Christopher McCarthy is a member of Midleton Writers Group and has published two volumes of short stories, ‘Dark Omens and Halos’ and ‘Capacocha’. He has been published in the Midleton News and has performed at numerous arts events. His photography has appeared on four book covers, including a recently published poetry collection. ‘Midleton Golden Miscellany’, produced by the Midleton Writers Group was shortlisted for a CAP Award in 2025. Christopher is also a musician, runner and has competed in numerous Marathons across Europe.
Salaryman
By Christopher McCarthy
My name is Yuichi Yamada. I’m a salaryman and this is my life. I live alone in a featureless apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo. Sunday is my only free day of the week, but I’m mostly devoid of the fervour required to make use of it in any significant way. It’s an 80 minute commute to my desk job in Shibuya where each working day is exactly the same. It is busy, long and meaningless. By meaningless I mean that it simply doesn’t matter. I work for Kiriyama Corporation, a successful and ambitious Engineering firm and due to the size and structure of the company and the bewildering complexity of its business interests it’s of no consequence how hard I work as the incremental benefits from my efforts are so miniscule as to be ultimately unnoticeable. However, I do work diligently out of cultural principle.
A typical day is as follows: The alarm wakes me at 05:40 and I instantly rise and shower. Breakfast is tamagoyaki or chazuke. At 07:00 I leave the apartment and start a 20 minute walk to Matsudo station to board a train which I always unsuccessfully hope will not be busy. The train journey takes 43 minutes and is undertaken in relative silence by passengers uncomfortably competing for every available inch of space, our movements synchronised with the swaying carriage as we hurtle deeper into the city to feed its insatiable capitalistic hunger. Many commuters nap as they are as weary and melancholic as myself. The others remain quiet out of respect to those sleeping, apart from the growing number of exuberant western tourists oblivious to our travelling etiquette. I disembark at Omote-Sando station and walk the remaining portion of my commute to the office, take the elevator to the seventeenth floor and reach my desk to prepare for meetings and open emails by 08:30. There are always new emails and they always relate to tasks that people need me urgently to carry out rather than mails which ease my workload. It’s not possible to control their influx, nor their demanding tone. I work until 13:00 at which time I take the elevator to the twelfth floor restaurant for lunch, which is usually something quick and inexpensive like miso soup with tofu and wakame seaweed. I finish work at 21:30, evermore depleted of what I used to be and return home via the same dreary, lengthy commute. I prepare a light meal and am unfit for any further activity other than scrolling aimlessly on my phone, after which I surrender to bed. For the vast majority of the day I am either working or worrying about work. I make no significant connection with anybody I meet. All human contact is purely transactional and most of my colleagues don’t know my name.
My life doesn’t feel real, like I don’t exist. I used to think it a result of the perpetual exhaustive state that I’m forced to maintain to survive in this bloated megalopolis of tens of millions. Everything is sombre, routine and stripped of happiness to the extent that joy of any description has become an alien concept. It’s a colourless landscape, though I’m surrounded by neon billboards and bright, gaudy store displays for blocks in every direction.
Sometimes at the station I take a moment to observe the thousands of other commuters shuffling through an equally meaningless existence as muffled announcements of delays are proclaimed over the public address system. They don’t really look like people. Nobody speaks, nobody laughs. Many are wearing the standard salaryman uniform, the neat dark suit, tie and black leather shoes, as I do, but they appear to move in the same direction in unison, as if being herded by an unseen authoritarian force rather than choosing their action and destination out of personal preference. Such thoughts are intuitive, scary but also meaningless and so I allow them to retreat from my focus as there are more pressing matters to consider such as crippling stress due to workplace demands, the rising cost of rent, my ailing health and that I may not actually exist. Some of the railway delays I encounter are caused by ‘human accidents’, a soft euphemism for suicide.
I was at my desk yesterday afternoon on a call with the Engineering Manager Tsuyoshi Miura. I decided to advise him of my concerns. This was the conclusion of our conversation.
‘I don’t have a soul’, I noted without emotion. ‘I just thought I should tell you that’.
‘That’s right, the report needs to be sent by close of business today’, he replied. ‘You realise how urgent this is. We’re expending thousands of manhours and they need an update today showing progress, not delays or budget overruns’.
‘Everything we do is meaningless’, I answered. ‘If I leave the office now and never come back there will be someone else sitting here in a few days and nothing will change. There’s no place for individuality. People don’t matter here. Maybe they never did’.
‘Yes, we need to maintain that account. Everyone’s putting in extra hours. Please do your duty. No excuses’, he wheezed.
‘Miura-San, you’re not even listening to what I’m saying’, I pleaded. ‘This conversation, this company, this life that we all live is completely pointless. We’re all mortally unhappy, in docile servitude to an unsympathetic superior one level above us on the corporate ladder. Everything in our lives is detached and mechanical’.
‘Thanks Yuji. I knew I could rely on you’, he said affirmatively, as though he had achieved something.
‘It’s Yuichi, and I think I’m disappearing. I don’t seem real anymore. Anyway, goodbye’, I added as I ended the call. It was the last action that I will ever perform there as something happened after the call with Miura-San.
I can hear them complaining that I didn’t issue the report, that I should have issued it last night, that I’m not answering my phone or emails, that I’ve caused big problems and will be strictly disciplined, but it’s not my fault. I became insubstantial. As I tried to finish Miura-San’s report my suit and underwear crumpled and fell in heaps on my chair and on the ground next to my shoes as I no longer have a physical body.
Miura-San’s face has deepened beyond red to a drastic and unhealthy plumlike complexion. Saliva is spouting furiously from his mouth as he again refers to me as Yuji to his nervous colleagues and queries where I am and why my clothes are strewn about the desk, not whether I’m ill or have had an accident. I can’t tell him that my name is Yuichi as I no longer have a mouth. I want to comfort him as it requires too much energy to harbour negative emotions and because I know that he’s just a salaryman too but I can’t as I don’t really exist anymore, like I said. I diminished. I’m ethereal. I’m a spirit or ghost who may even have diminished further since I diminished yesterday. Maybe I will diminish altogether. I imagine I will. There’ll be no miso soup for lunch anymore. When the cleaning lady came to my desk last night she just hoovered around the piles of clothes before moving on.
The Galway Review 