The Sagyoman Philosophy from an Outsider's Perspective

Disclaimer, this article is almost entirely in English with a few Japanese words thrown around. English is the only language I know currently. Apologies if anything comes off as pretentious or rude because of it. Now with that out of the way...

I'm not sure how I would translate that title. Maybe はたから見るサギョウマンマン主義. Anyways, this year I joined my favourite Discord server of all time, サギョウバ. This server has changed my perspective on life. The people there are all beautiful human beings, even if I have never seen a single one of their faces. My greatest wish is to be able to understand what they say, and my second greatest wish is to be able to communicate with them. In this article I make 3 observations on what I believe are the core philosophies of sagyoba.

I'm honoured be able to write this article today as a part of their advent calendar. Even though this is in English and the server is Japanese, I hope members of the server, or even other readers will be able to receive my message well enough. As the Japanese would say, よろしくお願いします！

Sagyoman Nicorasu: Origins

For those who don't know me, I'm a young Canadian software engineer, pursuing the Japanese language as a hobby. I've been "studying" Japanese for about 5 years at this point, with the bulk of my Japanese interactions being with Japanese people learning English. I thought it was time to start interacting with Japanese people who didn't speak English to broaden the scope of conversations to be had. Ironically this article is entirely in English, but honestly my Japanese level isn't good enough yet to express what I want to in this article. But I digress.

On July 7th, 2020, I started browsing Disboard for some Japanese servers to join. I was mostly looking for a constant stream of conversational text I could read to learn Japanese. A server called sagyoba, meaning a place to work or workshop, seemed like a good fit, so I joined the server, along with a few other Japanese servers.

I was greeted with an automatic Dynobot message telling me to read the rules, and to also write a mini-introduction about what type of work I do. Needing to read the rules is pretty standard, but this is the first time I've seen a server where you need to state the work you do before joining. This was one of the early signs that I was about to enter the best server in the universe.

What is sagyo?

作業 or sagyō, means work. And it's different from the other Japanese word 仕事 (shigoto) that also means work. To me, sagyo has a more productive connotation. Maybe because the kanji characters of sagyo translate to "creation" "industry", while shigoto just translates to "do" "thing".

It's hard to give a formal definition of sagyo, so I'm just going to give a few examples of what I think embodies it.​

- writing is sagyo
- drawing is sagyo
- programming is sagyo
- knitting is sagyo
- exercising is sagyo
- studying is sagyo
- drinking is sagyo

These are just a few examples. I wish I could cover everyone's sagyo but I'm really not familiar enough with them. Now you might be thinking, aren't those just hobbies? Yes, these are hobbies, but I think sagyo is a subset of hobbies. Hobbies are just something to kill time, but sagyo is more than just a pastime, it's a passion.

Observation #1: Sagyo is a passion

One of the ways we can quantify passion is the amount of sleep willingly sacrificed for something. Less sleep means more passion. Let me tell you that these sagyomen never sleep. The time difference between Japan and where I live is 14 hours and 13 hours when it's DST. I often casually browse discord during the day around noon, but when I check the server, for some reason everyone is still awake and sagyo-ing. Sometimes you'll see 10 people in voice channel at 3am. They will be talking to each other and socializing, but also be working on something at the same time. Finally at 4am you'll see someone post the drawing they were working on, and it will be beautiful.

Story about a passionate sagyoman, one of my early friends in sagyoba is in graduate school studying biology, and looking to get into a university in Canada. One day he mentioned that he needed to write a lab report for a class experiment he had to do, in English. I offered to help him write the report, although I was soon baffled by the amount of technical terms needed to write this report. I was helping him during the day which was fine for me since I didn't have work, but he stayed up with me until 4am just to get some extra feedback on the paper. The deadline wasn't even soon so he could have easily just called it a day and went to sleep. I really admire him for his hard work.

Of course, losing sleep isn't necessary to define passion. I see people's passion in this server based on a number of factors. The consistency and quality in their work every day, the type of advice they ask, and their willingness to help others with the same passion. This brings us to the more social aspect of sagyoba.

Observation #2: Sagyo should be shared

There's a channel in the server called "shinchoku", which means "progress" or "in progress". The most common thing I see posted in shinchoku is drawing and illustrations, and you can tell these are skilled artists. But a lot of the posts are still WIP. I believe the main reason people post WIP art works is because of the sharing culture in sagyoba. People should know that you're sagyo-ing, because if other people are sagyo-ing, then it creates an environment where everyone can sagyo.

There's a channel for every type of sagyo you can think of. If a channel is missing, normal members actually have channel creation privileges, and so won't have to ask the admin to create it. This is such a cultural driver because it means many people will have different interests, with some interests only having one person. But the common thing shared for every interest is that it's sagyo. So even if your interest is underwater Mongolian basket-weaving, it's still sagyo, and you can go right ahead and make a channel for it and start sharing your work there.

For more common interests like writing, programming, or drawing there is a decent amount of people who share your interest. The great thing about common interests is that people can give feedback or advice on things you need help with. The server has around 1000 people. (Side note: it's amazing how big this server is, yet there's only one admin and there are no issues with moderation). And these people are very kind, and will compliment your sagyo every time they see it. Speaking of which...

Observation #3: Sagyo is Erai!

The most common emoji used in the server is a pink, 4 character image, with the 4 characters arranged in a 2 by 2 grid; the 4 characters being えらい！(read erai!). This just means "great!", but it's a such a deep part of sagyoba culture that it deserves its own philosophy.

Whenever you post a sagyo to the server, you'll find someone react to it within minutes, often within seconds, with the erai! emoji. I remember in the beginning, I would see all of these great posts and just think to myself "Pretty nice!", but I wouldn't have anything else to say besides that, so I stayed silent. However, I would always noticed a small emoji reaction pop out momentarily, often before I've even had time to appreciate the art I'm looking at. People are able to make amazing works of art and create beautiful compositions. Great isn't enough to describe the greater-than-great pieces that I see very often. But even for WIP works of art, or artworks from beginners, the erai emoji is still there.

This has gotten me into the habit of reacting erai! to every post. While I did say people don't sleep much, the server still gets quiet around 4am, and so I'm happy to be able to react erai! while others are sleeping. But the admin has lightning fast fingers. I'm not always able to compete with that if they're awake.

You may be thinking, what's the measure for quality if every single post is "erai!"? But I believe greatness is a function of the time and passion you dedicate to something. So if a beginner posts something that's at a beginner level, you might not consider it great. But the actions that the beginner took, working hard to produce that work (or sagyo), is what is really great. If we continue to encourage sagyo by calling it erai!, the quality will surely follow.

This isn't just a hypothetical statement, I've seen it happen in this server during the few months that I've been here. People starting new endeavours becoming masters before you realize it. There's a channel called #神絵師を目指す会, which is just a channel for improving at drawing. I think the translation would be roughly, "group aiming to be god painters". But honestly the members in that group have improved so much so quickly. They might already be god painters. I think the fact that this was driven by the admin also leveled up the drawing/painting skills of all other members, because the works of art I see are truly exceptional.

Closing Thoughts

I'm in love with this server and the culture around it. It's possible that I've completely misunderstood what the server is about because of my poor Japanese ability. Regardless, I plan to use these three philosophies in my Japanese learning moving forward. I believe that I'll be able to improve significantly within the next year. Hopefully I'll be able to write my advent calendar entry in Japanese next time. If you're a sagyoman and you've made it to the end, I just want to say, keep sagyo-ing on!