Karen, Just a quick line to say thank you for your most interesting posting concerning Japanese problems -- and also your equally interesting, though very sad, doc attachments concerning the hikikomori phenomenon among many young men.
As a relatively unimportant aside, how is it that the bedroom of the Japanese offspring has become so sacrosanct that the parents can't enter it? Is this confined to male children only -- or just the the oldest male? (That is, is it a residual of the strong male dominance in Japanese society? If so, why can't the father enter the bedroom?) To us, this is all very curious. Stories often appear in our press about the similar Japanese phenomenon of those adult males who've been made redundant but who continue to pretend to go to work. (Incidentally, we have a similar case a few doors away along our road. We know of one young family man, an MBA and hitherto a high-flyer with a big income from a London merchant bank, recently dispensed with, who pretends to go to work [but stays in a friend's flat in Bath all day]. On dogwalk the other day I met his wife, collecting her children from school, and she seemed cheerful and stopped to chat in her usual way -- so it seemed to me that she doesn't know about her husband's deception yet. She's either a supremely skilful actress saving face or there's a tragedy looming. It's so sad.) Keith At 07:27 21/09/02 -0700, you wrote: >I don't know about the "getting high" part, but Japanese youth have pretty >much quit dressing up like Elvis and other 50s rockabilly's to dance in the >Tokyo parks on weekends. If you turn on the International Channel you might >catch a snapshot of their evolution to dance clubs of bleached-blonde males >dressed in baggy pants, rapping with chains on, accompanied by lithe >Japanese girls in tight pants, all to the hip hop beat. Japanese are still >chasing down the perfect persimmon in the market and some of them still go >to places where they can sit and meditate over the beauty of the autumn >moon, but they are doing it without their young people. > >The employment picture in Japan is still much worse than their parent's >generation: witness the rise of temporary agencies in Japan and the >increasing numbers of young college graduates that must use them. There is >an epidemic of depression and agoraphobic, mostly males who cannot cope with >the traditional Japanese work expectations, clinically depressed night owls >locked in their bedrooms refusing entrance to their parents, in need of >professional help to cope with the traditional demand that men enter the >fierce job market and sacrifice the rest of their lives to the capitalist >model of industry wedded to the Japanese heritage of feudal loyalty. (See >attached) >Attachment Converted: "D:\E-Mail\U-Net\Attach\Depression Simmers in Japan.doc" > >Attachment Converted: "D:\E-Mail\U-Net\Attach\Japans voluntary shut iins.doc" > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
