What does it mean to "not devote your life to your work"? #01 - Part 2 -
~A detour talk between two people working in Kamiyama~

One day, Nishimura Yoshitetsu approached Manabe (Manager of the Kamiyama Food Hub Project ^*1 and Director of Monosus), who also works in Kamiyama Town, Tokushima Prefecture, saying, "There's something I'd like to ask you." This is the second part of the conversation that began.

In the first part , we discussed "What does the 'social' mean in Food Hub's 'social agriculture'?" and then went on to talk about "not dedicating your life to your work," as mentioned by Mukaiyachi Ikuyoshi of Bethel House.
In the second part, we will share what the two people working in Kamiyama have begun to think about, centering on the question, "If we don't devote our lives to our work, what should support us in our work?" (Interview structure: Nakaniwa Yoshiko)

*1 Kamiyama Food Hub Project: A project to connect Kamiyama agriculture to the next generation, initiated by a working group in Kamiyama and jointly launched by the Kamiyama Town Office, Kamiyama Tsunagu Corporation, and Monosus Co., Ltd.

What is the energy that supports us in our efforts at work?

Mr. Nishimura (hereafter referred to as "honorific titles omitted")
Both Manabe and I work quite hard, but we need energy to sustain our hard work, and I feel that if we try to get that energy from the work itself or the reactions we get from it, we might end up with some kind of misunderstanding.
So where do you get your energy, Manabe-san? That's what I wanted to talk about.

Manabe (left) and Yoshiaki Nishimura (right)

Manabe : In that sense, I think we may not have been able to do it.
I think I'm doing well in some areas, and it might sound like a nice thing to say, but Monosus' executives told me, "Basically, Taichi Manabe's job is to make things that are going well even better." When there's trouble, I don't run away, but I'm not good at it.

Aren't there many social enterprises and social ventures that are active in turning negative things into positive things? I'm not very good at that.
Making positive things even more positive gives you energy and motivation, and makes it easier to do, so in that sense it's a bit unfair that you chose the context of "food."

I have the feeling that Nishimura is being unfair.

Manabe : Yes, there is. After all, we eat every day, and if it's delicious, most people will be happy. And if it's good for your body, it's good for everyone. In a way, it's like creating another option, or creating a just cause, in a context where negative elements are eliminated as much as possible, so there's no sense of it draining your energy.

Nishimura : I see.

Manabe : Thinking about it, I may have avoided negative things intuitively in order to focus on what I'm good at. However, society cannot function on its own, and although I understand that there are people who solve the negative aspects of society, I don't feel motivated by that, or I don't think I'm good at it. That may be why I'm keeping my distance from social ventures and the like.

Nishimura says his strength is not turning negative things into positives, but making positive things even more positive.

I think it's Manabe . In that sense, I don't really feel like my energy is being taken away.

Nishimura: It feels like a cycle.

Manabe: I feel like I get something back from doing it . But I also feel like it's decreasing.

Of course, the time when it takes the most is when things aren't going well internally. Even though the objectives we're trying to achieve are the same, doing it internally is extremely difficult. It's fine to use energy on things that make you exhausted, but it takes away from you. The amount of energy taken is so great that it can't be replenished just by customers telling me that it's delicious...
However, once things start going well, the things that are taken away from you come back to you in a big way, so you can endure it because you know that. That's the flip side of the fun of working as a team.

At Nishimura Junior High School, we depend on each other. Both the staff and the management depend on each other, so it can be tiring.

Manabe Nishimura-san said it well, "I don't get tired of the social aspect, but when I become a company, it takes a lot of energy." The current phase is one in which that energy is taken.

Nishimura: When circulation occurs, it functions like a single living organism, but that's a different story.
I thought for sure that you were trying to be conscious of not getting energy from the work itself, so I asked you about it, but it doesn't seem that's the case. It seems that you get energy from the joy of the work itself, from making others happy, and things like that.

Manabe :That's right. There was a period when that wasn't the case. When I was working at the advertising agency, I always tried to avoid getting joy from my work, or at least I felt that I couldn't continue unless I changed so that I could get joy from it.

Monosus says, "Work with people you want to live with," which is a bit of a hassle. At a certain point, I decided to only work with people who I thought, "I want to live with these people," and now, for better or worse, I've surrounded myself with people who I think of as family. Including the Monosus members, the American members, the chefs, and the Kamiyama members.
In that sense, I'm very grateful that I've been able to field opponents that don't take my energy, and that's how things have worked out up until now. When that's no longer the case, things will change.

Not from your personal life, not from work, so where do you start?

Manabe: Today, when I was listening to the talk about "not putting your life on the line at work," I thought, work is a public thing and life is a personal thing. So, I took it to mean that if you put your personal life on your work, it's going to cause problems for your work.

Nishimura : (laughs)

Manabe:Right now I'm in a good condition, and the Food Hub's activities are going well. But if my life were to go in a bad direction, I thought that if I tried to put my life into my work, it would be a huge nuisance.

Nishimura: Is work a nuisance? Or is it more like the company is a nuisance?

Manabe: I thought the work itself, the activity itself, would be a nuisance. After all, work should be something that is somewhat separate from yourself, right? Work is work, right? That's what you should think, for better or worse. That feeling is actually important, and if you get too attached to personal feelings, in a way, work stops being work.

Nishimura: It becomes like a projection of yourself, and it doesn't become something public.

Manabe: That's right. In that sense, I can understand the idea of "not dedicating your life to your work." Of course, I do feel that work is a nuisance.

I think that nuance is also contained in what Nishimura Mukaiyachi said.
Mukaiyachi's story is, how should I put it, for example, he used to work in a hospital, and a lot of emergency patients were rushed in. Then, from doctors to nurses and other specialists, everyone was desperately trying to deal with the emergency outpatients, and Mukaiyachi was also involved as a social worker.

And they managed to survive. After finishing their work, they would go back to their room, smoke a cigarette, and feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, like "We did it today," but in the hallway, their families were crying bitterly about what had happened. Seeing this situation, he said that he had decided at that time to have "sense of reason" that would not allow him to feel this kind of satisfaction or accomplishment.

I think Mukaiyachi's distinction between "work and yourself" is brilliant. For example, when a person with schizophrenia comes to me and says, "I set fire to a building," I rephrase it a little to, "Oh, so an arson phenomenon occurred." When the person is in the middle of it, talking about a situation where the event and the personality are all mixed up, by rephrasing it as "a phenomenon occurred," I'm trying to stand on the outside together and create objectivity.

I think this is the basic structure of the "stakeholder ^research " that Bethel House has been conducting, but it's the same as the middle ^voice story, where "I" and his "actions" are integrated, and where something like "subject" and "will" are separated to give freedom to Mukaiyachi. I think it's interesting that so many people around him are becoming free.

Umm. What did you want to say? Mukaiyachi-san also said, "Don't integrate yourself with your work," and I thought that was very careful.

*2 Participant research: A rehabilitation program or self-help tool that began at Bethel Home, aimed at people with mental illnesses and their families. By talking about their own struggles or making them the subject of research, people can "externalize" their problems, view them objectively, and encourage a common understanding among peers and caregivers.

*3 Middle voice: Currently, we are accustomed to classifying actions into "active (doing)" and "passive (being done)," but in the past, Indo-European languages such as classical Greek were classified into "active (internal)" and "middle voice (external)." While the "active voice" and "passive voice" determine the subject of an action and question the "will" of the actor, the "middle voice" does not foreground the "will" of the subject and is used in a way that describes a kind of event.
(Reference: Koichi Kokubun, The World of the Middle Voice: Archaeology of Will and Responsibility, Igaku-Shoin, 2017)

I guess it's because of Manabe that he can continue. It's hard work and it takes a lot of energy, but he separates it. He manages it well.

Nishimura Manabe-san is also working really hard. Even from the outside. So is everyone at Food Hub. I want to go and ask them one by one. Manabe-san is especially in the spotlight, he's always on the front lines and he's always in the middle of the staff, so it takes a lot of energy, so I wonder how he manages to get that energy?

Manabe : I think we're not managing things well after all. I think we need to make up for it. There's also the issue of how to take time off.

Nishimura : Are you saying that we should have energy in our private lives?

ManabeHmm ... I don't think it's the same as that.

Nishimura : What we do is a little different from what is called a social venture or a social enterprise, but we are definitely doing social work, and I wanted to talk about how we are able to be self-sufficient in the energy we use for this kind of work. But it seems we are not self-sufficient.

Manabe: I guess that means it hasn't been done yet.

Nishimura : Well, for example, if someone who is not satisfied with their work talks with glee about how fulfilled they are in their private life, I wonder, "Is that really okay?" I can understand and imagine that it's hard to overlap work with yourself, or that there are structural problems with work itself, but that doesn't mean that you should just enrich your private life and get energy from it. That being said, if you only get it from the reaction you get from the work itself, it's easy to make mistakes.
So where can I get it? That's what I wanted to talk about.

Manabe: I feel like I've just finished thinking about it, so can I speak properly again?

Nishimura : Well, maybe some other time. (laughs) That's all for today.