Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
`AT first I wasn’t sure if I ought to. After all, everything was so valuable. But once I got started … well, I just let rip and it felt fantastic.”
When Mr Watanabe, who describes himself as an ordinary Japanese businessman, and three of his female colleagues entered the stress- relief room it resembled a tidy antiques shop. Gilt-framed paintings hung on the walls, a decorated screen stood in a corner, and statuettes and an ornate Imari vase were neatly arranged on a mother-of-pearl table top.
Two hours later, Watanabe and friends left the place looking as if it had been hit by a typhoon.
“Watanabe is a good customer,” said the owner, Yoshie Ogasawara, as she surveyed the destruction. “Some of the others can get carried away. It takes days to clean up after them.”
The stress-relief room, on the tranquil surroundings of a small lakeside town at the foot of Mount Fuji, was set up by Ogasawara in July. For 10 000 yen (R410), you get the use of the room for two hours. This includes as much beer as you can drink, as many karaoke songs as you can sing and as much havoc as you can wreak.
“Everyone gets stressed out occasionally,” Ogasawara explained, “but perhaps especially so in Japan. Here people are expected to keep up appearances whatever they are feeling inside. This room is a way for them to let off steam.”
While smashing the room, middle-ranking managers have been heard screaming abuse at their seniors, housewives cursing their unfaithful husbands and bureaucrats ridiculing their political superiors.
It might be good therapy, but even with five customers at a time entry fees fail to cover the R6 900 value of the goods that get demolished.
Ogasawara said she was not worried. “During the bubble economy of the late 1980s there was a glut of everything in Japan – money and goods. But now that prices have fallen and people have gone bust I have been able to pick up stuff at a bargain.”
The end of December is traditionally a time for bonenkai (forget the year) parties, an opportunity for Japanese to unwind and put the frustrations of the previous 12 months behind them. Fully booked for the season, the stress-relief room is being restocked for the coming orgy of non-gratuitous violence.