Japan's Lost Generation

Finally! Master's Thesis is available with direct link.

Awesome news!

I'm happy to report that the UMI/Proquest Dissertation and Thesis service has finally listed my Master's so that it's publicly available via the internet:

"THE REHABILITATION OF JAPANESE YOUTH WITH ACUTE SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL AT TAKEYAMA GAKKÔ, A HIKIKOMORI SUPPORT CENTER."

This should help those folks who often arrive at Japan's Lost Generation via google.com search or bing.com search on one of my older archived posts and then email me for more information and/or available research on hikikomori.

The links to useful research can be found on the right side of the blog under "My Published Research on Hikikomori", but here's a fast and easy direct link now to my thesis.

PS: thesis writing spammers who have been flooding my comments the past week hoping to link their questionable pre-written thesis sites should give up now. I filter comments. Normal comments get through, spam doesn't. Hmm. there's a potential paper right there...

~M. Dziesinski

Dissertation Prospectus...going ABD

I'm going to talk about some of the nuts and bolts of academics today. After all, you need a tool kit to perform proper research on issues like globalization and social change in Japan.

I've been prepping my dissertation prospectus for my Sociology PhD at the University of Hawaii over the summer. Got to have it done by the second week of Fall term classes so I can gain the coveted "All But Dissertation", or ABD status.

With ABD status, I can register for the all-important SOC 800 course, which counts as full time registration status but only costs the equivalent to one credit hour, roughly $500 as a in-state resident. Compare that to about $6,000 for a full load of 8 credit hours. Now, when a graduate student is "ABD" they are generally in the field doing dissertation research and need to pay for those expenses. Without ABD status, trying to do your field work and paying an additional $6000 a semester to your university to retain your full-time student status- even though you are elsewhere- is, well, kind of a hardship.

That's why getting ABD status is so important. Lower overhead expenses in the field. And to get ABD, I need to defend my dissertation proposal in first two weeks of upcoming fall term at UH. I guess a graduate student really doesn't have summers free. Should have learned that in the last six years.

In any case, I have my comps material as theoretical reference, a fairly clear thesis (more on that later), good research location planned, and a general idea (such as here, here, and here) on how to write a prospectus. But its not just the proposal for the dissertation itself, I also have to formulate consent forms and provide my qualitative interview guides to address the concerns of properly protecting human subjects.

Despite all the guides I have on the process, I feel like I'm missing something but can't quite figure out what.

Maybe it's my brain....

***

Updated 8-13-09

PS: to those thesis writing services trying to spam comments to this post and get their sites linked to my post, don't bother---

Your sites are an insult to those of us who work so very hard to learn our craft and become professionals. Besides, its kinda, what's the word, oh yeah, unethical to buy a prewritten thesis or dissertation. It's also amazingly stupid to expect your graduate committee to green light a thesis found from the bottom of a box of crackerjacks. They know your writing style, warts and all. If you aren't expelled immediately from your graduate program, you will have lied your way into an academic career. Way to start your pursuit of the acquisition of knowledge for the betterment of mankind.

~M. Dziesinski

Scholarships and the JET Program: Thinking about cause and effect.

Yes, I was effusively gushing about my experiences in the last post, but if you think about it for a moment, it is a really rare opportunity to meet the Emperor and Empress of Japan, heads of state, and a honor to be affiliated with the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship.

To be slightly philosophical here, scholarships grant graduate students a chance to study and fulfill their personal dreams and goals in ways that might be otherwise difficult or impossible. I know personally there was a great deal of trepidation and anxiety in the year leading up to my planned transition to do my PhD field research in Japan. Now, with scholarship funding, I can completely focus on the issues and problems surrounding my research and make sure I get the very best data and insights possible. Further, in my meetings with alumni of the scholarship, some of them career professors and administrators at the University of Hawaii, and I can see how pivotal the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship was in their early academic careers.

This is not the first time that a funding opportunity has marked a major shift in my life path.

When I was in JET as a Japan Exchange Teacher in Imabari CIty in Ehime Prefecture from 1997-2000, I was often 'whelmed' by the hectic teaching schedule, culture shock, and craziness of fellow JET teachers (and a certain Wiccan ninja). As months wore to years, I began to see the positive impact my classroom time had with Japanese junior high school students. One thing that kept me going as a JET was my teaching.

Even today, I often think about the relationships and interactions with people in terms of a rock causing ripples in a pond and those ripples crossing, bouncing, and spreading to other shores. I find it as both a centering and grounding perspective:

What you say and do effects everyone around you, so you should think about the cause and effect of your actions (and even inaction is in its won way action). And really the thing you have the most control over in this lifetime is your own actions. Exploring cause and effect between individuals, groups, and societies is perhaps one of the main reasons I find personal satisfaction as a researcher in the social sciences.

When a instructor walks into a room full of receptive students and begins to teach, that experience and knowledge can last a lifetime.Those students in turn teach their children and may even become teachers themselves in due time. While reality does not always follow the ideal, I think life always offers potential to touch other peoples lives in a positive way and that is what keeps people connected and, well, 'human'.

~M. Dziesinski

I'm a 2009-2011 2009 Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship Recipent!!!

*ahem* in my best Professor Farnsworth voice: "Good News everyone!"

I'm very excited to be able to officially announce that I am one of two annual scholarship recipients for the 2009 to 2011 Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship Foundation award at the University of Hawaii.

This is very generous two year scholarship with a great deal of prestige attached to it in Japan studies circles in Hawaii.

The history behind Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship dates back to 1959 when it was established in arrangements between the Japanese American community in Hawaii and the Imperial Household as a endowment to celebrate the wedding of then Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko. Over the past fifty years, 129 graduate students from Japan and Hawaii have become recipients of scholarship and have gone on to become notable scholars and professionals. Annually, two University of Hawaii graduate students and two graduate students from Japan are chosen as recipients. In addition to the incredible history attached to the scholarship for which I am now a proud recipient, scholars are also invited to the Japanese Imperial Palace for an audience with the Imperial Majesties during the period of their scholarship. From my understanding, the reason the name of the scholarship retains the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship even though they are now the Imperial Majesties of Japan is because the scholarship began as a wedding present.

This year, 2009, the scholarship fund is in its 50th year and as the scholarship was originally a wedding present, the Emperor and Empress of Japan are also celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. On the way back from a trip to visit Canada in July 14 to 16, the Imperial Majesties stopped in Honolulu, Hawaii for a reception. (Here is a very nice news series by local newspaper, the Honolulu Advertiser that follows the Imperial visit to Hawaii.) During their visit, there were three days of events related to the 50th anniversary of the scholarship and I was able to attend all three days.

On July 14th there was a small gathering for scholars and, as I was one of the new scholars in attendance, I was asked by the local Honolulu media to do several short on-air interviews. I was really taken off guard as I had just arrived to the function in a two-piece suit in 90 degree weather and was immediately asked to do an interview. Despite five minutes of chatting with me, I can see why only nine seconds was used, as I was a bit flustered and could have used a comb! Ha Ha. Below are some links to the news items and videos.

It looks like KHNL channel 8 in Honolulu pulled the video already which is a shame as it was the longer interview with me:

http://www.khnl.com/global/story.asp?s=10735281

If you have the patience to watch the full news cast for those two days you'll also get related news stories about the Imperial Visit in Hawaii (note- steaming feeds not Mac OS X friendly):

http://archives.khnl.com/news/2009/07/090714.html

http://archives.khnl.com/news/2009/07/090715.html

KHON channel 2 in Honolulu still has a video up and also a nice explanation of the history of the scholarship:

http://www.khon2.com/news/local/story/Scholarship-Recipients-Explain-Impact-of-Japanese/5MDuobLgXUOFOqa2JX-HPA.cspx

The night of the 15th was the biggest event when a dinner banquet was held for Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko and was attended by 1500 guests.

The really incredible part of that evening is that the Imperial Majesties met in a smaller reception with only the Crown Prince Akihito Scholars in attendance, which was about 60 or so individuals. While it should be expected for an event such as this, the amount of press and security was surreal. In contrast, even though my meeting with the the Imperial Majesties was brief they really do have an incredible aura of grace and calm surrounding them.

On July 16th, the Imperial Majesties departed for the Big Island and the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship Foundation held a day-long meeting in an academic conference format. Throughout the day, three panels filled with alumni scholars as presenters discussed the impact of the scholarship on their careers and personal lives. As the new scholar not yet starting my field research in Tokyo, I found it fascinating to listen to the details of their original scholarship research experiences as well as their current academic careers. And its a eclectic group: from NASA scientists to Noh performance professors.

~M. Dziesinski

PhD Comprehensive exams done May 2009, onward to Prospectus

Some other belated news to post.

I officially passed my PhD Comprehensive exams on Friday, May 8th!

It was a truly brutal five months of study to prepare for the week-long writing marathon and two hour oral defense, but now its done.

Now that its August and several months behind me, I can say I understand why it was a required step in the path to a PhD in the Sociology Department at the University of Hawaii. The required organization, planning, and follow through was a learning process, but after five months of 3 to 5 hours of daily reading of research articles on my comprehensive topic lists, I feel like its become hard-wired into my thought processes. So it didn't really function as a gatekeeping academic hazing required to gain entrance into the hallowed halls of learning, but worked more like reprogramming in order to learn the skill set necessary to be a productive academic that will be required to teach undergrad classes, publish papers in journals, and conduct unique research over the course of my career.

Several professors have said to me that they probably will never be as productive as they were that very intense week of writing up and defending the comprehensive exam, and to a certain degree, I concur with that assessment. After all, unless you are complete glutton for self-inflicted physical and mental punishment, I couldn't see myself willingly writing up another 80+ pages of cited, theoretically heavy material in the span of seventy hours over a seven day marathon. I think getting that mentally fried is enough for this lifetime thank you very much.

~M. Dziesinski

Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, Aversion, and Hikikomori at Anime Edit Part 2

Now that you have the background from part 1 of this discussion, let's continue with my analysis of hikikomori after a couple years of reflection on my field work in Tokyo.

In my usual overly verbose style I had this to say in the comments section of  March of 2009 Moritheil posted a blog article titled "Aversion and Hikikomori"  over on Anime Edit Blog:

"Having done ten months of research at a Tokyo rehab center for hikikomori I can tell you that there is nothing “cool” about youth who are actual hikky.

First the media scare on “Dangerous hikikomori youth” back in 1999 and 2000 and the recent the pop culture depictions have really distorted and glorified the whole hikikomori phenomenon.

The reasons or trigger that caused a youth to become hikikomori vary. They can be like ghosts, staying up all night and sleeping by day or they can seem completely normal except they won’t look at a person face-to-face. It can be heartbreaking to be around hikikomori who are recovering as you can sense their frustration and desire to be normal but they are locked into patterns of behavior that avoid contact.

The thing is, the label “hikikomori” was originally about the behavior of acute social withdrawal by Japanese youth, not the causes of it. The reason why a lot of Japanese may say hikikomori are unique to Japan is because of the different way such behavior is viewed in Japan by everyday people. In western societies there is a tendency to label a troubled person by a clinical condition such as depression, aspergers, agoraphobia, schizophrenia and so on. If a doctor diagnoses such a condition the parent will seek care at a hospital and or a drug regimen. In contrast, a youth in Japan suffering from any of those conditions or even bullying or stress from school who avoids social interaction will be viewed as a hikikomori.

Also hikikomori is not a black and white “condition”, perfectly fine people, even adults, may lose a job or have hard times and slip into being a NEET and then into a hikikomori.

As I do research on the topic, I’ve been contacted by people from all over the world expressing concern over hikikomori in their own country, including South Korea, Italy and most recently Poland. Because the word “hikikomori” is now so high profile I think people self-identify with being hikikomori rather than seek help and see if perhaps they might have medical or psychological condition."

moritheil asked me to elaborate and, well, I did....overmuch perhaps:

"Yes, what I found at my research site is that the rehab staff in the 1980s were treating youth with similar patterns of social withdrawal, but at that time, the kids were being called “school refusals”, tôhôkyohi. The more I’ve looked into trying to pin down a definitive pattern/cause for a static label hikikomori the more its like quicksand.

Hikikomori is different things to everyday Japanese- something to be slightly afraid of; its something else to Japanese clinics- who are medicalizing youth identified as hikikomori; and it is something again to youth who may view themselves as hikikomori- stuck and cornered in society, they may feel that a social moratorium as they see in the popular media depiction of what it is to be “hikikomori” might be an answer to their problems. It goes without saying that the label hikikomori internationally has its own flavors and permutations.

Of course as a social scientist, I’m sure a clinical psychologist might disagree with my interpretation of the situation with hikikomori, but in my own research experience, I found that the causes for a person to “become” hikikomori can vary. Hikikomori causation is a complex issue and is really hard to say in any absolute way that 50% of all hikikomori are depressive, 30% are avoidance behaviors, etc. In fact the staff at the rehab center would argue that the reasons for each hikikomori undergoing treatment there were unique. Further as a researcher, its impossible to quantify for various reasons (ever try to conduct a survey on people who hide from sight?).

As I said, some people have genuine chronic medical issues while others might just be stressed and initially seeking escape from daily pressures and family expectations- but they can all fall under the umbrella term of hikikomori- if they avoid social contact for six months or more. And there is a reason why the discourse on hikikomori focuses on the final behavior of social seclusion as it is easier to observe and identify than what spurred someone to become hikikomori in the first place.

You ask what might “drive one to become hikikomori”. Assuming the individual is rational as you say, I have seen several common ones (for people w/o preexisting health disorders). Let me go back to the 1980s to make my next point. When school refusals were identified within health circles, there were a steady number of cases to be sure, but when it hit the mass media (TV, newspapers, etc) there was a large spike in “school refusals”. The same thing happened after 1999, 2000 for hikikomori as the media raised public awareness via several sensational stories like the Osaka bus hijacking. Back then however, hikikomori were frightening and seen as mentally ill by the public (read/watch the BBC’s “Missing Million” to see what I mean). Thus reflecting the “public aversion to hikikomori aversion” you mention at the end of your article. (You may want to look into Japanese attitudes on mental and physical disability to see more about why this occurs in Japan)

Now, with hikikomori in pop culture and woven into stories as both protagonist and peripheral characters, being hikikomori might seem like a viable option for some people who can’t handle the daily strain of life. Becoming hikikomori can seem a viable choice for some people- the media has made them aware that this option, being hikikomori, is out there and exists, other people suffer from this condition…maybe I do too. Some people make the label “hikikomori” their own and choose to be hikky. Now, this is only one part of the hikikomori “population” and perhaps only a small portion, but I think it is important to consider as they may be the most vocal part of the hikikomori population, the rest avoiding social contact.

Here’s the catch: once many people decide to socially withdraw, become hikikomori, for whatever reason, be it serious emotional trauma or whimsy, certain patterns of behavior begin to settle into their lives. For one, they socially stagnate and may become night owls. Second, their lack of face-to-face interaction may mean they start to over-think the rare times they are confronted with another person. They may be fine in isolation for weeks or months but eventually something happens and they become trapped in hikikomori patterns and not sure how to break those behaviors.

Think about sensory deprivation chambers or the concerns space agencies have about the extreme isolation of a physically and mentally healthy astronaut in a small capsule that takes months to get to Mars. Humans are social creatures. The separation from groups of people and regular daily interaction will have its effects on any person’s psyche- no matter what the original reason a person may have undergone isolation. For individuals with pre-existing health conditions, like depression. Well, it would seem it just further complicates their situation in social isolation as a hikikomori."

~M. Dziesinski

Rediscovering a dormant blog

Back to work on the blog,

As I mentioned many months ago, this blog will be undergoing changes as I:

1) start the field research phase of my PhD,

2) begin living in Tokyo in September,

3) actually have free time to work on the blog

4) expand my research from hikikomori, freeter and NEET to other sectors of the young adult labor force in Japan.

While this blog has something going for in terms of longevity as a digital parking lot on the web,it leaves much to be desired in terms of regularly filling the lot with posts.

Between Typepad's new user interface and the program I use to to make the blog, Ecto, its pretty easy to post. Maybe as easy as Facebook now days. So I have no excuses in that department.

Also, with all the nifty new widgets that Typepad has now I think it will be interesting to see what I can do with the JLG blog.

~M. Dziesinski

Hikikomori Reasearch Update and Other Things

Greetings Fellow Travelers,

This poor poor blog has fallen into disuse over the past few years and for that I greatly apologize. Over that time I have received a fair number of emails expressing interest in my hikikomori topic and for updates of the blog.

I thank those people for your continuing interest. I have always known that my topic was very much a niche area, that my intermittent posts, and my verbose blog style meant I would have a very tiny readership...if at all.

I figured those with interest would stumble upon my blog and that's fine by me. However, I always meant for Japan's Lost Generation to be a sounding board for my research. As much of my research material was unpublished I thought it prudent to keep that close to the vest until such time I had some copyright protection.

This concern was borne out by people who have contacted me directly in the last few years and then have subsequently released several publications that have come out in the interim of my blog's downtime. They have obviously built on my work posted on my Lost Gen blog but make no reference to me. That kind of dampened my enthusiasm to continue posting my unpublished research on my blog.

That's fine I guess.

In part, its my fault or not being quicker in getting my hikikomori work out there I have been lapped by others on the track, had I gotten my hikikomori work into an academic journal in 2005, I would have been one of the first in the English language academia to address the hikikomori issue in social science circles. In part, it is due to others being more established in the field and finding it easy to dismiss the work of a graduate student. But when you find the core of your ideas in another person's work it can be a bit frustrating.

Again, live and learn.

Welcome to my 2009 blog, enjoy your stay.

~M. Dziesinski

Still Here

Hello all,

Spent the last few years neck deep in Sociology PhD coursework. Something had to give and so I put aside this blog for a time.

Where did I go?

I've gotten past my core courses these last two years and am now transitioning into my comprehensive reading phase of my degree at the University of Hawaii. Hopefully, I can get that sorted by the Spring 08 term. In the meantime, I'm furiously writing papers to submit for journal publication.

What about the blog?

The blogsphere has changed a great deal in the last two years. While I'm a regular reader of a great many blogs, I simply cannot hope to keep up with the 72 to 48 news cycle on the internet these days with my own blog. So I'm going to do my own thing. If you would like to read along on my ruminations and idle speculations, welcome and enjoy the ride.

Refocusing the blog's focus

Also, my blog's focus is a reflection of my academic research and that has not changed. It has expanded though, and I will be touching on various topics. Hikikomori are still an interest, but so are freeters, parasite singles. In fact the intersection of Japanese youth culture with a globalized Japan is all fair game.

I'll try not to write War and Peace every post and keep it succinct as possible, but I'm naturally verbose so it'll be a struggle.

What I would like to do is make my blog a spring board and resource for ideas on the topic of Japan's Lost Generation. I would like to keep it academic in nature, but I may dip into cultural observations to mix it up a bit.

It's been done

There are a few blogs out there on Hikikomori, Freeters, Japan's lost gen, etc, but many seem to be by journos and meant to provoke.

I'm going to try, try mind you, to be a bit different. I'd like to create an alternative discourse on the plight of these young people in Japan. Rather than just rely on second and third hand re-reportage on the topics, I think analysis of first person observations is more constructive.

Also, I'm seeing in my stratification research that while freeters have unique cultural features, it is not a unique condition for youth in advanced capitalist/ information and service based nations. There are NEET in the UK and twixters in the US that also are in a similar fix.

Feedback

I welcome comments, in fact I highly encourage them, but I can and will edit them if they are off topic, flammable, or ads. However, for the time being, I have no illusions— my blog will most likely get little or no attention in the blogsphere, kind of like that kid who is picked last during gym class.

Be that as it may, I'd like my blog to be a forum of discussion for Japan's lost generation. In that vein I'll be taking submissions and posting them. I'll hash out some rules later but for now keep 'em under 500 words. Just email them to me with "lost gen" in the start of the topic line of your email.

Till next time—
~Mike D.

'You have been accepted into the PhD program for Sociology'

...Those were the words I saw on a letter mailed to me last week from the University of Hawaii's Sociology Department.

YAY!

Do the Badger Dance!

I'm just finishing up my Masters in Japanese Studies and to get this news is most welcome.

Let me tell you, I've worked hard for three long years to get into the PhD.

It's strange though; instead of feeling like I won the lottery, it's more like getting a transfer to a new department.

I thought I'd be more ecstatic; that the world would glow with strange colors and be transcendentally brighter or something, but I guess that only happens in movies and with Psychoactives.

Don't get me wrong— I am looking forward to being in the Sociology department as it opens up some exciting doors for research in Japan. I'm already thinking to make Freeta the focus of my PhD dissertation (which includes hikikomori and Parasite singles). But, right now at the cusp of summer here in Hawaii it's just not real yet. (Have I ever mentioned what a beautiful place Hawaii is?)

I guess it goes back to that old adage that the wanting is sometimes more desirable than the having.

That lottery jackpot sure would be nice though...

The evils of Google's Image search on blog bandwidth

No, you won't find any more images of the Bleach anime or manga on this blog.

Not anymore anyway.

So if you got here by one of the various Google image search engines, sorry but I had to strip all references to images from my blog.

Why did I have to do this?

As much as I love google as a search tool, for some reason, two postage stamp size images of the Bleach anime that I used in an article series about anime and manga back in November or 2004 are being zeroed in on by Google.

This month of April, I started seeing a spike in the hits to my blog. Thanks to Typepad that hosts my blog, I have a bunch of neat tools on tap; one of these shows me who has been accessing my blog and from where. When it's a search engine, like google image search, I can see what key words were used to arrive at my site. A handy thing to see if your topics are getting notice on the web.

Anyway, I start seeing 300 to 500 hits A DAY and they are all coming from Google.com's various image search servers from around the world. And they are all pretty much like this.

'Great! ', you say; you are getting people to your website.

Not so.

Google image search is directing everyone to this one archive of my blog which in turn loads the entire J-Pop entry section, images and all.

I did a help ticket with the Typepad staff (awesome folks! They responded in hours and always had something constructive and helpful to add) and they suggested I rename the images or delete them althogether. They suggested that with either of those changes, Google's image servers would update and no longer point to my blog's two tiny thumb stamped sized images of Bleach.

Not so.

I first changed the name for two weeks and the traffic to my site from the image searches INCREASED. Then I panicked as my tiny bandwidth for my basic Typepad blog service for the whole month was eaten up in 5 days! Five days of Google directing searches for Bleach images to my blog.

Then I deleted the images. Still no difference— 85% off all access to my blog are searches for these specific two images of the Bleach anime that WERE 100 by 100 pixels in size.

Amazing isn't it?

Then I go to the Google search engine and type in “Bleach”. My former images are the number three result! ACK!

Now I realize that Bleach is experiencing a rapidly growing fanbase as the anime goes into season two on Japanese TV. It's one of my favorite anime series at the moment. However—

I was forced to upgrade my blog service with Typepad up to their medium service just to accommodate the bandwidth jump (and not get hosed with overage bandwidth fees). SO here I am paying DOUBLE what I used to and two days before the end of the month my bandwidth usage is up to 98%. That's 98% for my NEW increased bandwidth account.

Oh, I did update my blog and put a graphic banner up and change the layout some, but I am still miffed that the Google servers are STILL directing people to my blog for nonexisteant images and STILL sucking away my bandwidth.

The point of a blog is to get visitors. I know this. But what the Google image servers are doing to my blog is akin to hotlinking to the images. People going to my blog this way are only interested in one thing: an image of Bleach. Surely not my pithy analysis of Japan's social problems. If people were coming via normal google search and viewing my site, that would be fantastic. But this is not that.

Not at all.

Yes, Google can be a love/hate thing.

I love Google for research, but when you are the receiving end of a Google raid on a buried image in your blog with their viking longships and pointy swords, that love- well...

I hate you Google image search!

Update your servers! Where is that Google dance you hear about?

Right now, the only dancing Google is doing is on the future grave of my soon to be canceled blog account... if Google keeps this assault on my blog up.

There I've said it.

Here's hoping they have a clue.

Sorry, just feeling a bit ranty today about this.

Apologies

I must apologize for the long absence on my blog, but as of Feb 14th I became a published author and had to set up up a website for it. My book, Secrets of Japan, is horror roleplaying set in modern day Japan, blending H.P Lovecraft's mythos with traditional Japanese supernatural beasts such as Tengu, Oni and Kitsune. Hence the month long blog vacation while I furiously built my book's website. Also, due to the book's success, I've been asked to write some articles for other books and publications.

If you'd like to see what I've been doing: http://www.secretsofjapan.com

It's very different from what I do here on the blog, but then I wrote this book four years ago through a small publishing company, so it took considerable time before it saw the light of day. I was in a different head space four years ago, but I do enjoy fiction writing so I'd like to publish some genre fiction as my next project after my thesis.

In the coming weeks as I get over the fact I've finally gotten a book out after waiting four years, I'll get back to the business of Japan's Lost Generation. I've seen the latest media blitz on the so-called 'internet suicide epidemic' in Japan, and I'd like to deconstruct this phenom; right off the bat, I'll say how remarkably similar the media buzz on this 'epidemic' is to the hikikomori problem back in 2000-2001.

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

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. ]