SHUTTING OUT THE SUN: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger

Fifteen years after Japan’s economic bubble collapsed, a great mystery still surrounds this exotic, enigmatic nation. Why did a decade of deflation, economic underperformance and rising social dysfunction not lead to political, social or economic revolt? Why has Japan proven itself unable to adjust domestically to the rapid process of globalization taking place around the world, even though a few large corporations, which represent a mere ten percent of Japan’s total GDP, continue to excel in world markets?

Resolving this question requires examining not simply the unique economic structures of modern Japan. It also demands an investigation into the particular social and psychological architectures which ceased to function effectively after Japan entered the transition from a fine-tuned industrial power to the more treacherous terrain of the post-industrial world of knowledge-based industries, flexible production networks, and service-intensive commerce.

One method to unearth these deeper structures is to better understand a host of modern afflictions that uniquely inhabit modern Japan. Though Japan remains, by most metrics, a highly prosperous economy, it also suffers one of the world’s lowest birthrates – ten thousand more people died than were born in Japan in 2005, and Japan’s population will now shrink for the next thirty years. Japan also suffers the highest suicide rate for males among wealthy nations. Alcoholism and psychological depression are widespread, underreported, and not addressed by policy makers. Even more debilitating is the plague of social withdrawal or hikikomori, which affects more than one million Japanese young adults, who shut themselves in their rooms for months or years at a time, breaking off contact with school, with friends and the outside world. These social isolates remain utterly dependent on their mothers’ who leave food for their sons’ outside their bedroom doors. These isolates, mostly young men, are searching for identity and seeking self-affirmation in a society that still fundamentally negates individualism in its intense demand for social conformity.

Understanding hikikomori not only offers insight into the social and psychological makeup of modern Japan; its unusual construction of “social trust,” its distinctive cognitive strategies and the absence of ethical universalism in Japanese society. It also helps the world better understand Japan’s likely future: as a nation that gradually withdraws itself from a world it finds increasingly unstable rather than embrace the domestic upheaval necessary to help it regain its global competitiveness or to challenge China’s rapid rise at Asia powerful center.

About the author

Michael Zielenziger has written extensively about social, economic, and political trends in Japan, Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. He was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting and was also a contributor to two other Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The Mercury News. He is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and is a 2003 recipient of an Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council of New York.

Return to the main book page...