Japan's Lost Generation

ICJS Wakai Project Youth Conference: Youth Work in Contemporary Japan

I've had a busy summer in 2009, I thought my blog might be a good forum to discuss some events I attended as it relates to the focus of this blog.

The big event in June was attending and presenting at my second conference on my Master's thesis research topic, hikikomori. (My thesis is now available via the Proquest service as a downloadable pdf. You can find more details in a earlier post on the subject here. If you are attending a university, your institution should have a subscription to the Proquest service and you can get free access that way.)

The first conference was the 2008 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting (ASA) in Boston last summer in which I discuss and provide a free link to my paper as a PDF here. Actually the 2009 ASA Conference is being held in San Francisco August 8-11th. As much as I'd like to go this year as well, I've been pretty busy preparing for my dissertation research which starts in September, so I'll have to pass.

I was in Tokyo from June 25th to the 30th to present at Temple University's ICJS Wakai Project Youth Conference: Youth Work in Contemporary Japan. This is the third year the Temple University campus in Japan has held a Wakai Project Youth Conference. Last year the theme was youth and digital content this year its youth and work, which is my area of research interest, so I went ahead and applied to present.

A PDF of all the presentation abstracts and conference schedule is available here.

I was very excited to be able attend this conference and doubly so when I was selected to present on day two of the conference.

One reason was due to the fact that the presenters for day one of the conference were Mary Brinton (Harvard University), Genda Yuji (Tokyo University) and Kosugi Reiko (Japan Institute of Labor). As a researcher, I have cited their publications numerous times in my own papers and their work is who I go to first in order to get a solid quantitative picture of what's happening in Japan's contemporary labor markets. So you can imagine, it was really rewarding to hear them present in person about their research.

I should point out that a great deal of economic and labor related data on Freeters, NEET and hikikomori has been produced by the Japan Institute of Labor (JIL for short) over the last decade. The researchers there are primarily economists, but thier analysis on issues relating to Japanese youth labor and Japanese government policy is top notch. Even if you are a psychologist or anthropologist and looking at issues relating to specific populations of Freeter, NEET, Hikikomori, et.al., for which you intend to perform an ethnographic study on, it's constructive to understand the macro structural context of the national labor scene and Japanese labor policies in which these young Japanese find their lives situated within.

So, I found the Temple University conference very constructive on many levels.

Personally, it was the first time in five years that I had been in Tokyo, and was the first time in ten years that I actually stayed and explored Tokyo rather than just passing through to another destination. As with any big metropolis, some landmarks remain the same while the character of the areas around them morph into something totally new. Yoyogi, Akihabara (now nicknamed Akiba), Harajuku and Shinagawa to name a few areas that are familiar and yet, so very different from the late 1990s when I last lived in Tokyo.

Professionally, I met some fascinating people doing very intriguing research. I look forward to catching up with them when I set up shop in Tokyo in September. And so many anthropologists! Talk about culture clash. I had more than a few vigorous conversations about theoretical framing over beers. It was great fun. All in all, I was very fortunate to have gone to the conference.

I had heard that they may be interested in gathering all the presentations at the conference into an edited book. But that remains unconfirmed. In the meantime, here's an abstract of my presentation:

Building a Working Class Future: Rehabilitating Middle-class Hikikomori with Normalized Working-Class Expectations.

Michael DZIESINSKI

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Hikikomori are Japanese youth who shut out contact with society by hiding within parents’ homes for months or even years. During these long periods of isolation from traditional school and work environments, hikikomori lack the socialization needed for adulthood. Due to the established school-to-work system in Japan, youth with a history as hikikomori have limited options for reentry into society as middle-class adults. This paper is based upon primary field data collected over a ten-month period at a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan. Over the three years of this program, hikikomori youth are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized working class norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. This process of hikikomori rehabilitation also takes on the dimensions of gender and class socialization: the normalization of hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a more viable adult gendered working class identity.

~M. Dziesinski

A very good Research Article on Hikikomori

For those who have asked about further research materials on hikikomori.

First off, I would refer you to the bibliography of my last paper titled "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori". I have always found looking at the Bib of a good paper great groundwork for further inquiry. If you would like to use the sources cited from my last published paper you can download a PDF here .

Also, here is an outstanding research articles on hikikomori.

This is an excellent piece by Andy Furlong from the University of Glasgow that manages to tie together hikikomori, freeters and the current labor market issues in Japan.

Sociological Review, Volume 56 Issue 2, Pages 309 - 325, Published Online: 18 Apr 2008

Title "The Japanese hikikomori phenomenon: acute social withdrawal among young people"

Abstract:

Although rare in the west, in Japan and in some other advanced countries on the Asian-Pacific rim, there is a popular perception that there has been a significant increase in the numbers of young people who withdraw socially for protracted periods of time (referred to by the Japanese term 'hikikomori'). This paper describes the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan, considers evidence relating to its prevalence and examines views about the causes. I argue that the tendency to think of hikikomori as a homogeneous group characterised by psychological malaise is misleading and that withdrawal and disengagement can also be linked to changing opportunity structures. The collapse of the primary labour market for young people and the growing prevalence of a precarious secondary sector has led to a situation in which traditional and deep-rooted norms are undermined and young people forced to find new ways of navigating transitions within a highly pressured and rigid system. Under these circumstances, acute withdrawal often represents an anomic response to a situation where tradition no longer provides adequate clues to appropriate behaviour rather than as a malaise reducible to individual psychologies.

There are no direct PDF downloads I am aware of but it is available online via Wiley Inter-science for purchase. For those readers affiliated with a university or research institution you should be able to access a copy of the Journal Sociological Review for free via your library system.

Furlong is a good researcher and reaches a great many conclusions I did is, I admit much more sophisticated in his analysis. Also he had the advantage of research funding and many years of experience over me. I highly recommend his book:

Furlong, A. & Cartmel, F. 2006, Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, 2nd edn, Open University Press, Buckingham, UK.

FYI, I will be posting citations on the blog in the American Sociological Association (ASA) citation style using my Sente 5 Database (would the good folks at Third Street Software please, please publish an official ASA Bibliography Format? All I can find is a user created one in the forums).

~M. Dziesinski

The story thus far, or what the heck happened to this blog

The story thus far:

It began with a fatal hard drive crash a couple years back and the loss of all my archived material.   

I did manage to finally get logged back in after much email correspondence. But then the Qualifying Reviews for my PhD Sociology program at the University of Hawaii Manoa demanded all my time.

That finished and my brain completely fried, I thought I could get back to blogging. But soon after that the harrowing Damocles Sword of my Master's thesis deadline for my secondary degree in Asian Studies loomed. (Never co-enroll in two graduate degree programs if you want to retain your sanity) I found it difficult to find time for much besides panicked study.

Then over the summer of 2008 a paper submission for the 2008 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Boston was accepted for presentation, so I spent the summer preparing for that. (More on that paper soon).

During the Fall 2008 I was also busy with a great many things. Between applying for scholarship funding for my dissertation research starting the end of 2009 in Tokyo, Japan, I also managed to finish my Master's Thesis in Asian Studies and

But it never stops does it?

Currently I am preparing for my for my Comprehensive Exam which I plan to take the end of this Spring 2009 Term. I'll be busy with that this spring but now that my work on hikikomori is published I can post about it now.

Also as I start my research in Japan in the Fall I'll be using this blog as an anchor to friends and family ti let them know what I'm up to. Expect this blog to transform into current events on youth phenomena in Japan type at that point.

~M. Dziesinski