Japan's Lost Generation

The new Apple Mac mini and the iPod Shuffle and the Japanese Youth Market

Yesterday Apple Computer announced two new products at the San Francisco MacWord show.

They are the Mac mini and the iPod shuffle.

When I lived in Japan, I noticed that next to Sony consumer products, Apple has had a pretty respectable share of the consumer youth market in Japan.

This last year, in 2004, when I did my homestay in Kobe, I had brought my brand new 15GB iPod (at the time) with me as a way to kill the boredom of the long train commutes. The distinctive white remote and earbuds of the iPod always seemed to catch peoples attention.

Over the months of my homestay, I began to see more and more of those white iPod earbuds on Japanese commuters during my train ride. The new owners ranged from the junior high school age to even young salarymen. When the iPod mini was announced, even smaller than the standard iPod, you couldn't get in a train car without seeing at least one set of iPod ear buds (not including me of course).

The clean aesthetic design of Apple products, as well as the extreme portability of the iPod product line, seem to go over really big with Japanese electronics consumers.

If you look at the small size of the iPod shuffle and Mac mini as well as the really clean and simple designs, they fit the Japanese market to a T.

The price point is another consideration: With a $99 dollar iPod shuffle, that's going to put it around 10,000 yen in Japan; pocket change for the affluent Japanese youth market.

I can see young Japanese consumers buying three or four iPod shuffles and customizing them in the same ways that they do to their keitai, cell phones, as a means of personalization in Japan over the last few years.

They might do something as simple as have J-pop singer Ayumi Hamasaki's entire album collection on one iPod shuffle, and a collection of Glay's greatest hits on another iPod shuffle.

More likely, you'll start to see Hello Kitty stickers, sparkly stars, keitai straps, and purikura, print club pictures of the young person's friends and 'signficant other' adorning the iPod shuffle.

The lanyard that is included with the iPod shuffle is another stylistic choice that almost seems included specifically for the Japanese market. Cellphones seen hanging from lanyards in Japan are ubiquitous.

Check out this website in Japan that sells lanyards and straps for keitai to see what I mean. It wouldn't take much to start attaching these to an iPod Shuffle.

Going out on a limb here, but I think that both the iPod shuffle and Mac Mini are going to be really 'big in Japan'.

Here is the Apple Japan website.

Watch the MacWorld keynote here.

Note that all images are copyright Apple Computer.

SO starts the Spring Semester

Well, the Spring semester officially starts here at the University of Hawaii today.

Tuesday is the first day for me anyways, as I have no Monday classes.

I'm a bit crazy busy so my prose will be terse this week as I struggle with installing my copy of SPSS for my statistics class and various other fun stuff, but here's a good news site on the daily happenings in Japan:

http://www.japantoday.com/

Mike

Hard Data on the Hikikomori- links to good Japanese sites

Here are links to several valuable Japanese sites that provide more reliable hard data on hikikomori than the secondhand reportage of the BBC and Asahi articles and their like on hikikomori which have been floating around the internet for the last four years.

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This first set of links are to Japan's Ministry of Health,Labour and Welfare's 2003 guidelines on hikikomori. Translated, it reads:

“Isn't that a hikikomori?”
A pamphlet intended for general questions about “Social Withdraw”
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/houdou/2003/03/h0303-2.html

“Guidelines for returning 'hikikomori' within the 10-20 age bracket to activities preserving mental health .”
Guidelines for dealing with 'Hikikomori' (Notice that this is the Final Version to be drawn up.)
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/2003/07/tp0728-1f.html

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This site is interesting also. The title, translated into English, is: “ Center for the Health of Young People”.

The topic of the section I have linked to is:“Hikikomori and Childcare Anxiety”

You'll want to stick to the six light blue colored topics in the middle of the page. (The dark blue topics are about 'childcare anxiety', the yellow are “community topics”.)

Translated, the left column, from top to bottom, is:

Hikikomori?
What kind of condition is 'hikikomori'
An introduction to the definition of 'hikikomori'.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-teigi/h-teigi.htm

Hikikomori Q & A
Common questions and inquiries,
Answered by psychologist Dr. Tamura.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-qa/h-qa.htm

“Hikikomori Statistics”
The resulting changes in participants of the Center for the Health of Young People's consultation activities in relation to 'hikikomori'.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/tokei/tokei.htm

And the three in the right column are:

For Families coping with (hikikomori)
A page on the method of supporting a family's approach to the situation of a 'hikikomori' (in the family) as well as directing attention towards the way the environment (is at home).
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-kazoku/h-kazoku.htm

From every standpoint
Father, Mother, Specialist; visiting the position of each respectively.
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/h-column/h-column.htm

An introduction on actions to cope with (hikikomori)
An introduction to useful activities on ways a family can continually keep at a hikikomori by the Center for the Health of Young People
http://www1.biz.biglobe.ne.jp/%7Eskc/katudou/hikikomori/taiou.htm

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For translation help:

The body of the text for all of the links above are in Japanese, so for the linguistically challenged, try plugging them in here:

Jim Breens WWWJDIC Server

Just cut and paste the url and see what that gets you.

Also try here:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/

And here:
http://www.worldlingo.com/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

...Though I find the translations by the last two not so useful.

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Finally, here is NHK's official site on hikikomori. Very fluffy bunny:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/hikikomori/

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Well, this post got a little longer than I intended, but it is pretty useful stuff so make of it what you will.

[If my translations are bad, well... that's why I'm training to be a sociologist not a linguist! If anyone is so inclined to provide better translations or even offer to translate the two Ministry of Health articles in English, I would be more than happy to host those translations on this blog and provide full credit to those who did the work. I would link them as PDFs on the left side of my blog under research links (Plus, you would make my life infinitely easier!). There is too little solid information on hikikomori in the English language. Currently, I have a half dozen books on the topic in Japanese, and if I had the resources (and natural language ability), that would be one of the projects I would be doing right now. It's a shame really, as that would be an excellent endeavor to undertake. Any takers?]

Searching for hikikomori in Japanese- what's it look like?

Note the graphic appearing in this entry to your right displays the two ways of rendering 'hikikomori', social withdraw, in Japanese. I have included it so if you ever have the desire to brave the world of Japanese web sites searching on the topic of hikikomori, you know what you are looking for (as for the rest of the web page in Japanese, well, you. are. on. your. own. *GRIN*).

1. The top version uses the verb 'hiku', to pull, rendered with the kanji or Chinese ideogram for it, combined with 'komoru', to retire, in the cursive script of Hiragana. (Hikikomori is Lit. 'to pull within and retire'.)

2. The second version is the entire word rendered in the cursive Hiragana script of Japanese.

3. The bottom line is the word 'hikikomori' in Romaji, Japanese written in the Roman Alphabet, hyphenated to denote the break point of each syllabic character of the Hiragana in the line just above it.

I'm not going to use this post to provide suitable search engine sites for Japanese but, if you want to try a search, here's a few:

http://www.google.co.jp/

http://www.amazon.co.jp

Hikikomori: Some diagrams for your edification

Today, rather than write too much (and maybe bore you), I'm going to post two diagrams I made explaining the causes and development of hikikomori. As usual, if you use them in your own works please be courteous enough to properly cite them as originating from me.

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Hikikomori are NOT Violent PART III:

Public attention to the previously hidden hikikomori problem is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Bringing public attention to social withdraw in Japan has been a mixed blessing according to those I interviewed at Takeyama Gakkoh.

Several of the senior staffers, who have been doing their job for almost two decades, say that they began to get their first cases more than ten years ago—long before it was called 'hikikomori' in 1998 or there about. Back then, social withdraw was a problem within families.

In fact, some of the Takeyama staff believe that social withdraw is nothing new and may go back fifty years into Japan’s past (probably coinciding with the pressures of the Post WWII school system put in place in Japan during the occupation). It wasn't until Dr. Tamaki Saitoh coined the word ‘hikikomori’ and the ensuing media frenzy that things changed dramatically for the socially withdrawn youth and the families of these children; before then, the public had no idea, but after 'hikikomori' became a household word, parents of hikikomori children became ashamed of their children and sought to hide them from public scrutiny. Perhaps letting the problem fester in the home longer than they would have years previous.

If the spate of violence by so-called 'hikikomori' could be attributed to anything in the years immediately after the new high profile of the 'hikikomori' issue, it might be blamed on the fact that parents were too ashamed to come forward and seek help for their socially withdrawn child due to all of the new publicity attached to the phenomenon. And so, tensions within such families reached a boiling point and sometimes escalated into physical confrontations between parent and child.

According to one leader in the hikikomori support industry, a Mr. Sadatsugu Kudo, who deals with these youth on a daily basis and who runs Tame Juku for socially withdrawn children in Tokyo, believes that it is erroneous for people to associate the hikikomori phenomenon with cases of crime or mental illness, “ . . . true hikikomori by definition do not have the wherewithal to venture into the world to commit crime”. And despite these high visibility incidents attributed to shut-ins, some experts point out that violent outbursts by hikikomori “are rare. Hikikomori are more likely to suffer from lethargy or suicidal depression”.

My field observations agree with these conclusions. The only aggressive behavior I EVER observed at Takeyama Gakkoh was very late at light, like two or three in the morning, where a socially withdrawn student would pound their fist or foot on the wall or floor for a stretch of time. This I view as a cry for help or frustration at their predicament, not some urge to 'hurt someone'.

Sorry to rant so, but these two misconceptions about socially withdrawn youth in Japan really get under my skin.

Hikikomori are not violent and it is highly doubtful they are one million strong.

[Again, if you want a detailed argument on these issues, please download my research paper on the topic in PDF form. ]

Hikikomori are NOT Violent PART II: Blame the Press!

As discussed in my previous post, here are two incorrect assumptions about hikikomori:

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1) That hikikomori are violent.

2) That there are a vast number, one million, young hermits hiding in their rooms in Japan in a mounting crisis.

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And yet, BOTH of these misrepresentations of violent hikikomori and being one million strong continue to float around the net and in the mass media.

I really wish that someone in the media would actually do some research rather than rehashing inaccurate statements on hikikomori made over five years ago.

Do you know why both of these fallacies continue to be propagated as discourse?

Because sensationalism sells so much better to put forth an idea. And lets be honest, youth who are secluded in their homes are hardly going to be able speak out against whatever the press decides to report about them. We have the roar of the information overload of the press on one side and an empty field with chirping crickets on the other. Whose side of the story are we going to hear the loudest ad nauseam?

What's in a name?

For the time being, let's assume that the hikikomori prognosis of social withdraw has a kernel of commonsense truth and condition is, in some respects, legitimate. By living within the assumed 'definition' of hikikomori it will allow an understanding of the mindset of those imposing the classification.

How many hikikomori did you say?

When the hikikomori problem was first widely publicized, demographics of hikikomori victims suggested it to be a youth based 'illness' which also appears to primarily afflict young males. Several media resources (Asahi Shimbun, BBC, Japan Times, et al.) were forwarding psychiatrist Tamaki Saito's theoretical estimates that between 500,000 to over 1,000,000 Japanese male youths aged fourteen to twenty years were suffering from the hikikomori condition as evidenced by their dropping out of active participation in society and sequestering themselves into the social safety of isolation in their rooms. According BBC's Phil Rees who uses Saito's estimates, one in ten Japanese youth today suffer from the hikikomori syndrome.

Media sources seem to be improperly analyzing the data and the scope of the problem, for if the variously quoted Saitoh statistics of 500,000 to 1.2 million male hikikomori shut-ins from the 14-20 age group is reasonably correct (Larimer 2001, Rees 2002, Secher 2002, Tolbert 2001), then the pervasiveness of hikikomori phenomenon in the Japanese population is disquieting.

Population census data collected by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunication (2000) provides an illustrated population pyramid. Adding up all the males in the 14-20-age bracket elicits a total population of roughly 4.2 million males in that combined gender and age demographic in Japan. What this means, is if over 1 million Japanese aged 14-20 indeed suffer from being hikikomori, then 20 percent of all adolescent males in Japan, and approximately 1 percent of the population, are abstaining from participation in Japanese social institutions!

If Saitoh's number of 500,000 is even a remotely accurate appraisal, then Japanese society as a whole is in dire peril in the coming decades for as Saitoh points out:

“I think it is dangerous for Japanese society because such people never work or pay tax,” he said. “We might be able to rescue some, but half a million will stay withdrawn from society for 20 or 30 years. We could end up supporting them for half a century.” (Watts 2000)

If the outside observer were to accept Saitoh's assessment on the scope of the hikikomori problem in Japan today, it would mean that a notable proportion of the next generation of the Japanese workforce has already dropped out of the system and Japan can expect serious labor shortages as well as verging on a welfare state in order to support a half million non-productive members of society over the next fifty years.

May question to you, the reader of this blog, is does this socio-economic apocalypse of Japan as predicted by Saitoh sit right with you?

I sure have problems with it.

[Again, if you want a detailed argument on these two issues, please download my research paper on the topic in PDF form. ]

Hikikomori are not Violent! Part I

During the holiday break, I was checking links to my blog, I have noticed that many who first across the topic of hikikomori on the internet hit upon the BBC report, “Japan's Missing Million” as well as other news items that came out in 2000 and 2001.

I must admit that, among other things, the BBC report was one of the first articles that encouraged me to do research on hikikomori—but not for the reasons you might at first believe.

What drew me to the hikikomori topic is that something was fishy about the BBC report and those other news items by the western press stationed in Japan in 2000. There are two ‘facts’ on hikikomori that this BBC report and others in the western media appear to be simply regurgitating what was being said about hikikomori in the Japanese media of the time:

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1) That hikikomori are violent.

2) That there are a vast number of young hermits, over one million, hiding in their rooms in Japan in a mounting crisis.

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After my field research at Takeyama Gakkoh it became apparent that accepting both of these discursive beliefs on the issue of hikikomori, if not outright fallacies, are at face value very dangerous. To believe these two items as fact distorts the situation surrounding hikikomori and puts one at a great disadvantage when trying to understand what is really going on in Japan with it’s youth. And people, believing this hype, are less likely to venture forward to help these poor souls.

Here's why:


1) Associating violence with hikikomori is the fault of the mass media;

Violence and its shock value sells papers— aberrant cases of a FEW individuals who might have been classified hikikomori but were more likely mentally disturbed hit the headlines, from there the association between violence and social withdraw became forever linked in the minds of the Japanese public.

2) All of the reportage on 'Japan's missing million' in the various English language articles on the topic of Hikikomori cite the same source, one single person as the quote for this 1,000,000 statistic, that of Dr. Tamaki Saitoh. He is the very psychologist who 'coined' the word 'hikikomori' and subsequently made a career out of publishing one book after another on the topic.

As a researcher, I give him every benefit of the doubt and have spent two years of my life trying to verify his 'definition of 'hikikomori' through direct, in the field and on the ground, field research at a location that treats socially withdrawn 'hikikomori youths'.

However, after looking at statistics put out in the year 2000 by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Labor, the cynical side of me questions Dr. Saitoh's motivations for quoting such a large figure of one million as the number of hikikomori today in Japan. I have serious doubts that this is anywhere near an accurate accounting, as according to Ministry stats as well as other health officials, the population of hikikomori is probably closer to 50,000 young men—and even if you double that to include the number of young women being mis-identified as Parasite Singles, that's 100,000 Japanese youth. 1/10th of Saitoh's estimates and nowhere near the epidemic portrayed in the press!

[I'm not going to belabor the point too much more here. but if you want a detailed breakdown of the statistics, please download my research paper on the topic in PDF form. Discussion begins on page 8 of the paper dealing with the problem of the 'one million missing' estimate by Dr. Saitoh.]

Akemashite Omedetoh Gozaimasu!

I want to wish everyone a happy new years!

I want to thank those who took the time to visit my blog last year and hope to make it more interesting for everyone involved.

The year of the Rooster is upon us, are you ready for it?

Well, here's hoping everyone had a great holiday!

Best,

Michael Dziesinski