There is an article in the New York Times about a trend in Japanese culture involving (predominately) young men shutting themselves in their bedrooms, sometimes for decades, toiling in apathy and despair. “Hikikomori,” as they’re called, are a unique product of modern Japanese culture, and a most startling contrast to the ideal that we in the West have of Eastern lifestyle.
The article is strikingly intriguing. I always silently bash Western culture, for it’s propagation of (what could be perceived as) social diseases, and resulting pharmaceutical drug-pushers therapies. Though I try not to, I’m often saddened by the idea that too much money, too much time and too much comfort has caused us to virtually invent disorders. Social anxiety, restless leg syndrome, and even my own depression (as mild as it may be) I see as products of a post-modern and bourgeoisie culture.
But this Times article points out that other modern cultures are experiencing the same phenomena, albeit of a different variety, forged from their own unique social architecture. As a culture hell-bent on success, fueled by high academic pressures, and most importantly as a society that still worships conformity, Japan is an intense pressure cooker that leaves little wonder how a “disease” like hikikomori could emerge. Dubbed “the lost generation,” I imagine these kids are the perfect articulation of what Generation X should have been (not that I wish that on anyone, though). Apathy at it’s most pure, desperation at it’s deepest lows and a profound lack of hopelessness…but carried out under extreme self-discipline and will power—that is how it differs from Generation X. It’s almost as if Americans don’t have the ethic to even perfect listlessness.
So while I still remain mildly bitter and cynical about the cavalcade of new social disorders popping up yearly in American culture, seeing an example such as the hikikomori in other parts of the world gives me hope. At least as we’re going down, we’re not the only country hanging ourselves by our own bootstraps. There are other developed nations crumbling at the edges underneath the weight of their own modernity, too.
