If you’re as unfortunately online as I am, you probably hear a lot about Japan. You might also have heard about the most unfortunately online Japanese people, known locally as hikikomori. These are people who shut themselves off from the world, refusing to work or socialize, sometimes spending years at a time inside a single room. This is a serious social problem, and one that gets a lot of attention in the media, both in Japan and elsewhere.
The English for hikikomori is “shut-in.”
Americans (and possibly other Westerners as well, though I can’t say for sure) have this weird exoticization of Japanese culture, where we pretend that everything about the place is special and unique, even when we are leveling criticism. Why do we do this? Japan might have more shut-ins than most countries, and they might face unique challenges when trying to reintegrate into society, but it’s not like Japan is the only country with this problem. So why do we insist on using the Japanese term, pretending that the concept is foreign to us?
Another example: Japan’s population has been shrinking for more than a decade. I’ve had countless discussions with friends about this problem, but none at all about the same issue as it afflicts, say, Germany. The CIA World Factbook says that almost every country in Europe has a below-replacement fertility rate, and countries from Denmark to Singapore have made embarrassing attempts at encouraging people to have more kids, but I have heard not a single word about either of those situations from anyone I know. Incidentally, the most common solution I’ve encountered to Japan’s fertility problem is that they should allow for more immigration – again, pretending that xenophobia is a uniquely Japanese problem.
Using Japan as a proxy for veiled criticism of one’s own culture is not a new thing – this has been happening at least since the first performance of The Mikado, a Gilbert and Sullivan opera set in a version of Japan that bears no resemblance to the genuine article. Of course, The Mikado is not about Japan; it is about contemporary British politics, but some level of misdirection was necessary to keep the pearl-clutchers from protesting the show out of existence. I wonder if the same thing is happening now, whether we are really discussing the problems with our own culture when we talk about Japan. After all, humans have not really changed that much since the late 19th century. And these problems do need to be discussed. So:
Japan really should be more welcoming to foreigners. Japan should also consider providing more resources for parents if it wants more people to have kids. Or, maybe that isn’t a problem! Maybe when everyone worries about Japan having smaller generations in the future, they are less worried about the work not getting done and more about people not earning enough collective income that it can be used as a tax base for all the things the Japanese government needs to buy. I think the real problem with Japan is capitalism. Instead of making sure that there are enough people to work pointless salaryman-type jobs, Japan should focus on better ways to capture the money that those people would have earned. If that money isn’t being paid to Japanese workers, it is instead being used for predatory lending and being used to make the rich even richer, and there’s no reason Japanese society needs to be organized that way. Maybe if we stopped tying people’s self-worth to their value at generating profits for business owners, the hikikomori problem would get better too. Japan could also afford to invest more resources into mental health. And Japan also has problems with cars and guns and a particularly hateful version of Christianity…
OK, so maybe it doesn’t always work.
Insert Title Here 