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Student’s Name

Professor’s Name

EAS 150 Labor and Precarity in Japanese Literature

Short Paper #2

Date

The Passage of Time, Seasons, Cycles, and Routines

"Spring, summer, fall, winter. A never-ending cycle of seasons. Back then, everything was easy
for me — it was a time of happiness. At the Factory, I wake up, eat breakfast, walk around,
maybe ride around on the bus, grab lunch at the usual cafeteria, and take another walk, go back
home to work on samples, or plug data into my computer. Then I eat dinner, take a bath, go to
sleep, and get ready to start the whole thing over again. How long can this go on?" (pg. 66)

Hiroko Oyamada's award-winning debut novel, "The Factory," is full of rich imagery and

themes that help to create the world portrayed in a large industrial factory. Narrated through

broad paragraphs, Oyamada presents a story about three apparently normal and unrelated

characters - Furufue, Yoshiko, and Yoshiko's brother – working in a factory. Each of the

characters is assigned a specific job task: Furufue works as a moss specialist, Yoshiko shreds

papers, and her brother proofreads implausible documents. Their life in the Factory has a unique

logic and momentum, and, ultimately, the Factory rapidly develops, enclosing these poor

employees. It reaches a point where these workers cannot distinguish between the Factory and

the rest of the world. As shown in the selected excerpt, one of the most puzzling and yet

compelling aspects of this novel is how the story jumps around in time, seasons, cycles, and

routines. Throughout the narration, time appears to pass gradually, demonstrating how the
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Factory exploited the characters' lives as they perform their respective monotonous and

continuous tasks.

Time, seasons, cycles, and routines seem to pass, making it hard to differentiate between

the past and the present. In fact, as Furufue points out in the chosen excerpt, employee's time in

the Factory passes from one season to another, and it is a never-ending cycle of seasons. There is

no doubt that he, as well as other characters, would spend all their time there - during spring,

summer, fall, winter - without going any other place. The Factory is portrayed as an enclosed

world with everything, including restaurants, learning institutions, museums, warehouses, roads,

forests, rivers, and animals. The Factory is its own universe, and every resident who lives in the

nearby city is part of it: Yoshiko confirms that "Everyone has at least one family member

working for the factory, or one of its partners or subsidiaries" (pg. 5). What the Factory creates

remains a mystery. The only perceptible product appears to be the fear and distress it induces

among its workers. It is not merely an environment where individuals would come to do their

jobs and go back to their homes; it is a place where people work, live, eat, and sleep.

With the endless tasks in front of him, it is notable that Furufue struggles with the

monotony of his profession and lose himself in the Factory's overwhelming landscape. The

contrast between "back then" and "now" is very apparent in the quote: "back then," he refers to

his university days when life was happy and fulfilled without monotony. In other words, Furufue

was in a free world, where he could be able to do whatever he wants. He ends ups, quite

mysteriously, working at the Factory straight out of the university. Assigned the work of "green-

roofing," it is an impossible task mismatched to his skills (pg. 11). It looks like he is dragged out

of university and offered himself to the Factory unwillingly. In his present time at the Factory,

life seems to stretch on and on, with no meaning or end. His work is not supervised, and he has
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nobody to assist him. The employer is not bothered at all about the undertakings of Furufue in

the Factory. He is required not to rush and should approach the job as he sees fit. Despite such

freedom, it is quite challenging for Furufue to cope with the repetitive tasks that he had little

interest in.

Even though Furufue has been a worker in the Factory for fifteen years, the periods have

collapsed, making it appear as though he had begun around the same time as the temporary

employees (pg. 108). The reality is that Furufue has been confined in the Factory for many years

with neither responsibility nor accountability. He is shocked by reflecting upon the passage of

more than ten years, during which time he has created nothing perceptible, regardless of going to

work every day. By showing how the time has passed, Oyamada illuminates Furufue's inability

to understand himself during the period he has worked in the Factory. He has eternally useless

life restricted by vague parameters. The metaphor here is apparent and executed quite perfectly.

Before he knows his significance in the Factory, Furufue will be an older adult with nothing to

show for his profession: a profession he did neither pursue nor fully comprehend.

There is a sense of misunderstanding that grows as routine develop. In quiet frustration,

Furufue begins to wonder how long the situation will continue - waking up, eating breakfast,

walking around, taking lunch at the usual cafeteria, going back home to work on samples, using

his computer, eating dinner, having a shower, and sleeping. Such a routine makes it hard for him

to understand his colleagues. Notably, at one night, when all the characters are drunk, the

proofreader asserts, "I started talking about my past, my struggles. It was my own voice, but it

didn't sound anything like me" (pg. 58). There is no description of her history or her struggles –

it is a false indication at a backstory, a kind of information that the reader expects from the

characters but does not receive in this text. In some cases further, the characters seem unfamiliar
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to themselves, as when Furufue, touches his face and realizes that he has a beard. He states, "I

was stunned, but only for a fraction of a second. It wasn't anything, after all. Hair had been

growing everywhere, on the backs of my hands, all over my body" (pg. 111). The fact is that the

never-ending daily routine makes him recognize changes in his body.

Like Furufue, the painful repetitiveness of factory life also affects the early lives of other

new workers. Yoshiko is, in the beginning, portrayed as a woman who cannot keep a job. When

she ran out of options, his brother recommends her to work in the Factory. This turns out to be a

profoundly sarcastic and amusing change by Oyamada when Yoshiko, who has language skills,

end up working as a shredder. Although "a job is a job," the more Yoshiko gets used to the

Factory's monotonous routine, the more she becomes unhappy. She affirms, "I thought I'd been

giving it everything I had, but what I thought was everything had no real value" (pg. 94). The

same fate falls to her brother. He is a qualified systems engineer; however, he was fired without

notice. Displeased and out of choices, Yoshiko's brother ends up working as a short-term

contract proofreader in the Factory. The job neither has real rules nor significance. It is very

tiresome as he has to balance between the novel's form and work life. "Staring at the ink, the

words started to break apart, failing to hold their meaning – all I could see was a meaningless

arrangement of squiggles and dots, symbols and patterns, running on endlessly. Words are such

unstable things" (pg. 54). At the same time, he does not know the meaning of the documents

being proofread, and it is uncertain if anything is occurring with these edits.

Based on the language used in the selected quote, it is evident that hours have passed,

days, and years – trying to demonstrate how the Factory has taken time off the characters' lives

as they become entwined with the monotonous and continuous cycle of seasons. The description

feels as puzzling as the place it describes. This unique style generates a broader understanding of
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the entire novel and its meaning. It is the same style used by Oyamada throughout the text,

whereby she presents blocks of dialogue in a single long paragraph to demonstrate the passage of

time. Indeed, a chapter might move back and forth in time with no indication that it is doing so;

the reader might be provided the end of a story, then have to read on to find where it began. Such

style clearly demonstrates the passage of time, which is an impressive ability of the author given

this was her first novel.

The ambiguity and matter-of-factness of Oyamada's language in the excerpt have a clear

purpose, bringing about the troubling sense of predictability that encompasses the entire story.

Furufue is a good instance of the helpless post-millennial type, one that exists in the shadow of

exploitative labor systems. It is a mirror to the contemporary work culture, but a biased one. A

labor system that is hard to rebel against: with time, it exploits its employees, fails them, and

ruins their lives. The monotonous life generates anxiety and worthlessness. Accordingly,

unawareness seems to obscure the Factory, causing inevitability and passage of time. The role of

Furufue is to examine the types of moss that grows around the Factory, in the hopes that after

some time passes, his work will help to develop the Factory's green roofing project. However, as

days, months, and years pass, Furufue's progress is insignificant; he keeps classifying the moss

and conducts a moss hunt for the factory employees' children in every year.

The expressions and attitudes of the passage are identical: perplexed, passive, and sad.

Similar to other extracts of the novel, only a change in pronoun or small detail shows a shift in

viewpoint. It is an attentiveness Oyamada instills in her reader. Such style enables the author to

narrate the story without including line break coherently. It clearly indicates how days and weeks

seem to pass, making it hard to differentiate between the past and the present. This presents the

idea that employee time passes from one season to another, and it is a never-ending cycle. The
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hostile way Oyamada depicts this realization is similar to how the information should shock and

bother the reader. For instance, Furufue struggles with the monotony of his profession and lose

himself in the Factory's overwhelming landscape. He is dealing with his respective struggles

related to the "dead-end" job, hope to discover, if not some impression of significance, then at

least an improved understanding of the despair, which is caused by monotony (pg. 7). Besides,

there is no order to the appearance of the characters, and their relationships feel both incidental

and unfamiliar to each other. The characters such as Furufue are, in fact, hardly there. In most

cases, he is an observer of factory life in the setting of his workplace. This kind of description

brings authenticity to the narrative.

The factory life involving the monotonous and never-ending tasks depicts a strange

realism; nevertheless, it points out how Oyamada's dreamlike world is equivalent to the modern

world. As illustrated, the Factory is an ecosystem unto itself, an all-encompassing world. It can

be compared to the Apple Park, which comprises offices, residents, museums, trees, and

restaurants under one roof. But something is unsettling about the universe in the Factory – the

workers are induced with fear and distress. Furufue has been there for more than a decade, and

he has achieved nothing. The same is also happening to his colleagues, who appear to be

frustrated by their roles in the Factory. In many ways, this work environment is comparable to

the monotonous work culture of Japan and reveals the concerns of overworking regularly. The

combination of nature, surreal imagery, and reality expands the application of this novel in a

capitalist society in a tone yet relevant for all readers.

At its core, The Factory is a reflection on how time, seasons, cycles, and routines pass

through work life. It is evident from the selected excerpt that employee's time passes from one

season to another; hence, the scenario is a never-ending cycle. The author delves into the
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monotonous work culture of the Factory and reveals the anxieties of the employees. Time seems

to shift from one paragraph or chapter to the other without breaking the narration, indicating how

the Factory exploited the characters' lives as they perform their respective roles. This theme

proves Oyamada's ability to bring realism to the narrative and conveying it to the reader suitably.

The aspect of jumping around in time simplifies the narration and make it uniquely relatable for

all readers. It casts a brilliant – if sometimes strange – depiction of the absurdity and

worthlessness of contemporary life inside an expansive factory that cannot be differentiated from

the rest of the world. There is no doubt that this novel will leave readers shocked and fascinated.