Special Interview
Interview with Cynthia Usui, Country Manager at LOF Hotel Management, JapanA Housewife’s Journey from Motherhoodto Management
By Japan SPOTLIGHT
Cynthia Usui, country manager at LOF Hotel Management, Japan, has had a distinctly unusual career.
She decided to become a stay-at-home mom after giving birth to her daughter, and 17 years later rejoined
the workforce with a cafeteria job at the international school her daughter attended. She returned to Japan
in 2011, and started out as a telephone receptionist. She joined the hotel industry as a corporate sales
manager at the ANA InterContinental Tokyo, and quickly rose through the ranks. She was also with CocaCola Japan’s hospitality team for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games until last February.
She is firmly convinced that Japan’s housewives have acquired skills and experiences that equip them
to be more than part-time workers, and that Japanese firms should do more to help them rebuild theircareers.
(Interviewed on July 26, 2021)

Skills Acquired at Home
JS: In your book Eight Things Full-Time Housewives Should do
Before Entering the Workforce(published in 2017 in Japanese byKadokawa Publishing), youmentioned that your competency
developed during your experience
as a housewife was useful in yourrestarted business career. What do
you think are the skills ahousewife should develop?

scratch. The task of cooking a Japanese meal
in a foreign country starts with figuring out
what ingredients are available, and where tofind them. In addition to the daily
housekeeping, if they have children, theyneed to learn to navigate the school system,
and interact with the local community without
the assistance of local staff that theirhusbands rely on at their offices. Theseexperiences equip these women with skills
that corporate Japan needs to expandoverseas.
JS: Why do housewives need to

Usui: Unlike other jobs, housewives cannot
become extremely patient, inparticular, as you said?
simply walk away. They cannot exchange
their families for another when the going gets
Cynthia Usui
Usui: Babies were not born speaking.
rough. They need to be patient and creative in
Mothers need to learn how their newborns
finding solutions to their problems. As thecommunicate, and they need to continue learning how tochildren grow older, their needs change, and mothers adapt to meet
communicate with their children whose needs will change as they
these needs, making them resilient to change.
grow older.
JS: In business today, we believe such resilient
human resources should be more welcome than
JS: Does raising a child lead not only to business

ever, given the drastic changes in the businessenvironment. Could you be more specific about how
housewives could be such resilient resources?

Usui: I was a trailing spouse, a housewife who accompanied herhusband on his overseas assignments. I spent 17 years raising ourdaughter in five different countries. There are many Japanese trailingspouses like myself. Unlike the men who generally arrive to join wellestablished offices, the women have to build their homes fromhttps://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

skills but also to maturity as a human being?

Usui: As a parent, it was my responsibility to discern my daughter’s
strengths and weaknesses, and to help her realize her full potential
as a person. Parenting has made me a keen observer of people, andthis has enabled me to mentor younger colleagues.
JS: Would you say it is more important to recognize

your child’s uniqueness and think about how toJapan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 2021

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encourage their abilities than just to read a book on
how to raise a child?
Usui: I am a voracious reader, and I read a lot about raising children.
Every child is different, and I worked on getting to know my child,and finding the best way for her. I became a very good observer, andthis had helped me in anticipating the needs of my clients when I
began a career in sales. After all, sales is all about meeting andexceeding the expectations of each and every client.

Tapping Into a New Resource
JS: In the case of Japan, we are facing a serious

shortage in the labor force as aging progresses. It isoften pointed out that we should take advantage of ahousewife’s potential capacities. How do you think
Japanese society needs to change to realize this?

Usui: Japan needs to stop thinking of housewives as a source ofcheap labor, and start allocating resources to assist them inrebuilding their careers. There are currently re-education, andre-skilling programs for men who are retiring from their companies,
but there are none for housewives who have “finished” raising theirchildren. Why is that? Is it because the policy makers are all men?
JS: Japanese society is rather backward in utilizing

the resources of working women. Is Japan far
behind the rest of the world in this regard?

Usui: LOF Hotel Management is committed to assisting stay-at-homemoms build careers in the hospitality industry, but it has not beeneasy. We pay an hourly wage of 1,200 yen, and 10 hours of training
costs us 12,000 yen. We have trained a number of housewives whoquit after a couple of days on the job. We have to absorb the loss,
and that is tough for a small company like ours. I suggest that thegovernment subsidize the salaries of these women while they are intraining. That should incentivize companies to invest time and effort
in hiring housewives.
JS: In Japan, diversity is now increasingly

considered a key issue in many areas. Yet we stillsee gender stereotypes in working styles. Diversity
is a concept that has not spread very widely or
deeply yet in Japan, isn’t it?

Usui: The definition of diversity in Japan is very often limited togender and race, but diversity is much more than women andforeigners in a sea of Japanese men. Are the women of differentages? Do they have different life experiences, educational andprofessional backgrounds?
JS: We should be more aware of the need to care forindividual character and develop a culture ofrespecting an individual.

50 Japan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 2021

Usui: I would like to think that LOF Hotel Shimbashi, our very firsthotel in Japan, has a diverse team. We have women of different ages
and backgrounds. There are Japanese housewives and male andfemale college students, Filipino high school graduates who used towork in a bento (packed lunch) factory, and single mothers.
Japanese companies need diverse teams to survive the rapidlychanging business environment.

Regaining Confidence to Rejoin theWorkforce
JS: How can a housewife feel confident in herself

after restarting in business? In general, ahousewife’s work is not easy to evaluate as it isconsidered not professional. This could lead tomany housewives lacking confidence in themselves.

Usui: The fastest way to regain one’s self-confidence is toaccomplish a task that one dislikes. For example, as a stay-at-homemom, I did not like cleaning the toilet and the bathroom, but they
were always on the top of my list of things to do! Once I got themdone, all the other housekeeping chores seemed like walks in thepark! I did my chores according to schedule, and I did themregardless of how I felt that day. That is what professionals do,right? After years of working as a professional, I did not have muchdifficulty adjusting to working in an office.
JS: In many cases, unfortunately, housewives quit

jobs within one year after coming back to business.
To avoid this, would you suggest they simply dowhat they can in their given job rather than try to
select a job that they prefer?

Usui: I was able to rebuild my career because I joined an industry
that was taking off, and jobs were being created. Rejoining theworkforce is similar to starting a journey. The destination does notreally matter in the beginning. Just get on the train. You can always
change trains along the way, and decide on your destination during
the ride. Your first job is definitely not going to be your last, but it
could lead to your next job!
JS: In light of the high rate of job turnover among theyoung in Japan, would you recommend thisapproach to Japanese youth as well?

Usui: High turnover? Really? I believe that the average is lower inJapan than in other OECD countries. When it comes to new jobs, I
subscribe to the three-month rule. I once worked as a cashier in asupermarket. I have to say that it was one of the most difficult jobs I
have ever had because I had to remember and execute several
payment processes before a line of customers! Practice andrepetition did not make me perfect, but it certainly reduced mymistakes! In the same way that the world was not built in one day,you do not learn a job in a few days. I say give yourself threemonths.
JS: Would it be a pleasure for them to find they could

manage to do what they were unable to do at thebeginning?

Usui: Not many people are able to combine what they like to do, andwhat they can be paid for to do. And to say that we must all findenjoyment in our work smacks of entitlement. We must all decide forourselves what we expect from our jobs, and align our expectations
with reality.

Remote Work During the Pandemic
JS: The pandemic has encouraged teleworking inJapan as well. With the further segmentation of jobs
and division of labor, short-term labor called “gigwork” without employment contracts will increase.
Could this situation encourage a housewife to dohousekeeping, raise children and work at abusiness simultaneously at home?

Usui: Japan has a labor shortage, and with a declining and graying
population, this labor shortage will only worsen. The tourism
industry is labor intensive, and as a hotel operator, I am consistently
thinking of ways to reduce our labor cost, and exploring alternative
manpower options. Instead of hiring an accountant, we have chosen
to break down our accounting tasks, and outsourced some of them
to a firm with a team of bilingual accountants in Malaysia. Our
reservation system is cloud based, and that gives us the option oftraining stay-at-home moms, and having them work from home.
Hospitality at the highest level will always require the human touch,but automation will make it easier for people to provide thathospitality.
JS: You have adjusted well to such a change in thebusiness environment. Is that thanks to yourexperience as a housewife?

Usui: Yes, of course. I have since discovered that as a result ofhaving raised a child in five different cities, I have developed skills
that have given me a distinct advantage over my colleagues. I waspart of the PTA and the local community wherever we went, and myexperiences interacting with people of different nationalities enables
me to understand the needs of the international travel market.
JS: To take advantage of a housewife’s full potential,

we would need not only retraining programs forthem in companies but also seminars to remindthem of their potential or matching events toconnect businesses and housewives looking for ajob. Would NPOs promoting such events
encouraging women to join the workforce again be
important?

Usui: I have learned from experience that programs for womentrying to rebuild their careers can only be successful with thesupport of the business community. With grants from the Ministry ofEconomy, Trade and Industry and the Japan Tourism Agency, I haveconducted two hospitality courses that included an introduction to
the hotel industry and careers within the industry; a refresher on
writing resumes and job interviews; and most importantly, a job fairthat matched the students with prospective employers. Programorganizers must work with businesses to ensure that they areteaching skills sought after by businesses.
JS: It is true that a good working housewife could bemuch more competent than a male salaried worker
in general. It is also true that another key issue toachieve growth of business would be to raise
resilience of employees working for a long time in a
big company.

Usui: Yes, I believe that in some cases, stay-at-home moms are
more employable than salarymen who have been doing the samething for decades. They are more flexible and able to adapt because
the needs of their families have changed over the years. I am notcompletely against Japan’s lifetime employment system because it
does provide Japanese society with a degree of stability. I see it ascorporate Japan providing universal basic income on behalf of thegovernment. I am convinced that it is the seniority system that is
unfair to women, and all those who cannot work continuously in thesame company. Employees should be evaluated, promoted andrewarded based on their performance and results, and not years ofservice.

Conclusion – Working Mothers
JS: There are now increasing numbers of working

mothers. What do you think about them?

Usui: I believe women should be able to work when they want to. I
do not believe in the traditional definition of work-life balance. Why
should balance be measured daily, weekly or monthly? Why not inyears?
Going to school in our teens and twenties, settling into a careerand starting a family in our thirties, accelerating our careers in ourforties, attaining leadership positions in our fifties, and retiring in oursixties – that is all in the past. Now that we are living longer, there isno need to live the life that was modeled when the average life span
was 60 years. Why can’t a woman, or a man, choose to concentrateon raising children before ramping up a career?
There is no right way to live life, but there is the best way for eachand every one of us. It is up to us to find that best way.

Questions written by Naoyuki Haraoka, editor-in-chief of Japan SPOTLIGHT,
with the cooperation of Naoko Sakai who is a freelance writer. Answers written
by Cynthia Usui, country manager, LOF Hotel Management, Japan.

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