Book review: Shutting Out the Sun

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Generated its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger.
My rating: three stars

Japan is a country that’s had a Bit Of A Time. At the end of WWII is was bombed into atomic submission (twice) by the nation that would become the defacto dictator of political structure and positions of power, it experienced unprecedented growth and became one of the richest countries in the world.

Then, of course, there was a bubble and everything went tits-up. Security was no longer assured. Birth rates fell. Productivity fell through the floor. Entrenched ways of working started to inhibit growth, rather than spur it to nation-envying heights. And millions of adults locked themselves away from the world in voluntary seclusion, becoming hikikomori, individuals choosing to withdraw from the world entirely, often placing burdens on the familial unit.

Hikikomori are a particularly Japanese problem. They aren’t represented in standard psychological manuals (such as the DSM) and their behaviours don’t neatly map to any other disorders. The author suggests that differences in the Japanese psyche play an important part in the creation of this group, noting that such world-avoiding efforts do not appear prevalent in other countries, including neighbouring South Korea (which the text frequently uses as a point of comparison), and that treatment is hard, and organisationally atomised. Nobody knows the right way to help people who’ve chosen to absent themselves from the world reinter life, though the ramifications of doing so – including parental murder and suicides – are vitally important.

The book is quite good at humanising the experience of the hikikomori and their families. The author makes touch with several sufferers, to the point of actually enticing some of them to leave their homes, and it does feel that he cares about his subjects. But the fact that he is not Japanese obviously informs the text also: while some subjects are verbose and open, there is often the sense that there’s inference at work rather than direct reportage.

While the hikikomori were the hook that drew me into this book, it’s better to imagine Zielenziger’s work as a collection of essays on the ways more recent generations try to square the strains of capitalism with the inherited proscription of the nation’s past. There’s chapters that detail the economic lead-up to the current situation, and while secluded individuals have several entries to themselves (general descriptions, dissection of the role the importance of maternal relationships to the problem, chats with different types of therapists and so on) there’s others that focus on other nations (South Korea, mainly), on the decline of birth rates, on the rise of stay-at-home kids (parasite singles!), the drive to acquire brand-name merchandise as a stand-in for achievement and identity, as well as more commonly covered topics such as suicide and the way the past informs the future.

As a collection it’s fine, but I felt a little cheated: it did seem as if there was a bit of bait-and-switch action happening when there wasn’t enough shut-in material to make page limits.

The author comes across as almost anti-Japanese at times, to the point of exhibiting some Alex Kerr-style grumpiness at all the changes the decades have wrought. This is ameliorated somewhat by an explanation of his thoughts: he takes pains to note that he feels the US has, since September 11, 2001, taken on a more Japanese type of national identity, which will perhaps lead to some of the same crises of personality. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion Zielenziger is someone who has lived a long time in Japan and feels able to whinge about it in the manner of a concerned local.

The strangest thing about Zielenziger’s examination of the Japanese psyche is that he seems to only posit Christianity as a solution to the current state of malaise. This is where he appears to lose a lot of readers (judging from online commentary, anyway) but I feel it worth noting that he is really only reporting the experiences of those he interviewed for the book: several spent times in countries with a singularly Christian background, rather than the religious pragmatism experienced by those in Japan. It’s still a flawed suggestion, as it works only for those people (rather than a nation at large) but it is worth keeping context in mind .

Since the book was written, Japan is in the throes of what’s been called the 80-50 problem. That is, earliest examples of hikikomori are now entering their fifties, while their parents are entering their eighties. The financial providers for a generation of recluses are dying, and exactly how those left behind will deal with the absence of their protectors is something I’d like to see Zielenziger address were this book ever to be updated.

If you’re interested in the Japanese identity and in specific social problems facing the nation, you could do worse than give Shutting Out the Sun a whirl.