(2) In 2002 the BBC aired a special taking the line that hikikomori was a syndrome peculiar to Japan. Numerous UK viewers protested that their children or they themselves fit this “uniquely” Japanese pattern.

(3) Korea has a higher suicide rate and a lower birth rate than Japan. The gap between those with secure jobs and good benefits and those with insecure jobs and no benefits is much larger than for Japan. The government has recently been calling attention to the alcoholism problem in Korea.

I have lived off and on in Japan for thirty-six years with various periods in the US and Britain. To be sure, Japan has its social problems and its nut cases, but the social problems are much less severe than they are in either Britain or the US. Teaching sociology to Japanese college students (in Japanese) on a daily basis and having two young boys (four and seven) growing up Japanese, I like to think I know a thing or two about this country.

Although Zielenziger does not describe anything that does not exist (other than the one million hikikomori), the patterns he describes are at most of minor significance and are hardly peculiar to Japan. (“Parasite singles” can be found in many countries.) I see this book more as a celebration of an idealized America (*) than an accurate depiction of Japan – Americans may not know how to make automobiles that people want to buy but American kids don’t sit at home and stare at the wall. (He ignores the American kids who instead of founding companies sell crack, hold up liquor stores, and help to give the US a prison population of 2.1 million – real millions unlike the hikikomori.)

EHK

(*) In his public appearances Zielenziger has repeatedly contrasted “Japanese” with “Americans in Marin County [California]” – one of the most affluent counties in the US and one of the least representative in terms of income, education, crime, and ethnic mix.

Bearing in mind what you wrote, I have to wonder if maybe the United States’ victory over Japan in 1945 had something of the “poisoned chalice” about it. The United States had been able to reduce the Empire to ruins, of course, which wasn’t a good thing materially for the Japanese people in the short run. But over the long run, the Japanese may have learned a good lesson– that prosperity is best achieved through trade, not bloody conquest– but followed what ultimately was a bad example: the United States as it was in 1945. The Japanese naturally wanted to emulate their conquerors, but learned (wrongly) that the way to power and prestige was to insist on “mass”– big corporations, big government, big what-have-you– which ties in neatly with what seems to be a Japanese fetish for conformity. It’s only since our own (here in the U.S.) fetish for “bigness” (what I call Political Taylorism, after Frederick Taylor) led us to some bad times in the ’60s and ’70s did we start to abandon it, leading to the good times (economically, anyway) that we’ve enjoyed for the last quarter-century or so. Alas, Japan is still stuck in the ’50s, or even the ’70s, and can’t find its way out, economically or socially. And the poor hikikomori are caught in the gears of this machine that is stuck in neutral.

Just elaborating on Elliot’s intervention: consider the fact that the notion of being an individual professional in Japan is still far from being engrained, for a number of reasons. In the West, you would find little problem in justifying hiring someone’s services because she is really good, period. You know the person is intelligent, well-prepared, hard-working, and so on, and this is pretty much all there is to it. But in Japan, this is far from being enough. You must have a group badge in order to get you in: coming from a well-known company, or family, or university. It is like an insurance of sorts: “that association really educates its members, so this individual must be ok as well”. But in order to get the badge you have to go through all that described in Mr. Zielenziger’s book, and it is far from pretty. It gives a whole different meaning to the expression “attention to detail”. (Anecdote: a colleague was once called by her boss and asked: “Are you wearing perfume?” She was not, but had the day before, a Sunday. “Stop wearing perfume! Perfume is just for your personal satisfaction! It is inconvenient to other people!” That can be quite disturbing if done in front of an audience. It also reminds me of Hannibal Lecter.)

But worse is, if you can’t adapt to it, you’re not out. They will keep you in, but will continue hammering you until you fit or break. This brings a sense of despair that is just too appalling for some on a generation of Japanese that began to be taught that they don’t have to kill themselves in order to survive. They can afford to break.

All of this just fills me with admiration for the young generation of entrepreneurs who have recently been able to challenge these structures and find their own niches in Japanese society. Nevertheless, the arrest of the best known representative of this generation, Livedoor’s former CEO Mr. Horie, remains as a warning: regardless of the merit of his arrest, and well before his prosecution, the Japanese media was all out trying (and succeeding) to sell the idea that being young and ambitious (as opposed to young and diligent) was against good morals. If Japan is to find consistent growth within its own economy, historically, it is quite likely that such growth will come from those – young or old – who dare thinking and living outside the box. If hikikomori’s are a social problem, their antithesis, the Akihabara-zoku, or “tribe from Akihabara”, are the new movers-and-shakers. The Japanese version of trekkies, these exotic figures are the underlying drivers and market for videogame and anime development, robot research, “maid-cafes”, and every other new fad that puts Japan under the spotlights of trend-hunters.

Will it be enough to warrant for stable growth? Hardly. But the fact that established Japanese economists are ready to concede that this is a force to be taken seriously shows that Japan may be ready to accept the contribution of (very unique) individuals after all.

Christianity arrived on Japanese shores in the 1550s in the form of Catholic (Portugese?) missionaries. The religion caught on pretty rapidly, but the Shoguns (perhaps from whispers in their ears from the Protestant Dutch? I don’t remember) got the idea that Christianity was ultimately incompatible with the Shogunate, and so Christianity began to be first discouraged, and then finally brutally suppressed, culminating in some pretty ghastly massacres in 1637-40. Afterwards, Japan was officially Buddhist and Shinto, with Christian missionaries only grudgingly re-admitted about the time of the Restoration, circa 1870.

Between centuries of Shogunate-era anti-Christian propaganda and furious post-Restoration boosterism of Shinto (ending only in 1945), modern Japanese may feel that Christianity is somehow “un-Japanese”, even unpatriotic, much as many Americans are a bit uncomfortable with seemingly-goofy religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.

My two cents’ worth…..

The economy and society have become too complex for this structured approach to work. There are far too many permutations available today, and the huge number of real world possibilities exhausts the structured society’s ability to catalog and track them in an orderly manner.

Who are the hikikomori? They are the guys who desperately want a stuctured place but can’t find one. They can find a job, but where does that job fit? They are terrified of being unconnected, so they hold onto the family connection. Unfortunately, as the hikikis grow in number, they really are becoming a recognized niche in the structured social order. They have succeeded. (And when their parents die…)