hours of work she became depressed wanted to die and became sick.Her breaktime for long hours of work was 10minutes only so she wasn't able to eat lunch and dinner .She sleeps for 4 hours then go to work again so we decided to let her stop working in that real estate company.

Not really you have to remember that most of these countries are logging in their over time. That is not something most Japanese workers do. You got people here going on 15 to 20 hrs or more unpaid overtime a week. I think Koreans are more extreme sometimes they go to work on National holidays. That's less likely in Japan.

But don't mistake long work for hard work, that's the real exaggeration. Outside of the food industry expect slow as mud work pace. I know of a business owner who employs a variety of internationals and wishes he could fire his Japanese workers. Often complaining that they can't finish projects on time and often beg him for overtime.

Before I open my own company, I use to work for a japanese company. Have rarely worked under 12 hours a day.

It's not as bad for government work which my dad does but for non-global Japanese company it's not a exaggeration. Karoshi (death from overworking long hours) is not a joke in Japan and it's a serious issue that the government is currently trying to fix. I hope the Japanese work situation becomes better.

If you wanna understand what's like to work as a software engineer in Japan, watch the first 10 minutes of the anime Death March. That's why I never wanna work as a software engineer in Japan…

It's a reality in most traditional Japanese companies. Foreign companies are lax and prioritize work-life balance. Long hours is quite common in Japan and it's not uncommon to see people going home at the last train which is mostly around 12am. But in recent years, Japan already made reforms with regards to overtime and started regualating the number of hours a person can work in a month. But still some companies still don't follow it, especially traditional ones.

Its not common knowledge but on an average basis, Americans work longer hours per month than Japanese. Some companies are famous for 80-100 hour overtime months but they are the exception. Although many Japanese will spend hours at the desk, often they are not actually doing very much, have to look busy or are waiting for the boss to go home. Working hard and working smart are two different things in Japan.

What a lot of people don’t realize is the Japanese work day starts later,  typically 9 or 10AM. In the US it’s common to start working from 8AM or  earlier (Especially on the west coast). Honestly, the average Japanese office person works about 10AM-7PM with an  hour lunch break.

There are industries with much tougher hours, but that’s the same in the  US. I can’t speak for Europe but from what I hear from a lot of Europeans  (especially French and Italian) they work a lot less.

Maybe 50–60 hours a week on average? I don’t think it’s much different  from America in my experience working in NYC, SF and Tokyo. As a headhunter we meet people after the work day is over. It’s not  uncommon for us to have meetings as early as 6PM or 7PM.

Long but not hard. A sort of half-staff, sleepy limpitude. It looks busy but they are partly faking it. Imagine grandma was on uppers and did every job. Probably done well, but sort of amazingly softly despite the hubbub.-

Yes, it is extremely exaggerated. The average working hours in Japan is actually lower than the average in OECD countries. According to the following statistics, the average yearly working hours in Japan is just 1,710 hours, below the OECD average of 1,746 hours.

So why then do Westerners insist that Japanese work too long? The answer is they only talk about men. The average working hours of Japanese men are much higher than that of Japanese women and is actually one of the longest among the OECD countries. Only men in South Korea and Mexico work as hard as Japanese men, while the working hours of Japanese women are among one of the shortest, if not the shortest, among the OECD countries.

Even if one gender works crazily hard if the opposite gender which consists of the half of the entire population doesn’t work and treat the other gender as ATM, the overall working hours suddenly shrink to below the average. But because Westerners are extremely creepy sexist and relentlessly defend women with their bigoted feminist ideology, they could never portrait women in a way that could possibly lead to criticism, and that’s why they insist it is a problem of the entire Japanese, instead of Japanese men.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the OECD resource by gender and country (which there should be, because I found), but according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the average working hours of men and women are 1,921 and 1,574 (in 2009).

https://www.quora.com/Are-long-work-hours-in-Japan-an-exaggeration-by-the-West-or-a-reality-for-Japanese  
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It figures prominently in one of the most famous movie scenes in the world, the sun reflecting off its rows of headstones as Clint Eastwood tersely stared down his companions in a final showdown. But while The Good, The Bad and The Ugly went on to become one of the world’s best-known westerns and turned Eastwood into a major film star, the set of the fictitious Sad Hill cemetery, located in northern Spain, did not fare as well.

Measuring 300 metres in diameter and featuring more than 5,000 grave markers, the cemetery was specially built for the famous denouement of the film by several hundred Spanish soldiers. Now overgrown with weeds and shrubs, the set of the cemetery in the province of Burgos, 140 miles north of Madrid, was abandoned after its stint as a backdrop in the film.
 

“It’s been a bit forgotten over the past 50 years,” said David Alba. “Many people drive right by it without knowing that this is where parts of the film was shot.” Alba is one of the volunteers behind the Sad Hill Cultural Association, dedicated to restoring the glory of the cemetery in preparation for next year’s 50th anniversary of the film.

 

Since October, he and dozens of others from across northern Spain have been spending their weekends at Sad Hill, shovels and hoes in hand, pulling out weeds and uncovering stones in a bid to make the cemetery appear just as it did 50 years ago.

“It’s a long and hard clean-up project,” said Alba. “It’s a huge site.” Its restoration has become a labour of love for the film’s fans. Alba, 34, was introduced to westerns by his grandfather, who had a particular fondness for what he called “the guys in blankets”, in reference to the ponchos worn in spaghetti westerns.

Alba later moved to the small town of Hontoria del Pinar, in the province of Burgos. To his delight, he said: “I found out that this film I loved so much was filmed just 30 km from my house.” His hope is that by restoring the cemetery, as well as another nearby site used as a prison camp in the film, both could one day become tourist attractions for the area.

The project is funded by donations, including through a crowd funding campaign that offers fans the chance to sponsor a grave marker in the cemetery. The initiative is one of many being planned by local associations in Burgos to mark next year’s 50th anniversary of Sergio Leone’s film.

Along with the planned talks, short film competitions and conferences exploring the genre, those behind the Sad Hill Cultural Association have bigger plans for the cemetery once the restoration is complete – they want the 85-year-old Eastwood to visit the site of his famous shootout. “We sent a letter to his producer,” said Alba. “It would be a nice homage to this land where he grew as an actor and filmed what has become an icon of the western film genre.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/29/clint-eastwood-sad-hill-cemetery-good-bad-ugly
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After more than 50 years, several fistfuls of euros and countless wheelbarrow journeys, one of the most famous graveyards in cinema history has been rescued from oblivion and is to be honoured in a new documentary.

Sad Hill cemetery is the setting for the climax of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, when Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach face off against each other to the strains of Ennio Morricone. Having dispatched the Bad and left the Ugly defenceless and furious, the Good lays out his simple credo: “You see, in this world, there’s two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”

Inspired by Eastwood’s words, a group of film fans spent two years restoring the cemetery to its former glories. The set, which was built by soldiers in the northern Spanish province of Burgos for Sergio Leone’s classic 1966 spaghetti western, had been forgotten and reclaimed by nature until the Sad Hill Cultural Association stepped in.

With the help of crowdfunding and volunteers from France, Germany, Turkey, Italy and the US, its members slowly, and backbreakingly, cleared the site to reveal the famous stone circle and its hidden graves. Their quixotic labours have been recorded in Sad Hill Unearthed, a documentary by the Spanish film-maker and cinema fanatic Guillermo de Oliveira. When a friend told him about the association’s idea, Oliveira felt a familiar pull.

“I love visiting the places where films were shot,” he said. “I’ve visited the dam where the beginning of Goldeneye was filmed, the sets for Star Wars in Tunisia, the cliff that Thelma and Louise drive off at the end of the film, and the Los Angeles restaurant from Heat.”

Although he hadn’t originally planned to shoot a documentary, Oliveira was moved by the volunteers’ dedication and perseverance. “I was just struck by the beautiful notion of fans of the film wanting to bring it back to the way it was … It may have been a beautifully crazy idea, but it was still a crazy one. It was a dream.”

He was also taken with their ingenious, if morbid, crowdfunding strategy for restoring the graveyard’s 5,000 wooden crosses: for €15, anyone, anywhere can have their name, nickname or initials inscribed on a cross. “That’s its unique selling point,” he said. “It’s the only cemetery in the world where you can visit your own grave.”

 

Oliveira and his camera followed the volunteers as they used hoes, spades and wheelbarrows to clear the site in preparation for a special screening at the site last July to mark the 50th anniversary of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

He and his team also interviewed Morricone and famous fans of the film, including the Gremlins director Joe Dante and James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica. One particular interviewee proved elusive. But after 10 months of phone calls, emails and faxes, the film-makers finally got to Eastwood himself.

The veteran actor and director sent a message of thanks to all those who had worked to recover Sad Hill. Just before the film was screened at the site last year, Oliveira played the audience Eastwood’s video. “He suddenly appeared on the screen to say thanks and some people started crying,” said Oliveira. “It was a very emotional moment.”

David Alba, one of the local volunteers, said that when Eastwood’s message was played “no one was really taking in what he was saying because we were so surprised. I had to watch it afterwards to find out what he actually said.”

Today Sad Hill is a popular draw and a boon to the local economy, said Alba, 36, who owns a bar named in Leone’s honour. Oliveira has finished his documentary and is now trying to raise the money to pay for the rights to the clips and music it uses so he can show the film at festivals.

He said the film is both a testament to the enduring appeal of Leone’s masterpiece and an attempt to explain the motivations of the many people who laboured to bring a dilapidated film set back from the dead. “There’s something almost religious about all this. Why would someone who’s been working all week spend eight hours in a cemetery at the weekend for nothing in return? It’s altruism in its purest form.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/22/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-graveyard-back-from-the-dead 
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Socrates was a whimsical wizard, a man who had many a bizarre habits. But, unfortunately we have little data about him that offer us a minuscule peep into this life, events and death. With the help of writings from various sources, we have collected a few interesting info and compiled these to form our article about the top 15 little known facts about Socrates. We do hope this article helps you all in knowing this philosopher better.

Socrates belonged to a humble family - There are a few pieces of info available on Socrates biography, but not many will know that this great philosopher was born in a not so affluent, rather a humble family. It was in the city of Athens in 470 BC that Socrates took birth in a family comprising of Sophroniscus, the father, and Phaenarete, the mother. The family’s breadwinner was Sophroniscus who worked as a stone mason and sculptor for a living.

Socrates’s mother too worked as a midwife. Not much information is available that offer deep insight into his early life. However, its quite evident that in the 4th century BC, Athens was the cradle of civilization and many classic masterpieces were created in the fields of literature and philosophy. Socrates was educated in masonry as well as basic Greek education, just like the other commoners.

Socrates and his various professions - Pieces on Socrates biography often mention about this philosopher working as a tutor to various influential students that included Plato and Alexander, but often these won’t write about him working as a mason in his early life. Yes, that’s quite true as Socrates worked as a mason before taking up philosophy as his full time profession.

Since he was born in a family where his father worked as a mason, the young Socrates too took to this profession and worked alongside his father. He also did sculpturing and this continued for many years. From the records maintained by Aristophanes, Socrates became a tutor of philosophy and took money in return for his services. However, Socrates did so as he had no other means of earnings.

Socrates was grossly ugly -  Among the many facts about Socrates that offer us some understanding of this philosopher’s life is the one about his physical appearance. Socrates, by no standard was handsome. In ancient Greece, a man’s handsomeness was judged by the way his body measured in terms of his height, and the way his facial contours appeared. Unlike well chiseled cheeks, sharp nose and fine mouth, Socrates was bestowed with every feature that made him appear rather ugly.

He looked more like a woodland god called a satyr. His hair was long while a part of his crown was bald, and had bulging eyes that made him look funny. The nose was flat and quite spread out with nostrils that flared. His lips were not by any means smooth and fine. It looked more like a fleshy mound. Unlike the ancient Greek sculptures of gods that depicted handsomeness from every angle, Socrates was a contradiction to the ancient perception of beauty.

Socrates was not a very hygienic man - There is one little secret about Socrates not many books or records will tell you. Socrates, unlike other philosophers and thinkers, was not exactly hygienic. One could always spot this great thinker in a market place chit chatting with strangers-both men and women, wearing no sandals or shoes. He walked barefoot always for each and every type of occasion.

If listening to this wasn’t enough for your ears (lol!!), there is yet another habit of Socrates that spoke of how unhygienic this master philosopher was in life. For delivering lectures or for other events, Socrates always went without bathing. He always had a stick with him everywhere he went. His hair was long like most Spartans of that time and he often wore long and loose robes to work (he would wear the same clothes for his work that he wore for his bedtime)..yikes!!

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Socrates thought quite highly of women, both local as well as foreign. There are a few written records that go on to prove that this great philosopher thought women were as equal to men provided they knew to use their minds. The master philosopher, it seems was taught by various women teacher in the fields of erotic and rhetoric. These women went by the names of Aspasia and Diotima. Mankind has gotten hands on such amazing information, courtesy – Plato’s Menexenus and Symposium.

https://www.historyly.com/historical-figures/15-little-known-facts-about-socrates/
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Pronghorn can sustain blazing speeds for miles, and in a distance run would easily beat a cheetah without breaking a sweat. Pronghorn can reach top speeds of around 55 mph and can run at a steady clip of 30 mph for over 20 miles! The fastest animal in the world is of course the cheetah. This animal is actually only slightly faster than the pronghorn antelope, and can reach speeds of up to 61 miles per hour.

The years between 1950 and 1960 were difficult for the great Hollywood film industry. A sentence of the Supreme Court of the United States decreed the end of the studios' productive and distributive oligopoly and, at the same time, TV began to  become very popular.

The significant drop in films produced  created problems for the programming of many movie theaters, which had also been seeing the number of spectators go down. The cinema crisis touched all genres, including western that, for decades, had represented the most popular soul of the offers on large screens. But the story had not come to terms with a director destined to enter the celluloid world as a protagonist: Sergio Leone.

An icon of Italian cinema, and even more than that, whom we want to remember in the thirtieth anniversary of his death.  Leone was born in Rome on the 3rd of January 1929, son of Roberto Roberti (né Vincenzo Leone), director and actor from Torella dei Lombardi (Avellino), and Bice Waleran, a Roman actress of Milanese origins. Of course, Sergio’s first steps in the world of employment took place within the cinema industry: he  was a seminarist in the cult Italian Neorealism movie Bicycle Thieves,  by Vittorio de Sica. 

Sergio understood immediately that acting wasn’t his thing, so he began working behind the camera, as an assistant director in Hollywood’s Quo Vadis and Ben Hur, both shot in Cinecittà. But the occasion of a lifetime came in the shape of an illness. 

In 1959, director Mario Bonnard was forced to abandon the set of The Last Days of Pompeii, leaving his chair to Leone, who had worked on the screenplay for the movie. This was the  golden era of the sword-and-sandal genre (historical movies in costumes), but Leone officially debuted as a director with The Colossus of Rhodes, a flick he managed to produce with a very low budget while keeping intact all the spectacularity typical of Hollywood’s historical movies. 

Sergio Leone left us 30 years ago, on the 30th of April 1989 - Once the genre ran its course, Sergio invested it all in westerns, creating his very own particular  sub-genre: spaghetti-western. 

For a Fistful of Dollars (1964), one of the most famous in the history of the genre, costed him a plagiarism lawsuit from Akira Kurosawa, who won in court because, indeed, the movie’s plot mirrored that of his 1954’s Seven Samurai.  

Despite the legal issues, the movie represented a turning point in cinematic trends, bringing back a style made famous by John Ford and John Wayne and transforming Clint Eastwood, at that time a second-tier barely known actor, into a movie star.

The relationship between Leone and Eastwood was often volatile, which led to some memorable fights in later movies, fights Leone recalled with fondness after one last diatribe sent them two different ways. Very famous the anecdote according to which Eastwood asked to the director if his character could stop smoking cigars, and received a “ Are you joking? The cigar is the protagonist!” as an answer. 

Sergio Leone directed For a Fistful of Dollars with a pseudonym, Bob Robertson (an homage to his father’s screen name), and produced it with a very low budget, shooting many scenes in the Spanish desert of Tabernas. The following two movies, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), completed the Dollars Trilogy and benefited from the wonderful soundtracks created by Ennio Morricone, composer who was to work with Leone in all of his movies, up to his last, Once Upon a Time in America, in 1984.

Only six movies among the over 500 he wrote music for, but they were fundamental to  open the  doors of Hollywood — and of the history of American and world cinema — to him, even though Morricone got his first Oscar for his career, and received one for an actual soundtrack only in 2016, with his work for Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight: a western again, coincidentally. 

A younger Sergio Leone: he started his career as a director in 1961 -  In 1967 Leone, who was by then a Hollywood star, directed Once Upon a Time in the West, a movie that failed to achieve in the US the success he hoped for, even though it is today considered a classic of the genre.

Winner of a David di Donatello in 1972 and 1984, and of the Nastro d’Argento in 1985, Leone never managed to crown his career with an Oscar, in spite of being a true icon of world cinema. Highly requested in all the Hollywood circles that  counted, in 1969 was invited by Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski,  to the  party where she  and her  guests found a gruesome death, miraculously avoiding the Charles Manson’s gang massacre. Leone didn’t go because he felt unsure about his English. 

Now a Hollywood legend, in 1984 he gave to his public Once Upon a Time in America, an epic parable that drew anew the very imaginary of American cinema, deconstructing its cinematographic dimension

Two years later, he directed Duck! You Sucker, with James Coburn and Rod Steiger, then he wrote several screenplays, and was behind the camera again for parts of My Name is Nobody, a movie officially directed by Tonino Valeri, that was to make Terence Hill a star.

He collaborated with Damiano Damiani for A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe. With his production company, Rafran, he then produced The Cat (1977) by Luigi Comencini and A Dangerous Toy (1979), by Giuliano Montaldo. In the early 1980s, Leone also produced two Carlo Verdone’s movies, Fun is  Beautiful (1980) and Bianco Rosso e Verdone (1981). 

Now a Hollywood legend, in 1984 he gave to his public Once Upon a Time in America, an epic parable that drew anew the very imaginary of American cinema, deconstructing its cinematographic dimension. At the beginning of 1989, he founded his own production company, Leone Film Group,  without having time to see it grow. 

When he passed, on the 30th of April 1989 because of a heart attack, Leone was working to The  900 Days, dedicated to the siege of Leningrad, during the Second World War,  for which he had already secured a 100 million dollars budget and Robert De Niro as main actor. One last, unaccomplished project was yet another western, set against the historical backdrop of the American Civil War. 

https://italoamericano.org/story/2019-5-20/sergio-leone
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All those who have experienced the honor and the adventure of meeting him, said that his English was, actually, its own English. For the first ten minutes, the largest U.S. producers looked at him and thought how strange was the accent of that Italian man from Rome who wanted to reinvent cinema. They stared at him, then at his eyes, listening to his story carved into the American myth in a time either ancient and new. And, kidnapped by his stories, they opened their doors to his visionary passion, its sharp images and to the camera of Sergio Leone.

Born in Rome on January 3, 1929, in only seven films the director transforms the language of the movies, rewriting a model which will inspire directors of every age and gender. After working as a second unit director on several among which “Ben Hur”, winner of 11 Academy Awards, Sergio Leone debuts as a director in 1961 with the film “Il Colosso di Rodi” (The Colossus of Rhodes), spectacular film made with a low budget thanks to the extraordinary experience acquired by the director in his previous years.

It will be his famous “Dollars trilogy” to allow him to be recognized as one of the most acclaimed directors of those years. Between 1964 and 1966 the master will do, consecutively, “Per un pugno di dollari” (A fistful of dollars), “Per qualche dollaro in più”(For a few dollars more) and “Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo” (The Good, the bad and the ugly).

The protagonist of the films is his first big new idea born in Leone’s mind: the man with no name, central character in the trilogy, undermines all the canons of classic American westerns. The hero without fear is replaced by a smart man, who knows how to play dirty, with great skills as a gunman but also a deep, realistic moral ambiguity. Clint Eastwood, until then a simple television actor, will be the actor who will give a face to this character. Sergio Leone choose Eastwood after evaluating as many as 11 actors for the role. He will later say, ironically: "I like Clint Eastwood because he is an actor who has only two expressions: one with the hat and one without it".

With three films, Sergio Leone invents a genre, which will later on be given the name of spaghetti westerns, which will inspire filmmakers from all over the world for its technical innovations, the artistic originality of the direction, the ability to reinterpret such a dear style to America.

Sergio Leone literally invents from nowhere new cinematic elements, far from the classical theory of the genre: the famous rhythm alternating very slow actions to extremely sudden ones, the faces of the common characters idealized in the realist narrative of the epic West; then the music composed by Ennio Morricone, now entered in the collective imagination of western. But the most famous is the so-called "primo primissimo piano” (extreme foreground)": the shooting where the actor's eyes fill the film, in a long and decided cut, slow and real. Quentin Tarantino calls it the "Leone’s framing". He himself will admit to have shouted several times to technicians, during the shooting of his movies "Give me a Leone!"

In 1967 Sergio Leone shoots what to him had to be the last page of his history of the West: “C’era una volta il west” (Once Upon a Time in the West), narrating the end of the American epic. Leone chooses a woman to represent the end of the battles, a woman who in the film brings the water to the cowboy, metaphor of a love that breaks the violent fascination of the West. “Giù la testa”(A fistful of dynamite), in 1971, will be his most thoughtful film, closer to the political issues of those years. For several years, Leone will continue to write screenplays and produce Carlo Verdone films.

In 1984 Sergio Leone signs his last great masterpiece. After a very long engagement on the screenplay, which lasted about 13 years, Leone includes all his cinema in “C’era una volta in America” (Once Upon a Time in America). The story of "Noodles" Aronson, starring Robert De Niro, goes through forty years of American history, following the life of the protagonist, of the United States, of those times (from the 20’s to the 60’s). It is a movie about the lack, the nostalgia for ages and values. A story of violence and redemption, morality and ambiguity, of love and betrayal. In the scenes where Noodles - violent gangster and lover - is a child, flows the adventure of a man who would have lived all his life in the still picture of his childhood.

Sergio Leone dies on April 30, 1989, leaving a new, different, rethought cinema. Quentin Tarantino will define him "the first post-modern director of history". 25 years after his death, the great director is remembered for having created myths, out of nowhere. Myth as "the most beautiful form of entertainment” as he liked to say. Its characters, its atmosphere, the movements of his camera have never left the modern film language.

https://www.wetheitalians.com/web-magazine/great-italians-past-sergio-leone 
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In the life cycle of the Tarot, the Fool is the start of the story. He represents our childlike selves or the beginning of a cycle. The Fool is often depicted as a young person, with a knapsack in hand who is going places. And what will be the final destination? No one knows, but it does not matter. For the Fool, the lesson is in the movement, in the adventure of Chance. The Fool often shows up in a reading as a reminder that we are taking life too seriously.

The Fool represents our childlike selves. The person we were before we understood that life can be burdened with an inordinate amount of responsibility. He tells us to break the routine, to try something new even if an experience ends up not turning out exactly the way that we thought it would.

Bringing in new adventures and experiences builds character, and too often as a part of the human condition, we get stuck in the monotony of our lives and routines, afraid to ever make a change.

The Fool tells us that it is healthy to break a routine now and again. How else can we gain perspective and appreciation for the life that we have created for ourselves? Embrace spontaneity to find the truth. Shake things up. Express yourself. Do not be callous or cruel, but make changes and give in to laughter. The possibilities are endless, be joyous now. 

When this card shows up in your reading, consider yourself invincible. There is a step or choice that needs to be made that will propel you forward to the next stage of your development.

You cannot and should not ignore this message. Look for opportunities that sprout up around you to do something that you hadn’t considered before, and then consider it. With the Fool, you are encouraged to throw your fear aside.

Here you will find understanding of all of the cycles of life, that death and birth will come and you no longer have to be afraid of what you do not know.

Here in this adventure, you are invincible. The Eternal optimist, the Fool is lucky because he knows no other way of being. He symbolizes unmitigated joy and he floats from experience to experience.

The Fool is honest and hardworking and explains that being forthright is the key to releasing us from our constraints of stunted secrecy. Now is the time to make a choice, to lay out your goals and begin accomplishing them.

He promises clarity at the end of the movement because no matter what happens when you put change into motion, change is what you will find. If you can find the joy in the change, then you will find happiness.

The Fool In Love  Often we hear the saying, ‘Only fools give in’ or, ‘foolishly in love.’ These sayings are designed to express a level of care-free behavior that has at times been knocked down in today’s skeptical society. There is an overall sentiment that foolish means stupid and that you should always be in control.

But this is not so always in life. Responsibility and foolishness both have their place in the cycle of your life. If you ignore the fool within, the romantic, the jester then you might become only a shell of yourself and your existence can feel pointless.

Open yourself up to the endless possibility that this card signifies. Whilst pursuing counsel through the tarot about love and relationships the Fool says to tear down the walls that surround your heart and have some fun with the wild and ecstatic energy of love.

Now is an excellent time to pursue new love, to feel silly with someone or just to fall unconditionally in love with you. Embrace your inner fool and trust that falling into this phase is the point. If you get some cuts and bruises, brush yourself off and try again. When you feel fear, remember that you are never alone.

Doubt is no more than indecision taking up residence in your heart. Make a decision, any decision and you will become free of the chains that bind you. You are blessed in the phase of the Fool.   
https://www.auntyflo.com/tarot/fool