Social Withdrawal and Other Maladies: A New Paradigm for Understanding Japan and Its Contemporary Deadlock
Social Withdrawal and Other Maladies: A New Paradigm for Understanding Japan's Contemporary Deadlock
http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2004.03.08.html
Michael Zielenziger (Journalist, Business / Economics, Knight Ridder Newspapers)
Discussant: Steven Vogel (../faculty/vogel.html) (Professor of Political Science, UCB)
Discussant: Scott North (Associate Professor of Sociology, Osaka University)
DATE: Monday, March 8, 2004
TIME: 4:00-6:00 p.m.
PLACE: IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Fl.
FORMAT: Colloquium
SPONSOR: Center for Japanese Studies (../cjs/), Institute of East Asian Studies (../)
Some 14 years after the Japanese "bubble economy" collapsed, the nation still searches for a means for economic revitalization and needed political reform. Conventional understandings of Japan's long deadlock have failed to account for the long period of stagnation, the halting progress towards reform, and the rising unhappiness in a prosperous, but increasingly pessimistic society.
By examining an unusual array of dysfunctional social behaviors now emerging in Japan, including falling birthrates, rising numbers of suicide and depression, and social withdrawal syndrome ("hikikomori") a new paradigm for understanding and diagnosing Japan's long malaise can be considered.
Michael Zielenziger was Tokyo bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers for 7 years, until May 2002. He is now a visiting scholar in the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, while finishing a book to be published in 2005 by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday.
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