News & Reviews
Isolation nation — Japan Struggles To Understand A Dysfunctional Generation
By Richard B. Dasher — Special to the Mercury News
Thirty-four-year-old Kenji (not his real name) has not set foot outside his mother's apartment in Tokyo for most of the last 20 years. He reads newspapers and magazines, enjoys baseball on TV, and is terrified that if he goes out he might accidentally bump into a neighbor or deliveryman. A long time ago, he "fell off the conveyor belt" of society's expectations, and now he does not know how he could face the outside world.
Kenji is one of more than a million hiki-komori, recluses who have allowed themselves to become cut off from normal social contact rather than adjust to the demands for self-deprecation and sacrifice that put "group" ahead of "self" in Japan.
In "Shutting out the Sun," Michael Zielenziger takes us on a journey that begins with hiki-komori such as Kenji that he investigated as Tokyo bureau chief for Knight Ridder and the Mercury News. He then proceeds through the dark side of modern Japanese society, politics and economics to arrive at an analysis of why Japan has had so much difficulty in adapting to the Internet age and globalization.
As Zielenziger points out, the hiki-komori are one result of a malaise that plagues present-day Japan. Other results include an epidemic of suicides, a declining birth rate as young women opt for brand-conscious materialism rather than traditional family roles, and increases in alcoholism and violence.
The account is frequently disturbing but most often enlightening. It also makes for important reading, as economic power and global influence shift toward Asia. How Japan reacts to the challenges outlined in this book will have implications for this side of the Pacific as well, since Japan is America's closest ally in the region and one of our largest creditor nations.
Zielenziger's examples show that the ostracism of a hiki-komori often begins around middle-school age with bullying, shunning or vicious teasing by an adolescent clique. In Japan, the power of such a group is unrestrained. Parents and teachers usually take no action and may even blame the bullied child, viewing it as the child's job to learn to adjust and fit in. If the child instead descends into seclusion and depression, the response of the family is to keep up appearances by ignoring the outcast. In some cases, direct communication ceases; meals are left on a tray at the bedroom door.
For working adults, the company replaces the teenage clique as life's dominant social group. The company, however, is not controlled by shareholders acting according to free market capitalism, but rather by the interests of an "iron triangle" of the biggest companies (especially banks), bureaucrats and Japan's ruling political party, the Liberal Democratic Party.
Using the voices of Japanese economists and politicians, as well as the work of other well-known experts, Zielenziger argues in case after case how the top-down, authoritarian nature of Japan's group-controlled social structure has left that country ill-prepared to face the challenges of globalization, rapid innovation, and the open flow of people and ideas.
He then digs deeper to find the roots of the protectionist tendencies and inability to change that permeates this system. In comparing the histories of Japan and South Korea, Zielenziger uncovers a surprising factor in the differing degrees to which Christian thinking has become woven into the social fabric of the two countries. Promoted by Western missionaries in both countries in the latter half of the 19th century, Christianity became widely accepted in South Korea but not Japan.
Zielenziger explains how the impact of Christian values can be seen today in the intense, widespread involvement of the civil population in political debate in South Korea, and in the willingness of that country's leaders to admit their mistakes and move forward with change.
In contrast, Japan's leaders have been unable to establish unambiguous accountability for the past, much less the present. The admission of guilt and failure will be necessary in order to implement the true structural reforms that Japan needs for success in the 21st century.
Zielenziger's focus on the authoritarian nature of Japan's group-based society sometimes needs to be balanced with more reference to the positive motivations that lead individuals to accept the authority of the group. Many individuals have successfully achieved what they see as their personal goals by working within this social structure. Moreover, it can become easy to forget that the unique social dynamics and values in Japan are problems not because they differ from more familiar Western thinking, but because they have yielded dysfunctional results within that society.
These weaknesses are compensated for by Zielenziger's vivid descriptions of real people, places and events, and by the clarity of his style and argument. The description of the luxury handbag mania around the opening of the Louis Vuitton outlet in Tokyo is particularly inspired.
The problems exposed in "Shutting out the Sun" will not surprise Japanese readers at all. There is widespread awareness in Japan that their country seems to be falling off the conveyor belt to success that they worked so hard to put into motion. In the highly integrated world economy, no one wins if this major player gradually drifts into hiki-komori-style isolationism. And the rest of the world will share responsibility for not caring about the outcast.
