Furuta Akira
If your boss won’t ever let you go home
Business owner | 13 January 1906 – 30 October 1973

We all have our reasons for drinking.

There are some who are faint of heart, so they drink like whales just to hide their embarrassment or shyness. You’ll often hear people describing these individuals using words like, “He’s a great guy so as long as he doesn’t drink.” But for the person in question, it could be that it feels like they’re incapable of doing anything unless they drink. Or they might find it troublesome that anyone should ever think of them as a “great guy” to begin with. They just can’t take it without a drink.

But although one might feel that they “can’t take it” without liquor, it’s quite the challenge to drink during the daytime if you happen to be an office worker. Or even if you’re not an office worker, but a popular actor perhaps. If you don’t even have enough time to sleep, you might not have time to drink either.

That is what I used to think until just a while ago. But now when even a Johnny’s Entertainment pop idol—someone who was constantly busy with everything from doing renowned TV music shows to planting rice—could be forced to retire due to getting drunk off his face, it proves that no matter how busy you are, anyone who wants to drink will always find a way to do so.

Continue reading →

Yonai Mitsumasa
If your boss won’t let you go home
Politician | 2 March 1880 – 20 April 1948

You don’t get to choose your parents, and you don’t get to choose your boss.

For the average office worker, dealing with their superior remains an eternal challenge. There’s the type of boss who is generally difficult to approach, but when they drink, they suddenly become outspoken to the point where they don’t even notice from all their babbling how the other party wants to go home already. But then there’s also the type of boss who remains silent, even when they’re drunk.

The former type of boss—while annoying—at least feels familiar in a way. But the latter? Honestly, bosses like that are just scary. You have no idea what they’re thinking to begin with, and now that feeling of “who even is this guy?” is only amplified.

Among all the great men of history, too, there are some whose expressions did not change even when they were drinking. You could never tell what was on their mind. Yonai Mitsumasa, Navy Admiral and once Prime Minister, is a good example.

Continue reading →

Kuroda Kiyotaka
If your boss accidentally fires a cannon
Politician | 9 November 1840 – 23 August 1900

People who become annoying when they are drunk. Surely you, the reader, know one or two individuals who would fit that description.

There’s drunks like me: guys that are usually quiet who suddenly get all jovial, guzzling down booze by themselves like it was water until suddenly you notice they’ve passed out.

But then you also have the guys who can get surprisingly belligerent. While you might yourself be feeling nice and woozy, you can never quite totally relax when you’re drinking with these individuals. You never know when that switch inside of them is going to flip.

They’re the sort of people who are going to pester other customers and waiters, sometimes with verbal abuse. More than just once or twice, I have personally had to apologize on behalf of these people. One drunk apologizing for the misbehavior of another drunk to a third party who is in all likelihood also drunk themself—it’s the Japanese izakaya hellscape.

Continue reading →

Tsuji Jun
If your coworker jumps off a roof
Author | 4 October 1884 – 24 November 1944

I’m sure many of you have experienced that feeling when you’ve had too much to drink, and then, suddenly, you feel like you could literally do anything.

While it goes without saying, that feeling is of course but an illusion. And yet, the majority of booze-related troubles and gaffes are brought about by this simple misunderstanding.

Drinking can’t turn you into a superstar—at the end of the day, an office worker is still but an office worker—but it can change the way you think and behave. Your department chief, that one Average Joe who’s always going, “Oh, I’m no Ichiro, I’m just a nobody,” who happens to like baseball? If he were to turn into a serious binge drinker, it might get him to start copying Ichiro by eating curry for breakfast every morning and practicing his bat-swinging skills at the office.

Or, well… He might start not coming to the office in the first place.

Continue reading →