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Miami Herald – November 5, 2006 -- In Japan,
making the world go away; A Journalist zeroes in on hikikomori,
young Japanese who cannot bring themselves to conform with their
society. -- By Janice Nimura -- SHUTTING OUT THE SUN: How Japan
Created Its Own Lost Generation. -- In his trenchant examination of
declining, post-bubble Japan, Michael Zielenziger has found an
elegant but oversimplified metaphor. During his seven years in Tokyo
as a bureau chief for Knight-Ridder Newspapers, he stumbled upon a
phenomenon: hundreds of thousands of young people, overwhelmingly
male, have retreated to their bedrooms and refused to come out,
sometimes for decades. Neither conventionally depressed, agoraphobic
nor schizophrenic, these hikikomori, or socially withdrawn people,
are often highly intelligent and painfully aware of the failings of
the society they have rejected. Perhaps they were bullied at school,
perhaps unable to keep up with expectations. Whatever the reason,
they have found themselves incapable of submerging their true selves
beneath the surface of Japanese conformity...
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San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, October 17,
2006 -- 'Sun' shines a light on Japan's struggles -- By Darrell
Hartman
A modern Japanese lexicon: Karoshi: death from overwork
Kireru: to experience a sudden fit of violent rage
Tatemae: false face; an adopted demeanor or attitude that hides true
feeling.
Asia scholar and former Tokyo journalist Michael Zielenziger returns
often to this hit parade in "Shutting Out the Sun," his grim,
unsparing portrait of contemporary Japan. The nation that rose from
the ashes of World War II to challenge America for global economic
top-dog status...
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Wall Street Journal – September 26, 2006 --
Society on the Edge Of a Nervous Breakdown -- By EMILY PARKER
-- The Japanese language has its fair share of colorful -- and
revealing -- words. Hikikomori: a person so alienated from society
that he literally never leaves his home. Futoku: a young person who
refuses to go to school. Parasaito: a "parasite single" or young
working adult, usually a woman, who prefers to live at home with her
parents rather than marry or start an independent household. Such
personalities play a prominent role in Michael Zielenziger's
"Shutting Out the Sun," a book that delves beneath Japan's glossy
surface and uncovers...
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Booklist – September 15, 2006 -- Zielenziger,
Michael. Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost
Generation -- Sept. 2006. 352p. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $24.95
(0-385-51303-8). 305.8. -- At the end of the 1980s, Japan’s future
seemed bright. A leader in the technological arena, Japan seemed
poised to become the world’s next superpower. Twenty years later,
that promise has faded and the once influential nation is in crisis.
Journalist Zielenziger, who has lived in Japan for 10 years, set out
to discover why. Much of the focus of this engrossing, comprehensive
work is on the clash between older and younger generations, and on
how the former’s inability to let go of tradition...
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Publishers Weekly – July 17, 2006 -- Shutting Out
the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation -- MICHAEL
ZIELENZIGER. Doubleday/Talese, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-385-51303-8 --
After its 1990 economic crisis, Japan entered a period of stagnation
and has yet to recover. Although at first limited to finances, this
depression slowly spread to the country’s political system as well
as its national consciousness. One extreme example of the problem is
the more than one million young men who have given up on school or
employment, spending their days in their cramped...
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Kirkus Starred Review -- July 15, 2006 -- SHUTTING
OUT THE SUN: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation -- An
incisive, well-written account of Japan’s recent social and economic
malaise, including a frightening portrait of the nation’s hikikomori:
disaffected youths who lock themselves in their rooms for months or
years at a time as a way of coping with life in a society that
denies them self-expression. Visiting scholar at Berkeley’s
Institute of East Asian Stuides, Zielenziger was puzzled by Japan’s
seeming inability to recover from its economic slump when he began
his seven-year stint as Tokyo bureau chief for Knight Ridder in
1996. Then he met some of the more than one million socially
withdrawn hikikomori...
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