As everyone probably knows by now, American-born Japanese heartthrob Leah Dizon recently announced that she is both married and pregnant.

Instructive in this announcement is the childishness with which dating, male-female relationships, marriage, and pregnancy is treated in Japan.

Here is a video of Leah’s announcement at a recent concert. Note the screams of shock and disbelief that a young 22-year-old woman would do such things. At the end of her announcement, Dizon says she will take some time off to have the baby, after which she plans to start performing again. She ends with a plea to her fans not to “toss her aside.”

With attitudes like this, it is no surprise that young people in Japan are shying away from marriage and that the population of the country is declining.

One interesting concept I learned about soon after coming to Japan was jiko shokai, which just means “self introduction” but which seems to have a special cultural significance here.

In almost any situation where people will be interacting, be it a classroom, a part-time job or the local PTA board, a new member will always stand and make a formal self introduction, telling the others their name (including how to write it in kanji), where they’re from, what their hobbies are, and so on.

Giving this information to the other members of the group allows everyone to categorize the newcomer properly, and afterwards the others will do their own jiko shokai in turn.

These self introductions are also heavily used in ESL teaching, too, since formal self introductions are seen as the “most basic” form of human communication in Japan. Back when I was an ESL teacher, I taught children a lot, and I made sure to spend a lot of time teaching self-introductions, since I knew that the parents of my students expected that their kids have this ability before anything else and would complain if their kids couldn’t recite basic information about themselves to others.

Hiku (引く): to draw back or recede.
Komoru (篭る): to seclude oneself or be confined.
Hikikomori (引き籠もり): A person who isolates themself and refuses all human contact for long periods of time, often years. The term also refers to the entire social phenomenon.

Japanese society places many demands upon its youth. Its educational system is structured as a vast selection machine in which performance even while very young contributes to one’s eventual standing in society. “Social mobility is extremely easy for the able individual. On the other hand, people fear that if they do not succeed against the competition, the fall will be limitless.” (Kurimoto) The educational system itself is not the only problem, as children are quick to bully others who stand out, even to the point of suicide.

Most people eventually emerge into adult life unscathed. However, for a small fraction of them, the pressure proves too much to bear. As a consequence, they simply refuse to participate. In the young, the problem is called school refusal. Those who had held out until adulthood in the hopes that things would improve end up hikikomori.

The problem with hikikomori is that it is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. Tatsuhiko Takimoto, whose best-selling novel Welcome to the NHK is based on his own experiences as a hikikomori, writes:

The largest source of rage is his own personal cowardice.

He is poor because he lacks the skill with which to earn money. He has no girlfriend because he lacks charisma. But the process of seeing this truth and acknowledging his own incompetence requires quite a bit of courage. No human beings, regardless of who they might be, want to look directly at their own shortcomings.

Hikikomori often suffer crushing self-esteem issues which make it difficult for them to even contemplate improving themselves. There are legitimate obstacles to their finding a traditional job, but few manage even to support themselves as freeters. The majority are instead are supported by their parents, and either live with them or are entirely supported by a stipend from them.

Parents of hikikomori rarely cut off funds and force their children into the world. Having one in the family is seen as an embarassment, like mental illness, so parents often aid and abet in the seclusion of their children. Schools write off extended absences as “medical trouble,” and parents leave food and allowances at their child’s doorstep.

There are any number of professionals in Japan working to help hikikomori. These can range from “rental sisters” to more traditional halfway houses. In his book Shutting Out the Sun, Michael Zielenziger writes about three:

Minami, Watanabe, and Kudo are, in Watanabe’s definition, lunatics–people who are “doing really good, original work” to help some of the most vulnerable members of their society. These three have no professional contact with one another. Each pursues a different strategy of counseling hikikomori… Yet each operates on remarkably similar principles. They want their charges to exercise individual judgment over their lives. They insist that each be held accountable for his actions and be able to distinguish between fixed, not flexible, notions of right and wrong. They want to encourage individual autonomy over collective sensibilities, and recognize that these lost and sometimes troubled young adults can prosper only in an open, flexible, and trusting environment.

Eventually, some hikikomori emerge on their own, and some through the assistance of professional help. Many, however, are only thrust back into the real world with the death of their parents. With no professional background, no social skills, and no sense of how to deal with the world around them, the fate of these unfortunates remains unknown.

I went to Tokyo to meet a friend the other day. He’s working for the prestigious Tokyo University, the top ranked school in Japan, and it was interesting to take in a part of the city I’d not seen much of before.

The hotel we stayed at was called Eminasu, and I was surprised to see a large sign stating proudly that the hotel had been built with money from the National Pension System, the equivalent to Social Security in Japan. Yes, there’s so much money sloshing around in funds like the pension system and Japan Post deposit accounts that legislators are quite unable to keep their paws off it, and regularly launch grand construction projects to foster economic development, provide services for citizens and (of course) secure lucrative employment for the former government employees who were directly involved with said projects when they retire.

Sometimes the system works okay, as in the case of the hotel we stayed at, providing a good room at a slightly subsidized rate since the government-operated hotel didn’t need to generate a profit. But there are plenty of horror stories of massively wasteful construction projects made with taxpayer funds, like a sprawling resort hotel at the top of a mountain that no one ever stayed at and a now-bankrupt theme park designed as a replica of a Turkish village, complete with a full-sized Trojan horse. How fitting.

They have these hotels all over. You can stay at this one in Kyoto if you like.My hotel room was $80 per night, so I presume the ones in Kyoto will likely be the same.

I remember back in the 1980s, when Japan’s educational system was held up as a success story for other nations to follow.

While there certainly are some good elements the country’s approach to education — like the idea of using competition to get students to become goal-oriented and apply themselves in ways I could never have dreamed of when I was that age — not every aspect of schools here would be appreciated in other countries.

The primary goal of education in Japan seems to be to help create happy members of society through inclusion in groups, and there are several mechanisms for promoting this appreciation of your own place as a member of the larger group, for example the complex system of sports and other character-building clubs that students are compelled to join in Junior High School.

Whereas American Junior High and High School kids will each have random schedules, Japanese classes are fixed, with all 40 students of class 3-A staying in the same classroom for every hour of every day, as different teachers come and go depending on what the next subject is. One side effect of this is that all classes in Elementary and Junior High learn the exact same material, no matter what their individual level might be.

My daughter was taking some lessons with a private tutor in the U.S. over the summer, and I was discussing the possibility that she might be borderline dyslexic with her teacher, since I am myself. The tutor asked me, “Well, if that’s the case, they must have some kind of special class for her in Japan, right?” The answer is no — unless a child is so different they’re not able to go to their normal school, everyone will be treated exactly the same no matter what, the better for the harmony of the group.

Video highlights from the 2008 Asakusa Samba Carnival in Tokyo.

The event started off hot and sweaty then the clouds opened up and the rain poured down. The samba performers kept going though they were soaked to the bone. The Samba girls looked none the worse for it though.

Tokyo’s Asakusa Samba Carnival dances on despite showers

A Rain-soaked Samba Dancer defies downpour

Tokyo’s traditional Asakusa district once more swayed and bopped to the exotic strains of Brazilian samba music. Asakusa’s annual Samba Carnival festival took place this past Saturday, August 30th. Asakusa has been holding this event on the last Saturday of August for over twenty years and it never fails to draw a huge crowd.

Koichi Toyama, wild and wacky candidate for past Tokyo governor elections of years gone by, has found a new goal in live. . . Becoming President of the United States!

You know, some of the things he says make more sense than some of the “real” candidates. . .

That is the name of a this year’s campaign held by Japan’s Paradise TV to raise money for research aimed at the prevention and spread of the HIV virus and AIDS.

Events includes five two-handed squeezes of the breasts or buttocks of adult video (AV) actresses for 1,000 yen, as well as servings of food reported flavored using the precious bodily fluids of an AV actress.

Last year a similar Paradise TV event (for which an AV actress demonstrated her handicraft for 3,000 yen) raised some 2 million yen.

All the juicy details are over at Captain Japan’s Tokyo Reporter.

More on this event in the JAPUNDIT Archives here.

Magibon

Magibon is an internet personality on the video-sharing website YouTube.

As of August 8, 2008, Magibon leads YouTube Japan’s All time top list. Magibon is also a member of the Youtube Partner Program.

Magibon has been invited and flown to Japan by a Japanese Internet TV Station GYAO for a media appearance. She has been interviewed twice by the Japanese Weekly Playboy magazine.

Magigon on YouTube