Japanese Culture

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by aohige

.... is there a reason why Sankaku Complex neglects to link or reference its source for their articles?

The source is this.
http://shunkan-news.com/archives/7556

The context of this is, at an event held in Okubo Tokyo "Naked Loft" for "Young unattractive men who hates marriage, and want to speak out" the panel hosts urged the unattractive, single men in the audiences how marriage is pointless, and that they are single by choice. .

Oh, dear...

From the moment I read "unattractive", my answer would be: "Get yourselves a total workout in the gym and/or book appointments with estheticians who are paid for that, men. Then come back to give your opinion after you get laid."

This is exactly why Sankuaku Complex has ZERO merit on their tabloid bullshit.
The fact they neglect to source where their claims even come from, and in what context they were held.

When I sometimes get on their website, I have the same disgusting feeling as if I go and try reading The Sun. In fact, Sankaku really is sometimes far worse than The Sun.

[AnimeFan188]

Originally Posted by walkofshane

This just goes to show how values in Japan are changing in the generations. The attitudes towards marriage, having children, abortion, etc are extremely different than those that went before them.

Maybe the Japanese have been reading the World's Shortest Fairy Tale:

http://www.mgtowforums.com/forums/at...airy-tale-.jpg

[SeijiSensei]

Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

A lengthy BBC News report on the phenomenon including interviews with psychotherapists who treat it as a mental illness and the therapeutic methods they use.

Tamaki Saito was a newly qualified psychiatrist when, in the early 1990s, he was struck by the number of parents who sought his help with children who had quit school and hidden themselves away for months and sometimes years at a time. These young people were often from middle-class families, they were almost always male, and the average age for their withdrawal was 15.

It might sound like straightforward teenage laziness. Why not stay in your room while your parents wait on you? But Saito says sufferers are paralysed by profound social fears.

"They are tormented in the mind," he says. "They want to go out in the world, they want to make friends or lovers, but they can't."

Symptoms vary between patients. For some, violent outbursts alternate with infantile behaviour such as pawing at the mother's body. Other patients might be obsessive, paranoid and depressed.

When Saito began his research, social withdrawal was not unknown, but it was treated by doctors as a symptom of other underlying problems rather than a pattern of behaviour requiring special treatment.

Since he drew attention to the phenomenon, it is thought the numbers of hikikomori have increased. A conservative estimate of the number of people now affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one million.

The average age of hikikomori also seems to have risen over the last two decades. Before it was 21 - now it is 32.

That increase might mean that younger Japanese men are no longer as likely to become hikkis, but it could also happen with a relatively constant rate of "recruitment" and declining numbers of younger men. That graphic also shows that the population of Japanese males between 20 and 39 is about 16 million. If most of those million men Saito estimates come from this age group, that's about about six percent. Adding in the 40-49's raises the base to about twenty-five million, and reduces the rate to about four percent.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

By William Kremer and Claudia Hammond

July 4, 2013

FOR Hide, the problems started when he gave up school.

"I started to blame myself and my parents also blamed me for not going to school. The pressure started to build up," he says. "Then, gradually, I became afraid to go out and fearful of meeting people. And then I couldn't get out of my house."

Gradually, Hide relinquished all communication with friends and eventually, his parents. To avoid seeing them he slept through the day and sat up all night, watching TV...

Hide had become "withdrawn" or hikikomori...

Andy Furlong, an academic at the University of Glasgow specialising in the transition from education to work, connects the growth of the hikikomori phenomenon with the popping of the 1980s "bubble economy" and the onset of Japan's recession of the 1990s.

It was at this point that the conveyor belt of good school grades leading to good university places leading to jobs-for-life broke down. A generation of Japanese were faced with the insecurity of short-term, part-time work.

And it came with stigma, not sympathy.

"The opportunities have changed fundamentally," says Furlong. "I don't think the families always know how to handle that."

A common reaction is for parents to treat their recalcitrant son with anger, to lecture them and make them feel guilty for bringing shame on the family. The risk here is that — as with Hide — communication with parents may break down altogether...

For Hide, the journey to recovery was helped by visiting a charity-run youth club in Tokyo known as an ibasho — a safe place for visitors to start reintroducing themselves to society...

Hide has a part-time job. He thinks that by starting to talk again with his parents, the whole family has been able to move on.

"They thought about their way of life in the past and in the future," he says. "I think that before — even though they were out working — their mental attitude was just like a hikikomori, but now they're more open and honest with themselves.

"So, as their child I'm very happy to see them change."

BBC WORLD SERVICE

The above is my abridged version of the BBC World Service story on the hikikomori syndrome. The condition is undoubtedly well-known among AnimeSuki members, but the article does bring up some interesting new nuggets of information, especially those related to treatment and coping strategies, like the ibasho youth club mentioned above.

I highly recommend reading the full story. Even better, listen to the original radio documentary on which the text article is based. It's the last in a six-part series about mental health issues all around the world and yet another example of the BBC World Service at its best.

For my part, two things stand out in particular. Firstly, the passage above about how Japanese families and youth found it hard to adapt to the socio-economic changes that destroyed the "conveyor belt" stability of their lives prior to the 1990s. I can empathise with that to a certain extent, as I experienced a similar sense of dislocation during the same period.

Singapore didn't undergo the same problems as Japan at the time, but something definitely changed. The dot-com bubble happened, aong with the attendant upheavals wrought by the "information revolution". Up till then, it was the norm for the best and brightest students in Singapore to win prestigious civil service scholarships, attend the best universities in the world, and return to a fast-track career in public service. As civil service leaders, these highly intelligent and often idealistic youth would find ample opportunity to rub shoulders with the political elite — and to "change the world".

But the increasing sophistication of the new economy opened up new opportunities in other careers that promised greater rewards. So, within a generation, priorities changed. Where once we had a cohort of youth who believed in a socialist vision, we now have young men and women who are more likely to think first about fattening their bank accounts.

Looking back, I believe I was caught at the pivot point between two generations, two different worldviews. It was not a happy period for me.

My second point is less personal and more speculative. The BBC documentary touched briefly about conditions observed elsewhere in world with similar symptoms as those of the hikikomori. This raises a nagging doubt that has bothered me for a while, especially whenever I see AnimeSuki members talk casually about being "hikikomori" themselves. I suspect that some of it may actually be copycat behaviour, not unusual among the impressionable young.

That in itself may be another story altogether. I welcome your thoughts and comments.

[Haak]

Lol. Seijisensei just posted that above you.

[RichardFromMarple]

I spotted this on the BBC website earlier.

[Malkuth]

I read the article and it had a lot of inaccuracies, I hope the documentary itself is better... but my first impression is that they are trying to make popular correlation and present these as causes for the situation... pushing under the carpet the real problems that are not limited to Japan.

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

That graphic also shows that the population of Japanese males between 20 and 39 is about 16 million. If most of those million men Saito estimates come from this age group, that's about about six percent. Adding in the 40-49's raises the base to about twenty-five million, and reduces the rate to about four percent.

Bloody shocking hell! That is becoming a Greek tragedy, if I may use the term.

Just 16 million men in the prime of their lives over a population of 130 million, that's just damn too low and it looks even more worrying with the number of kids out there. It's one more reason to write up something new and fast about birthrate incentives to make up for that lost generation in the next one at the same time they invest money in mental health services (that also includes support for families) to get those hikikomori out of the house at all costs.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Haak

Lol. Seijisensei just posted that above you.

That's a crazy coincidence. I suppose bright minds think alike.

Judging from the timestamps, SeijiSensei posted his message while I was in the midst of editing mine. In any case, I'll leave my post as it is, as I was hoping to extend the discussion beyond the hikikomori phenomenon, which most members here are, in any case, already familiar with.

Originally Posted by Malkuth

I read the article and it had a lot of inaccuracies, I hope the documentary itself is better... but my first impression is that they are trying to make popular correlation and present these as causes for the situation... pushing under the carpet the real problems that are not limited to Japan.

Could you elaborate? I don't see what you mean by "real problems" being swept under the carpet. I felt the documentary did a fairly good job making several links, from family and social pressures, to the larger economic woes that overturned the working norms of an entire generation of Japanese.

For my part, my major quibble is with the tenuous attempt to describe the condition as a "mental illness". To the producers' credit, they did manage to get a Japanese specialist to clarify the point. In the documentary, the expert said it is not at all clear whether it's an "illness" that led to the withdrawal, or whether the withdrawal itself leads to an "illness".

[Malkuth]

@TinyRedLeaf: I will elaborate when I watch the documentary, the article only by itself is rather superficial for making my mind. As for the real problems, I was thinking about inaccessibility to education, exclusion to people of a certain background within corporations and the government, military-like practices in the workplace, social pressure to achieve pointless milestones in life that end up making it harder, and the almost complete marginalization of alternative lifestyles... most of these are not limited to Japan, but are prevalent to a greater or lesser extent in every country.

Some of the problems I see with the article are the direct link between ones inability to integrate in society with the hobbies that he/she has which themselves help him to retain some form of social life since society itself has already ostracized him. Also another very annoying point was the insinuation that hikkikikomori are more likely to become violent, while the few violent crimes that occur in Japan are from overworked and socially integrated members of their society.

I have more issues with the article, but as I said it might have been just the presentation and the documentary itself won't be another superficial hate-fest about something that the mainstream just "does not get" and wants to destroy it.

[SeijiSensei]

Personally I thought the presentation was pretty balanced and sympathetic, but then I don't live in Japan. I did not think the violence aspect was overplayed; they mentioned that the occasional young man has been known to attack his parents, but I didn't see hikikomori portrayed as a vast dangerous underground tribe.

Also the article itself doesn't mention any hobbies that I see; anime and manga are mentioned once in a sidebar. Are you talking about online gaming as a method of maintaining a "social life?" Do you see that as preferable to the therapeutic methods being used to help these people learn how to interact with flesh-and-blood humans? I certainly don't.

I think you are asking for the article to be a full-out assault on aspects of Japanese culture that you don't like. That's not what it is about, nor is it a likely subject for a journalistic article.

The other sidebar about women was rather intriguing. There may be many more girls and women in this group than we usually imagine. Saito, the psychiatrist, put the figure at 20-30% but an "Internet survey" by the NHK put the figure closer to 50%. (I don't put any trust in Internet surveys myself.) A researcher at the University of Glasgow speculated that "female withdrawal into the home seems so natural to Japanese society that women hikikomori may remain unreported."

[Malkuth]

About the sidebars, because I follow BBC online, they use the sidebars as bullet points or to provide context, and just throwing anime & manga there, along with sex crimes, while the article pretty much was irrelevant, and hardly verified this connection is a statement in itself. Add to that the western media lust to assault foreign to them cultures, and you can see why I am very apprehensive about what I am going to hear in the documentary itself.

These and having talked a little with a shut-in while in Japan, their depiction in popular media is generally very off target. I hope in this case they take their time and explain that hikkikomori are just an easy target for the society that creates them, and are irrelevant with otaku... oh! which is also oversimplified when defined.

EDIT: As a comparison, this guy has a very accurate and encompassing description about what an otaku is in a couple of minute (1:15-2:55)... this is where the BBC documentary about hikkikomori failed, they have no clear idea what they are, and confuse a lot of things that they want them to be.

[aohige]

Although there ARE social, and economical background to rising number of NEETs, IMO it's nearly dismiss-able to the biggest reason: because they can get away with it. Because the parents neglect to throw them out of their house, and ALLOWS lazy scumbags to leech off them, they take advantage of it... I mean, why not?

I chat with these ilk every day, the Japanese NEETs, and know for a fact that majority of them don't really have an excuse for why they bum out.

Of course, I'm talking about NEETs in general, and not just overall problem of shut-ins, which is often a mental illness case.
I'm rather unsympathetic to lazy young Japanese in general.

[Nerroth]

Apologies if there is a separate thread covering Japanese history, but a poster on another forum noted this BBC Radio 4 podcast looking at sakoku as was practiced during the Edo period.

[aohige]

It's basically a Nation-scaled Hikikomori.

[AnimeFan188]

Rubber-Suit Monsters Fade. Tiny Tokyos Relax.:

"For decades, Japanese studios dazzled, terrified and tickled global audiences with
monster movies and television shows featuring actors in rubber suits laying waste
to scaled-down Tokyos, or dueling atop miniaturized Mt. Fujis. The genre, known
here as “tokusatsu,” or “special filming,” helped take the Japanese film industry
global by creating such fabled creatures as Godzilla and Mothra, pioneering the way
for other fantasy genres like animé.

But now, in an era when lifelike digital effects have made the use of small models
and suited actors look quaint and kitschy, tokusatsu is rapidly becoming a thing of
the past. The last Godzilla movie shot in this style, the aptly named “Godzilla Final
Wars,” was released almost a decade ago, after a half-century span during which
the creature appeared in 28 films, sometimes every year."

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/wo...anted=all&_r=0

[Fireminer]

Oh, anyone have an idea where I could find statics about Japanese religion faith?

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by AnimeFan188

Rubber-Suit Monsters Fade. Tiny Tokyos Relax.:

"For decades, Japanese studios dazzled, terrified and tickled global audiences with
monster movies and television shows featuring actors in rubber suits laying waste
to scaled-down Tokyos, or dueling atop miniaturized Mt. Fujis. The genre, known
here as “tokusatsu,” or “special filming,” helped take the Japanese film industry
global by creating such fabled creatures as Godzilla and Mothra, pioneering the way
for other fantasy genres like animé.

But now, in an era when lifelike digital effects have made the use of small models
and suited actors look quaint and kitschy, tokusatsu is rapidly becoming a thing of
the past. The last Godzilla movie shot in this style, the aptly named “Godzilla Final
Wars,” was released almost a decade ago, after a half-century span during which
the creature appeared in 28 films, sometimes every year."

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/wo...anted=all&_r=0

Has it been that long since Final Wars? It seemed like just yesterday when I was watching it....how time flies...

[Urzu 7]

I see oni and youkai in anime and manga. What is the difference between oni and youkai? Oni are malicious spirits, right? Are all oni malicious?

[Fireminer]

Well, youkai is evil, while it's depend on the situation with oni.