Japan's Lost Generation

A Hikikomori film- Left Handed, "Tobira no Muko"

English director Laurence Thrush and executive producer Takao Saiki released "Tobira no Muko" (Left handed) back in 2009 and the film now is due for an official release in Japan. The film stars a former hikikomori who attended Apple Tree school in Saitama prefecture for troubled youth unwilling or unable to attend school. The film depicts the main character's descent into social withdrawal and the various factors that contribute to his state as a hikikomori.

You can read about the film in greater detail on the English website for the film: Tobira no Muko

And here is a subtitled Youtube trailer for the film:

~M.D.

Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, Aversion, and Hikikomori at Anime Edit Part 1

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Image Sources: animecharactersdatabase.com

Whilst tweaking my Typepad account's new settings I noticed some hits to my site from Anime Edit Blog. I'm familiar with the blog from several years ago when I was more active blogging.

Back in March of 2009 Moritheil posted a blog entry titled "Aversion and Hikikomori" about how the humorous and often twisted anime series Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei , often abbreviated to SZS in internet discussions, portrays the hikikomori condition as a a type of extreme aversion via one of its characters,

Komori Kiri , 小森 霧, whose actual name itself is wordplay, 籠もりきり, on hikikomori, 引き籠もり. Most, if not all of SZS characters, have names that are Japanese word play on some eccentricity or neuroses and said characters are living embodiments of those quirks throughout each episode.

SZS often deals with serious or gloomy topics, which might be expected with the main character is named Mr. Despair, but it does add a touch of humor and parody to ordinarily heavy subject matter. Such as Mr. Despair's famous refrain: Zetsubou Shita!!!, "I am in despair!":

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In any event, coming across moritheil's post crystalized some thoughts about the interaction between the mass media and the hikikomori phenomenon that I have been seeing develop over the last nine years. In 1999 and 2000 the initial coverage on hikikomori entailed shocking crimes or behaviors attributed to hikikomori. The net effect of this media coverage was a moral panic in the Japanese populace about hikikomori.

Over the years, as hikikomori have become used as characters in popular entertainment the meaning and context of what it is to be a hikikomori has been distorted and morphed through the lens of mass media in order to suit the purposes of popular culture consumption. In some depictions in popular entertainment the hikikomori image has been softened to invoke sympathy and in others, such as Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, played up to humorous effect.

In effect, while the hikikomori condition still exists as a serious problem for a notable number of Japanese people in 2009, nine years after it came to awareness in the public eye, it has also been effectively co-opted by the mass media into a "safe" consumable commodity. Its interesting that the reaction towards hikikomori in Japanese society loosely follows the arc of youth subcultures such as Mods and Punks detailed in the works of Tony Jefferson and Stuart Hall et. al, Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain (1991).

~M. Dziesinski