I feel similar about Japan's society as the previous responder.
Although I have only been in the country once, I have read enough articles about Japan and seen enough products catered to Japanese people to understand the type of problems they face.
I once read an article about a man who spent thousands of dollars to buy life size dolls to assuage the lack of women in his life or how Japanese workers have to work well beyond the work schedule for fear of ricidule from his/her colleagues for "slacking".
Perhaps they should try practising religion. If anything, it gives one a sense of hope.

I've lived on and off in Japan for 6 years now, and i am currently in Nagano.

For what its worth, i thought the article was kind of a joke. It is a serious attempt to look at the alienated youth and disconnected people that fill the large cities. But even the examples used to show the creativity of the current generation, go no farther than heavily consumerist and plastic world of anime. Evangelion and Pokemon have huge licencing contracts with everything from pachinko parlors to fast food chains.

For all the problems facing Japan, there are almost zero outlets of original or critical thought in the any kind of mass media. I say almost zero, because although i personally know of ziltch, i am sure something exists beyond my limited experience.

There have been comics and manga that have dealt with social and environmental issues, like Barefoot Gen's account of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, or Miyazaki Hayao's epic work, Nausicca and the Valley of the Wind.

But those are already 20 years past or more. There is very little rebellious, critical music. Even the most fertile ground for youthful angst, punk rock, is just another lame fashion safe for mass consumption.

And while other first world counries have subversive outlets for information, there is nothing even coming close to a magazine like Adbusters that i am aware of. And believe me, i have looked.

Not that everything is bad, mind you. There is enough beauty here that keeps me from returning to my home in Canada. People are much more polite here, and do still treat each other with a fair bit more respect that other places i have been. And things are slowly improving in terms of environmental awareness.

But it is still very much a closed country when it comes to discussing serious social and environmental issues publicly. Out of the many people i have talked to about it, i can count on my fingers how many actually know the kanji for 'exploitation', and only a percentage of those know what a sweatshop is.

I spent 3 days of my summer under a tent at a music festival, handing out flyers and newspapers on topics ranging from animal rights to feminism. Many people were sincerely interested, and the ones i talked to voiced the complaint that there was no outlet to get 'alternative' views. I had a stack of Adbusters out for people to peruse, and those seemed quite popular. There is fertile ground for these ideas, but no one is getting them out.

Thought provoking article based on a deeper understanding of Japan and its strange psychology. The situation mirrors the European fin de siecle, spleen or mal de siecle that surfaced in the late 1880s. We have the advantage of instant communication, and rapid distribution of any news, good, bad or irrelevant.

Living on two continents, neither of which is Asia, I can only add that there are pieces of what we have just read everywhere. The cost to disenfranchise has become exceedingly cheap, the rise of boredom is steepening and the ability to solve one's own problems almost non-existent

Simple case in point which some may deem laughable, not so long ago, in the late seventies, you could actually fix your own car with a decent set of tools. That is no longer possible. You could play a guitar and sound decent, no longer feasible because electronics have destroyed that simple sound.

And the society that has done the most to destroy those simple pleasures and coping mechanisms is Japan. No wonder they are the first to start coming apart.

It was when I saw the Japanese movie SUICIDE CLUB that I thought, whoa!!!! I am 50 years old and pretty removed from much of J-Pop culture, so that movie brought me up short. The romanticizing of suicide as an existential choice, the poignant way the girls join hands on the subway platform before the sacrament of jumping off together... and then, the melodramatic, horror-movie waves of blood rushing up on the subway platform and into the subway cars where the OLD PEOPLE (very obvious symbolism, I thought) all scream AHHHHHH!!!!! In your face, old Japan, with our collective suicides!!!!!

And yes, I agree with others here that this is where WE are headed...After all, it was twenty-somethings in my workplace who were avidly passing the movie around to each other, as if it said something very important.

Wow, the above post paints an incredibly bleak picture. Bleaker than I was previously aware.

My admittedly fictional, but still very compelling window on the situation came (perhaps ironically) from a relatively recent anime series:

Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent (2004)

I recommend anyone interested watch this. Not by any means definitive, but very relevant to the issues discussed in this article.

I'm a Japanese woman living in Tokyo.
When I first started to learn about how popular Japanese pop culture is becoming in the States, I felt pretty puzzled. I think the majority of Japanese people here either feel the same way, or are still totally unaware of the fact. I don't think many of us has even been exposed to the idea about being "leaders" or trend-setters of any kind, much less the "canary" in a global coal mine.
In terms of the recent range of tragic incidents that's been occuring - internet suicides, parent/child killings, the Kato case, etc - of course we're aware of their impact on our society, and everybody is feeling the sense that there is definitely something wrong and weird going on here. Analysts and commentators on tv and other media are coming up with dozens of theories to try to explain and these things.
But after reading this article, I realized how useful it could be to change the perspective a bit and to start thinking about these these matters in a broader context. Not that it will be any direct solution to the problems, but at least it would trigger thinking in a newer, fresher way. I always wish that more Japanese people could have access to these kinds of articles.
I personally really liked reading this piece, and am looking forward to reading more by you.

yeah, but is it really that different here? this american pop-culture is one of youth as well. most of the faces on tv or in the movies are young or want to be young again or look young. this isn't a culture that appreciates age and maturity. we have 50 year old businessmen walking around in superhero t-shirts and ripped jeans. "the new 20" is being raised by 10 years every other year.
the pop-culture says that youth is the only thing that matters and being old is lame.
but the young celebrities that happen to get old are easily replaced.

it's not the truth

I think the problem that really must be addressed (and I believe that many of your comments are missing the point: it's no longer about model economics or market shifts) is the increased substitution of synthetics in place of nature, ethics, morality, empathy and basic human understanding. Technology now is more advanced than it ever has been in human history; is it really a coincidence that the arbiter of all things technologically groundbreaking is also facing one of the most dire ethical dilemmas of modern times? More alienation and disconnection, a weakened sense of self and purpose, an inability to differentiate between real and produced. The irony of Western progress and ideals is that as we build our synthetic world, we're deconstructing our collective consciousness. The human race has always been connected through human values, but the more we diminish the natural order in favor of God-complex "ingenuity", the weaker the connection becomes. think of a consumer capitalist society as a creature whose head grows as its tail shrinks. When all we have left is the shit we've mass-produced, we'll have turned everything into nothing. we need an ethical push to replace empty cultural signifiers with something of substance. As the "canary", the land of the rising sun is a cautionary tale for all westernized nations. we're building in a vacuum. it's time to reevaluate our values before it's too late.

The author of the comment directly above this one is an absolute twit

Thing is in Japanese live-action film there's an entire genre devoted to the theme of youth vs. adult violence in popular movies such as 'Battle Royale', 'Battle Royale II', 'Kill Enemy', and 'Machine Gun Girl'. These types of movies would never be made by Hollywood, which still show most teenagers as dumb, stoned, sex-crazed morons instead of people with real problems.

The aove poster is full of nonsense. Ever since WW2, japanese traditions of old have been purposefully propagandized by Western intelligence agencies to make these beliefs and traditions seem quaint and a joke to be laughed at. Western and zionist organizations destroyed Japanese school systems and completely changing their text books into pro-western capitalistic propaganda. Voila, a whole generation of Japanese youth running around acting and dressing like American hipsters. Believe me, the USA went through it in the 1960's when the CIA released millions of hits of LSD and flooded the cities with hard drugs. It was called Operation Chaos and you can look it up. It is easily confirmed.

Read Alex Constantine's Covert War Against Rock and you'll begin to understand. Also go to www.8thestate.com and watch the movies and listen to the podcasts.

We in the West tend to look to Japan for all the positive images and inventions it seems to promise in our futures, everything from hybrid cars to advanced cell phones and bullet trains, organic healthy cuisine to Nintendo Wii, and now, as the article points out, street fashion and entertainment. But we equally tend to ignore the negative signs, even when they are plain to see.

Having done business in Japan for a number of years, I find this writer's analysis of the nation's darker tidings spot on. Unfortunately.

Regarding an earlier post--Japan may have been steeped in Samurai traditions centuries ago, but no more, and today suicide is bemoaned there as a selfish, brutal act of violence. While there may not be the Judeo-Christian taint of sin attached to suicide in Japan, it is hardly viewed as an acceptable act by contemporary Japanese.

For many years, I've considered Japan to be about ten years in the future compared to Canada and the United States.
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Despite claims to the contrary, I think that Japan is way ahead of the west in technology and economics. Economically Japan may seem stagnant, but I think that this is where western economies are going. Japanese visiting the west have far greater buying power than we do with their money. And, conversely Japanese technology is often years ahead of anything available in the west.
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I think you point to a cultural collapse we are heading to and 'canary in a coal mine' is a good way of describing Japan.

no no no! (to the last comment)
we have to wake up to the reality. OUR HUMANITY HAS BECOME DISLOCATED
and yes, Japan is like a mirror for western civilization.
-it is happening everywhere
i live in a little town in northern mexico, people in the streets is as unhappy as this article describes.
If we dont turn to the solution, we are going to collapse, seriously.

I don't see the US as being paralyzed by uncertainty in the future, but rather by ignorance. We seem too willing to celebrate lack of intelligence, and hold education in contempt far too readily.

What I fear for the next generation is a majority of dull-eyed, angry hopeless ignorami too willing to blame their problems on outsiders -- and as we have seen far too often, an isolated nation full of desperate, impoverished xenophobes is extraordinarily dangerous.

Add busters is censored - propaganda like all the rest new media my foot.

I think its difficult or nearly impossible to draw connections between Japan and the West. Does this really need explanation. Our cultures are so different, theirs is steeped in the way of the Samurai, where suicide is not an act of selfishness but selflessness, whereas, suicide in the west, is seen as tragic. We find ourselves dumbfounded, asking pointless questions. In Japan its an honorable thing to do - save ones families from disgrace.

I don't know that many Japanese or Asians, however, the ones I do know are far more introverted than most westerners I know, this surely might be perception but I wouldn't be surprised if its the rule.

I definitely agree this online business is getting a little creepy. Gaming cafe's and what not, I think this is a problem we have to deal with from a socialist point of view.

I have a friend of mine and he tells me that in Saudi Arabia if an adult jokes around or plays with a kid that he does not know. It is no big deal i.e sociablly acceptable, however in the west people will often give you dirty looks like i.e; your a paedophile. Correct me if I'm wrong but don't most of us find joy from the smiles of children. Hell, If you were going to school on Saturday and untill 5pm you would probably be a little depressed as well.

Keep it light, laughing is always better than crying. Things might be bad now but they can always get worse...Let's try and be vibes.

Eerie article - adbusters I'm strting to be a little bit skeptical about you guys recently. I mean does every article have to be themed "apocalypse now". I do appreciate the honest journalism you guys provide but maybe we could try and uplift a human every now and again.