Japan has a concept called hikikomori, referring to extreme shut-ins. If someone stays at home for months at a time, particularly if they stay in a single room, they are experiencing hikikomori. They’re locked into TV and video games and ignoring the outside world.
Around a decade ago, many international websites reported on hikikomori, all expressing suitable horror. But in the years since then, it seems that people everywhere have become isolated, plunging many of us into a loneliness epidemic. Maybe it’s time to check back in with Japan and see if their trial-and-error offers any of us clues toward a way out.
EARN ALL YOUR MONEY FROM MAGAZINES HIRE A MIDDLE-AGED MANCRY INTO A ONE-WAY PHONE BOOTH GET SOMEONE TO QUIT YOUR JOB FOR YOU LIVE ALONE ON AN ISLAND, NAKED EARN ALL YOUR MONEY FROM MAGAZINES
In 1999, the idea of earning money from home was slightly more novel than it is today. In this setting, a Japanese TV show placed a contestant in an apartment and challenged him to support himself without leaving it—not by working but by entering magazine competitions.
At the start, contestant Tomoaki Hamatsu had nothing, not even clothes. The network gave him just crackers to eat, and he would have to win magazine contests to get other food and then any other items he wanted. He never did manage to win clothes, so he remained naked throughout the experiment. But he did manage to win food. 10 months in, he won some toilet paper. He also won enough assorted items that after more than a year, the network said he’d hit his goal.
All along, Hamatsu had thought the network had been recording footage of him for a documentary once the whole thing was done. But he now learned they had actually been broadcasting him live every week, without his knowledge. To cover up his nudity from the public, they’d just strategically superimposed over him the image of an eggplant.
It was perhaps the sort of experience that could wreck someone for life. But Hamatsu (now adopting the stage name Nasubi, meaning “eggplant”) went on have a career as a minor entertainer and even climbed Mount Everest.
HIRE A MIDDLE-AGED MAN
The movie Rental Family stars Brendan Fraser as an American actor in Japan who gets an unusual gig. He works for a “rental family service,” whose actors impersonate roles in everyday life rather than playing parts for movies or TV. Rental family services really do exist in Japan, and while many of them involve the actor carrying out some type of deception, not all of them do.
In 2012, 45-year-old Takanobu Nishimoto launched a business called Ossan Rental. An ossan is a middle-aged man, and when Nishimoto heard some girls on a train refer to him as one in a derogatory manner, he embraced the identity and invited the public to rent ossans for a quick chat.
Want some advice? A professional ossan will sit down with you and give you some. Want someone to play the violin for you? An ossan with that specific skill will be able to take care of that. Want a date? An ossan will escort you to events. However, a no-touching rule ensures that this is purely about providing company and not about more physical needs.
CRY INTO A ONE-WAY PHONE BOOTH
Perhaps you’re lonely because you lost a loved one. To help with your grief, consider speaking to the dearly departed. You can try this by traveling to the northern town of Ōtsuchi and talking into a phone booth set up for this express purpose.
The rotary phone in this booth does not really connect to the afterlife. It does not connect to anything at all. But you can speak into it and enjoy a one-way conversation, with your words getting carried off by the wind.
A garden designer named Itaru Sasaki created the booth in 2010 to deal with losing a cousin. The following year was the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which killed 10 percent of Ōtsuchi, and now, the town was filled with people with a similar need for comfort. Sasaki made the booth public.
In the following years, tens of thousands of people came to Ōtsuchi to try the phone out for themselves, to the point that the original booth fell apart. People now readily donate money to replace it with a more durable one that can withstand many more years of mourners.
GET SOMEONE TO QUIT YOUR JOB FOR YOU
Those rental services we mentioned earlier might provide someone you can talk to, but services can also provide someone to ensure you don’t need to talk to anyone.
Japan has long had a tradition of workers loyally sticking with the same company for decades. As a result, some introverted workers are so embarrassed at the thought of telling their boss they want to quit that some of them never do, even if they want to. Then, in 2017, came a company called Exit, which claimed to end this problem forever. For $450, they’d contact your boss on your behalf and quit for you.
Workers are supposed to give two weeks’ notice before quitting, but they can avoid this by instead relinquishing two weeks’ of stored-up paid leave. Still, quitting via proxy violates various rules of etiquette. An employee is expected to give even more notice than they’re obligated to give, is expected to honorably confront their boss in person, and is expected to offer the remaining workers parting gifts before leaving. Quitting through Exit spares them all this.
This sounds like the sort of start-up that will get some press coverage for its gimmick but will quickly shut down, but Exit remains in operation even today.
LIVE ALONE ON AN ISLAND, NAKED
This article ends much like it began—with a naked man.
When Osaka factory worker Masafumi Nagasaki retired in 1989, he decided he wanted to move to a tropical island. But unlike some fantasies of retired life, he did not see himself being waited upon in some resort. Instead, he went to the island of Sotobanari. It measures just a thousand yards across, and no one lived there but him. He spent 29 years there.
Early on, a typhoon destroyed much of the stuff he brought there, including his clothes. He remained there anyway, now naked all the time. Occasionally, he would leave the island for supply runs, funded by his family, who still did exist and remained on the mainland. But he otherwise just stayed on his island, alone.
In 2018, a fisherman sailing nearby spotted him unconscious on his beach. The fisherman informed authorities, who now forcibly removed the 82-year-old from the island, saying he couldn’t take care of himself. The government put him up in an apartment for the next few years. The city looked dirty to him, and he spent his time as a volunteer cleaning the streets of litter.
Four years after that, a reporter offered to take him back to the island for one last visit. He was happy for the chance, and once he was on the island again, he took the opportunity to once again get naked. But he said he probably wouldn’t be able to stay there, and when he headed back to civilization, he was not sad to leave. Hey, maybe forced socialization isn’t so bad.
AloJapan.com