WTF Japan? Epic thread of problems

[Liquid Blue]

I found out about Hikikomori awhile ago but I mentioned it to my room mate today and when he asked me to get him some of the info about it, I decided to post about it here as well.

It's a term for a social phobia, in which young kids (generally males) shut themselves in a room away from other people for years at a time. Their parents will bring them food, they'll piss into bottles and leave them outside the room, take baths once every six months- shit like that. I wish I was kidding about this, but Japanese culture is very lenient about it, and treats it as a phase that they will grow out of. Parents actually let this behavior continue and support it. Here are some disturbing quotes and pictures I've found, links to articles will be below:

Her son is 17 years old. Three years ago he was unhappy in school and began to play truant.

Then one day, he walked into the family's kitchen, shut the door and refused to leave.


Since then, he hasn't left the room or allowed anyone in. The family have since built a new kitchen - at first they had to cook on a makeshift stove or eat take away food.

His mother takes meals to his door three times a day.The toilet is adjacent to the kitchen, but he only baths once every six months.

After years of being bullied at school and having no friends, Y.S., who asked to be identified by his initials, retreated to his room at age 14, and proceeded to watch TV, surf the Internet and build model cars - for 13 years. When he finally left his room one April afternoon last year, he had spent half of his life as a shut-in.

One morning when he was 15, Takeshi shut the door to his bedroom, and for the next four years he did not come out. He didn't go to school. He didn't have a job. He didn't have friends. Month after month, he spent 23 hours a day in a room no bigger than a king-size mattress, where he ate dumplings, rice and other leftovers that his mother had cooked, watched TV game shows and listened to Radiohead and Nirvana. "Anything," he said, "that was dark and sounded desperate."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/ma...5japanese.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...nt/2334893.stm

Post on Japan suicides reaching alarming level, and how companies are urging their workers to fuck more coming in the next post

[Liquid Blue]

Over 30,000 people killed themselves in Japan last year, and the number is rising

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4170649.ece

Newly published figures show that 30,093 people took their own lives in 2007 — a 2.9 per cent increase in a year — leaving the country as the most suicide-prone anywhere in the developed world and rendering government efforts to combat the problem a failure.

Government analysis of the figures, for the tenth year consecutive in which suicides have remained above 30,000 mark, has exposed a series of new and troubling trends: people in their thirties are the most likely to kill themselves, and work-related depression is emerging as a prime motive.

Since February this year, 517 people have killed themselves using the gas, about half of them in their twenties, and its macabre popularity as a method of self-destruction shows no sign of waning.

The crisis of despair gripping young working Japanese has triggered plenty of official and media hand-wringing, though little in the way of change in corporate Japan. Wages remain low, and hierarchies rigid.

“We live in an uncomfortable and restrictive society where trivial matters are important,” said Professor Kiyohiko Ikeda, a veteran social commentator at Waseda University. “The young feel a sense of deadlock; society does not accept minor mistakes.”

10 years in a row where a country has had over 30,000 suicides- 300,000 people in Japan have taken their lives in the past decade, and most of them are in their twenties and thirties. Wow, and I can't even begin to imagine the pressure they go through with all the school exams, and then landing that perfect job, then getting a wife and popping out kids, then working your entire damn life away 12 hours every day at work- speaking of which, the next subject up is Japan's low birth rate and their employees getting out early to go fuck and pop out more kids.

[Liquid Blue]

Workers urged to go fuck more

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapc...ies/index.html

In a country where 12-hour workdays are common, the electronics giant has taken to letting its employees leave early twice a week for a rather unusual reason: to encourage them to have more babies.

Japan is in the midst of an unprecedented recession, so corporations are being asked to work toward fixing another major problem: the country's low birthrate.

At 1.34, the birthrate is well below the 2.0 needed to maintain Japan's population, according to the country's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

In addition, Japan's population is aging at a faster pace than any other country in the world.

Analysts say the world's second-largest economy faces its greatest threat from its own social problems, rather than outside forces. And the country desperately needs to make some fixes to its current social and work structures, sociologists say.

Well no shit. Thousands of people shutting themselves away, hundreds of thousands killing themselves, rampant depression and social pressures- holy shit, wtf Japan?

Your thoughts please!

[Izor]

Not in America. Fuck em

[Xog]

I thought japan was over-populated?

[Liquid Blue]

I think what the last article/post I linked was saying, is that their birth rate is far below what it needs to be, to sustain the country. Alot of the older japanese people are living longer and longer, and the young workforce is currently not large enough to deal with all the old people.

If you have 3 million people, and 2 million of those are retired or going to retire in the next 10 years, unless you start cranking out alot of kids, you're going to be in a shitstorm very quickly.

I just made those numbers up on the fly btw, they're in no way shape or form related to japan's numbers.

[Vatican Assassin]

Japan has too few people, China has too many, I smell invasion.

[Pandagirl!]

I like it when LB posts news threads, because he quotes things so I don't have to read the whole article, and he even bolds things in his quotes. :wub:

Very topical thread though - I was going to write my term paper for my econ class on the aging population in Japan.

[Izor]

This still has no relevance to America. Fuck Japan and their culture. Anyone who makes games like Ikaruga can die in a room the size of a king sized mattress imo.

EDIT: i bet all 3 of em had computers and internet in their room. All the ones that left their rooms prolly had to upgrade or replace their computers or they finally got bored of starcraft

EDIT 2: maybe if kamikazi tactics and suicide werent looked upon so highly in their culture they wouldnt be in this situation. In America we have people that like to cut themselves and we put them in their own category and pick on them so that no one else gets the idea that its acceptable behavior. Very tough concept, eh?

EDIT 3: Maybe their economy wouldnt suck so bad if they would have people work instead of sending them home to procreate. The work day is only 8 hours long...does it really take that long to make babies?

EDIT 4: What kind of parents let their children take over the house like that? They seriously built a second kitchen to let the kid live in the kitchen for 3 years? Seriously, I thought spoiled white kids were the worst...now I cant help but laugh at this. If my kid ever tried that I'd knock the fucking door down and whoop his ass.

EDIT 5: What kind of fucking kitchen has doors? I've never seen this...

EDIT 6: Then again, if my kid was a complete fuckup and locked himself in my kitchen and I couldnt do anything suicide would be a viable option

EDIT 7: Wait, are you really just learning that Asia is fucked up socially? Everyone knows this already.

[Vatican Assassin]

Doesn't have relevance to America guys, fuck it.

[Mantra-Slider]

yes Im going there to fuck too. good advice ixor!

[phata$$]

God bless America and everything that holds relevance to America.

[Zerzera]

EDIT 4: If my kid ever tried that I'd knock the fucking door down and whoop his ass.

And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

Kind of lame though, beating a kid with an extra chromosome.

[Pressure Drop]

Japan has a different culture, different culture have different issues. It is easy to look at a very different culture and think WTF?? Yet they could point out similar things in your culture they find hard to fathom.

I’ve read about this before and was shocked when I first found that out. But equally I was surprised at the fact Japan still has the death penalty and actively uses it.

However the crime rates etc in japan are much lower than other countries etc

Like most countries Japanese traditional culture is being eroded away and replaced with a modern global homogenous culture, this is partly good and partly bad.

Prejudices and cultural hate are a blight on human society, as the world becomes closer and communicates more hopefully these will not be the major issues they are now but I think they are ingrained deep in our psyche . But it is also sad to see independent culture which has evolved and been practiced for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years be replaced by the latest soulless fad.


ultimately japanese culture interests me, i love some of their films and also sense of humour, yet unsurprisingly there are alot of issues with it i couldn't abide by and have no respect at all for

[Liquid Blue]

Izor why would I only care if a topic had some relevance to America