Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage Departures)

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage Departures)

   The world's second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America as the leading global economic powerhouse. But the country failed to recover from the staggering economic collapse of the early 1990s. Today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends, notably a population of more than one million hikikomori : the young men who shut themselves in their rooms, withdrawing from society. There is also a growing numbers of “parasite singles”: single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children.    In this trenchant investigation, Michael Zielenziger argues that Japan's tradition-steeped society, its aversion to change, and its distrust of individuality are stifling economic revival, political reform, and social evolution. Shutting Out the Sun is a bold explanation of Japan's stagnation and its implications for the rest of the world. “Offers a glimpse at an uneasy nation suspended between two worlds.” — The Wall Street Journal   “Full of surprises and fresh discoveries, Shutting Out the Sun convincingly explains why the great Japanese juggernaut has faltered — and it does so with intelligence, insight and verve.” —Richard Rhodes   “ Shutting Out the Sun puts a human face on a nation's plight and provides an intriguing point of entry into a consideration of Japan's crisis of confidence.” — The Washington Post Book World   “Well-researched. . . . Zielenziger gives observers of this reticent country good reason to be concerned.” — San Francisco Chronicle Michael Zielenziger is a visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, and was the Tokyo-based bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers for seven years. Before moving to Tokyo, he served as the Pacific Rim correspondent for San Jose Mercury News , and was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on China. Find him online at www.shuttingoutthesun.com . 1. "AN ARROW POINTED DEEP INSIDE OF ME" He pedaled feverishly down the narrow back streets of Kanda and Asakusa, legs churning, his face--intense dark eyes, a well-trimmed mustache--obscured by his bicycle helmet. He cruised past the silent storefronts selling rice crackers and stationery, past the ancient wooden Senso-ji shrine surrounded by shuttered souvenir stands, and darted through darkened alleys and deserted streets, his mind disengaged from the outside world, the rhythms of J-Wave radio reverberating through his headphones, the beat propelling him forward, no destination in mind. Manic, angry, indomitable, Jun pumped fast, faster, through these ancient neighborhoods heavy with his history, his legs almost flailing, his knees driving hard. Sweat beading his forehead in the humid night, he sliced through the low-slung neighborhoods of Tokyo's old downtown, the working-class flatlands along the banks of the Sumida River, far removed from the aristocratic, hillier districts to the West, deathly still in the hours after midnight, the road illuminated only by the arc of a few scattered streetlights and the eerie blue fluorescence of the ubiquitous Family Mart and 7-Eleven convenience stores. Later he might stop at one to browse through its huge array of comic books and purchase a polyethylene bottle of orange drink to slake his thirst. These tranquil few hours before dawn are strangely precious to Jun. Only in this empty calm can this wiry twenty-eight-year-old work off his restless anxiety. Only on these rare dark nights when he can gather the courage to venture out of his tiny room, can Jun be in the world yet be himself, and escape for just a few hours the confinement of a bedroom that has become his citadel. Being alone seems to him his only mode of self-preservation. "I have an arrow pointed deep inside of me," Jun said to me once, as he sought words to describe his pain. "Listening to music and getting high from the exercise, that's the way I coped. At night you can go out when other people can't see you . . . If I didn't go out at all on those nights," he added darkly, "I'd probably have done something violent to my parents." * * * Jun is not alone in his pain and anxiety. Nor is he uncommon in his solitude. There is also gangly, nineteen-year-old Hiro, whose long hair nearly obscures his face, who dropped out of junior high when he was thirteen and lives at home uneasily with his bickering parents, seldom stepping outside. Hiro has no idea what he's going to do with himself as he emerges into adulthood. And there is thirty-four-year-old Kenji, who almost never leaves his tiny room in his mother's modest apartment on Tokyo's western fringe. He is a pale, quiet child-man, his smile wan, his hair thinning. For most of the past twenty years, his daily rituals have seldom varied. He reads the newspapers each morning and watches Tokyo Giants baseball games on television every summer evening. He passes long afternoons with magazines and daydreams. Sometimes he speaks to his mother. Other days he sits