Kobayashi Hideo
If you fall from a train station platform
Critic | 11 April 1902 – 1 March 1983
A suit and a cast. The silliest-looking getup there ever was.
Surely no one would disagree with the notion that in the Japanese corporate world, suits are this “thing” you’re just supposed to wear by default; a survival tool in a demerit system. So when you combine a suit with an orthopedic cast—something that just screams, “I messed up in my private life“—it makes for an outfit that comes across as very, very strange.
There’s this one esteemed person I know through work. He used to be a competitive skier in his student days, but he later stopped going to the slopes entirely, his reasoning being that were he to break his leg and get hospitalized or something of the sort, it would be a hindrance to his work. Subconsciously, we all have the impression that a suit with a cast is just the lamest-looking thing there is.
Of course, you never know how or when disaster might strike. One day you may be forced to wear a cast through no fault of your own. Although even then there’s no denying that it just looks stupid.
But the truly tragic thing is when you have to wear a cast all because of a mistake you made on your own.