Japan’s salarymen and women, the corporate troops who built one of the world’s biggest economies, are struggling with tents, earplugs and wandering toddlers in their hardest battle yet — the home front.
Their struggle with coronavirus, telework and poorly-segregated living rooms will push Japan into a fundamental rethink of the way its homes are designed, said the head of one of the nation’s biggest housebuilders.
The observation by Akira Ichikawa, chairman of Sumitomo Forestry, comes as Japanese office workers wrestle with the logistics of working from home and have discovered just how ill-suited the average apartment and house is to the job.