AsiaFile

I had a “stranger than fiction” experience while giving a lunch talk at Columbia University today.

My host at the Whitehead Institute, Gerry Curtis, a “lion” of academic experts on Japan, had to excuse himself from my presentation to meet with an academic colleague from Japan, who was briefly visiting New York city and wanted to meet with him.

When my presentation was over, Dr. Curtis told me what had transpired. The Japanese professor had walked out of my talk and insisted that he had to speak directly with Professor Curtis. “He said to me, ‘I don’t need to hear a conversation about hikikomori. I myself AM hikikomori.” Curtis recounted. “I go out of my home to teach my class, but then I come home, close the doors and lock myself in my room.”

He had cometo NYC to see if he could “feel good” in a place as lively as foreign as Manhattan…and so far he was succeeding.

Dr. Curtis is a classic political scientist, one who has never claimed to look closely at the unusual sociology of modern Japan…but even he was shocked by the revelation and the coincidence.

As Dave Barry might say, “I am not making this up.”