FamilyMart said hijabs are fine under its new uniform rules, and the internet caught fire. I counted 938 comments: the top voice rejects the religion outright with 5,979 votes — but the page's second subject wasn't religion. It was konbini wages.
"If they do the work, who cares" — that is what I came to say. The page's top voice answered with 5,979 votes: we care. But its second subject wasn't the hijab. It was the hourly wage.
How the votes fell
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1 5979 ∕ 850 This is a natural rejection of a religion incompatible with Japanese culture advancing into everyday life. Most Japanese know Islam only as the Middle East, terrorism and no pork — understanding hasn't caught up, yet they keep coming. Nobody promoting this answers the question of why Japanese are asked to understand foreigners while foreigners are never asked to understand Japan. Trouble is certain to follow — it's already on fire, isn't it
- 2 2421 ∕ 247 A uniform is corporate image, so this is about what Itochu, the parent trading house, wants FamilyMart to look like. What worries me more is that the media as a whole has lately been priming us to see the growth in foreign residents positively. If the other chains follow suit, I fear a command from above rather than one company's decision
- 3 2227 ∕ 246 The hijab doesn't bother me — the T-shirt uniform is the real problem. A front-opening jacket goes over your own clothes, but a T-shirt is worn directly and pulled over the head, so makeup gets on the collar and won't wash out. Keeping it clean means laundering it every day, and if each employee manages their own, some will wear it for days. A jacket you just put on would cause less trouble
- 4 1650 ∕ 209 The hijab is religious dress, but some Islamic countries don't mandate it and some countries ban it — it is wear-it-if-you-wish clothing. Declaring it OK just to advertise diversity is FamilyMart telling the world it has certified the hijab as required religious dress. If they've thought that through, fine; it looks like a rule made casually by people enamoured of the word diversity
- 5 1211 ∕ 235 The konbini business model — run almost entirely on part-timers — only ever worked because the "ice-age generation," numerous, patient and capable, could be used up cheaply. Konbini jobs are apparently very popular among foreigners - nobody watches over you, no factory-style quotas, you work at your own pace. I suppose clerks chatting on private calls while serving customers will become the norm here too
I read all 938 top-level comments. The buttons: 29,512 votes of "I relate" against 9,492 of "hmm" — 76 percent agreement, with "I see" pressed 2,659 times. Compared with 93 percent on the illegal-parking page and 87 percent on the driver-camera page, the objections are far thicker, and 332 comments — 35 percent of the page — drew more objections than support, well beyond the 19 percent on the speed-limit page. Counting the content: comments touching Islam or religion fill 160 comments worth 11,674 votes — 40 percent, the page's largest theme, led by the top comment at 5,979. Comments naming the hijab itself: 285 worth 15,080 votes, 51 percent. Hygiene and laundry: 70 comments worth 11,094 votes, 38 percent (overlapping the top). Wages, pay and the hiring structure: 51 comments worth 4,316 votes, 15 percent — the second subject. The accepting side — it doesn't bother me, what's the problem — fills 62 comments worth 2,712 votes, 9 percent; its plainest voice took 134 votes against 485 objections, and the comment quoting the article's own "what exactly is the problem?" took 124 against 565. Worries about service quality and training: 52 comments worth 2,359 votes, 8 percent. Comments using the word "diversity": 49 worth 2,953 votes, 10 percent. Calls to stop insisting on 24-hour opening: 8 comments worth 1,732 votes, 6 percent. Fears of the next demand — prayer rooms, Ramadan, halal — appear in 19 comments worth 6,130 votes, overlapping the top comment. And the boycott hints that made the headline: 32 comments carrying 98 votes of agreement between them — on the buttons, almost nobody. The top ten comments hold 61 percent of all agreement.
First, what happened.
FamilyMart — Japan's second-largest convenience-store chain, with stores on seemingly every corner — changed its staff uniform rules for the first time in ten years. From September 1, the uniform switches from a zip-up jacket to a T-shirt, and, in the same announcement, the company said employees may wear the hijab, the headscarf worn by Muslim women. The company's stated reason: to hire a more diverse workforce.
The moment it was reported, Japanese social media caught fire. "FamilyMart has finally crossed a line." "Japan is falling apart." Some hinted at boycotts. Others fired back: "How is this different from the employees already making your bento? What exactly is the problem?" The article I took this page from is about that fight.
Let me state my position up front. If they do the work, I could not care less. Whatever is on the clerk's head, the register moves. Where Japanese people genuinely get angry is not at cloth — it is when nationality or religion becomes a reason the work doesn't get done, in a country where working hours and break times are fixed to the minute. And one more thing I believed going in: konbini work is, despite its image, one of the hardest service jobs in Japan — utility-bill payments, parcel shipping, fried food, complaints, all handled by one person at the till, in Japanese. Japanese workers know the pay does not match that workload, so they stay away. Foreign workers take it thinking it is simple customer service. That gap, not the headscarf, seemed to me the real story.
Two pieces of context before the numbers, for readers who have never stood in a konbini queue. First, the job itself. A Japanese convenience store is not a shop so much as a piece of civic infrastructure: the person at the till sells you dinner, but also accepts your electricity payment, ships and hands over parcels, prints your documents, sells stamps and concert tickets, and fries the chicken — usually alone, usually overnight too, and entirely in Japanese. That is why the wage argument you will read below lands so hard here. Second, the word you will see in the comments — the "ice-age generation" — is Japan's name for the people who left school during the long hiring freeze after the 1990s bubble burst, a generation that filled exactly these part-time registers because the proper jobs never opened for them. When a commenter says the konbini model was built on using them up, every Japanese reader knows precisely who is meant.
About 14 hours after publication, I read all 938 top-level comments and counted the buttons.
The top of the page: we do care, 5,979 times
The count: 29,512 votes of "I relate" against 9,492 of "hmm" — 76 percent agreement. Compare the illegal-parking page at 93 percent or the driver-camera page at 87: the objections here run far thicker. And 35 percent of the comments drew more objections than support — well beyond the 19 percent on the speed-limit page. The voters themselves were split.
And the page's top comment is the exact opposite of my shrug.
This is a natural rejection of a religion incompatible with Japanese culture advancing into our daily lives. [...] Above all, the heart of the problem is that nobody promoting this ever answers the complaint: 'Japanese are asked to understand foreigners — why are foreigners never asked to understand Japan? Why do we alone carry the burden? Who takes responsibility when something happens?' Trouble will follow, without question. I guarantee it. It's already on fire, isn't it.
日本の文化と相容れない宗教が身近に進出してきたことに対する当然の拒絶反応。
［…］なにより「日本人には外国人への理解を求めるのに、どうして外国人には日本人への理解を求めないんですか？我々ばかり負担を求められて不公平だ！何か起きたら責任取れるんですか？」という主張に、推進派は誰も応えていないのが問題の本質。
まず間違いなくトラブルが起こる。断言する。だってもう炎上してるでしょ。5,979 votes for, 850 against — the runaway first place. Comments touching Islam or religion fill 160 of the 938, carrying 11,674 votes — 40 percent of everything pressed on this page. Read closely and the target is less the headscarf itself than the next demand: allow this and prayer rooms follow, then halal handling. "A hijab I can accept, but once religious accommodation becomes the principle, the niqab and the burqa can't be refused" took 621 votes.
The anger I predicted — a Japan that erupts when religion becomes a reason work doesn't get done — exists on this page in anticipatory form: the fear that the excuses are coming.
The shrug got shouted down
My own side — it doesn't bother me, what's the problem — fills 62 of the 938 comments, 9 percent of the votes. Here is what happened to the plainest of them.
A hijab doesn't bother me at all. If it's needed to match a diversifying workforce, do it — and if the old rule was unfair to some people, fixing that is simply the right thing to do.
ヒジャブであっても特に気にならない
人材の多様化に合わせるために必要ならすればよいし、逆にそれがないと一部の方に不公平があったのであれば改善することは当然のこと134 votes for, 485 against. The comment that borrowed the article's own line — "some Muslims want konbini work; what exactly is the problem?" — sank at 124 to 565. On this page, the objection button was pressed hardest not on the angry voices but on the accepting ones.
But look at the other extreme too. Thirty-two comments hinted at boycotting FamilyMart — and together they collected 98 votes of agreement. Thirty-two comments, 98 votes. The "boycott threats" that made the headline are, on the buttons, voices almost nobody seconded. The page's anger is real; its willingness to walk away from the fried chicken is not. This gap is worth remembering whenever you read a "Japan boycotts X" headline abroad: the sports paper counted the loudest tweets, I counted the buttons, and the buttons say the outrage is a spectator sport. Nobody is giving up a store they visit every day over a headscarf — they just want it known that they mind.
The second subject wasn't the hijab. It was the wage
Now for my half of the argument. The second-largest theme on this page, after religion, is pay and the structure of konbini hiring: 51 comments worth 4,316 votes — 15 percent. The page's fifth-place comment is this.
[...] Konbini jobs are apparently very popular among foreign workers: nobody watches over you, it's relaxed, no factory-style quotas treating you as a machine, you work at your own pace. [...]
［…］コンビニのアルバイトは、外国人の間ではとても人気があるそうだ。見張りがいなくてラク、つまみ食い可、工場労働者のように機械替わりでＫＰＩを求められない、マイペースに働くことができる様々な理由があるのだろう。［…］1,211 votes for. "A job Japanese workers know is a bad deal, taken by foreign workers who find it easy" — the page testifying to my gap, from the other side of the counter. One commenter brought numbers.
I live in Tokyo. The konbini near me pay about 1,300 yen an hour. The Maibasuket supermarket nearby pays over 1,800 — not even a night shift — with finely split time slots that make it easy to work. [...] So people don't come, and cheap foreign labour fills the gap.
自分は都内に住んでいるが、近所のコンビニは大体時給1300円くらい。一方まいばすけっと(スーパー)は深夜でもないのに時給1800円超え、更に時間帯を細かく分けて働きやすくなっている。
［…］つまり人が集まりづらく、これを安い外国人労働で補っている。510 to 38. Around 1,300 yen an hour — roughly nine US dollars — at the konbini, versus more than 1,800 at the supermarket down the road, for a job with a fraction of the duties. "Stop using developing-country workers on the cheap behind polite pretexts; we don't need 24-hour opening this badly" took 604 votes against 15. "Hiring cheap instead of training is how Japan's carefulness and quality are being lost" took 916. A night-shift konbini worker added the detail that settles the uniform question itself: most konbini have no changing room — a T-shirt uniform means wearing it from home (249 votes). The people closest to the register talked least about religion.
The most Japanese comment on the page came third
And my favourite voice on this whole burning page sided with neither camp.
The hijab doesn't bother me — but that T-shirt uniform sounds like real trouble. [...] A T-shirt is worn directly, and you pull it over your head, so makeup gets on the collar — and once it's on, it doesn't wash out. Keeping it clean means laundering it every single day.
ヒジャブは気にならないけど、Tシャツの制服は大変だろうなぁ。
［…］けどTシャツは重ね着しにくいから直に着る事が多いだろうし、頭からかぶらなきゃいけないから、化粧品が襟につきやすい。そして化粧品はついたら落ちにくい。
清潔を保つなら毎日の洗濯が必須。2,227 votes — third place on a page about a religious culture war — for a worry about foundation stains on a collar. Notice what this comment quietly is: the closest thing on the whole page to the view of the person actually behind the counter. It does not argue about Islam and it does not argue about immigration. It asks who washes the shirt, how often, and at whose expense — the question a uniform announcement written at headquarters never has to answer. Laundry over theology. Skin oils over ideology. Under a headline about a nation on fire, the third-loudest thing its people agreed on was the practical life of the person wearing the shirt. If you want one comment that explains Japan, it is this one.
A country arguing about cloth to avoid arguing about pay
Here is what I carried home from the count.
The top of the page rejects the religion outright, and my "who cares, as long as they work" is a 9 percent minority — that argument I lost, and I record it. The plainest accepting voice took three objections for every vote of support. Japan's comment section does not see the hijab as cloth; it sees it as a door.
But my other claim — that konbini work pays too little for what it demands, that Japanese workers know it and stay away, and that foreign workers take the job believing it is simple — the page said back to me in its own words, 51 comments and 4,316 votes of it. The 1,300-versus-1,800-yen comparison. The used-up "ice-age generation." The stores with no changing room. The hijab is just the moment this structure became visible at the counter.
If you visit Japan after September, you may be served at a FamilyMart by a clerk in a hijab. Read it less as Japan discovering diversity and more as the sign that a job handling your parcels, your bill payments and your fried chicken, in Japanese, for about nine dollars an hour, stopped finding Japanese takers. And if the looks she gets are cold, that is less about the cloth than about a country that argues endlessly about cloth so it never has to argue about pay. Fifteen percent of this page had that argument anyway. That is where I pressed agree.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.