This is a cut out from a magazine that featured the phenomenon of job hunting in Japan. 合同説明会の様子を写した雑誌の切り抜き。
就活 | Hire Me (2012~2014)
証明写真機 ID Photo booth
In Japan, around the third year of university, students all don the same suit, called the "recruit suit" (around ¥50,000) and practice becoming agreeable so they can be hired. Then they spend anywhere from a year to a year and a half going to interviews with this suit in order to get a job offer before they graduate. Not having a job offer leads to serious anxiety, and in worse cases, suicide.
When I graduated and returned to Japan, my grandparents bought me this suit so I could start looking for jobs (although, since I graduated from a US school, I had completely missed the normal window of job-searching that my Japanese peers had gone through). I felt completely dehumanized when I wore the suit, and took these photos in the typical photo booth meant for ID photos that one can find scattered throughout the city.