Does Kawasaki stabbing rampage signify start of lost generation’s

revenge against society?

The reaction was unpleasant but inevitable. What else can one say, after all,
about a man who indiscriminately stabs children and adults at a school bus top
– killing two, wounding 6 – before taking his own life? “Die alone!” cried the
horrified public – online, on air, and in private. Social workers and other experts
who deal with the intense form of social isolation known as hikikomori warned
against such outburst. They deepen prejudice against people who have enough
to cope with as it is, and may also, the experts warn, encourage suicide and
murder.

The warning had its effect. Outrage grew guarded. But (June 21) asks a
disturbing question that cannot be suppressed: Is this the beginning of the lost
generation’s revenge against society?”

“Lost generation” is the label the media stuck on the generation coming of age
in the 1990s and 2000s. Recession-mired corporations were not hiring. Young
people coming into the job market during those 20 years and more were out of
luck en masse (French word “in mass”). The result we live with today is a very
large number of people who should be in their working prime either stuck in low-
paid, dead-end part time jobs, or having given up on that, living hikikomori
recluses, at worst scarcely ever emerging from their bedrooms in their parents’
house.

Precisely what drove Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51, to his murderous pre-suicide assault
at the school bus stop in Kawasaki in late May is not known, but the intolerable
and unnatural stress of hikikomori life evidently underlies it. One indirect
repercussion of his outburst, probably inconceivable to him, manifested itself
days later. A father allegedly killed his 44-year-old hikikomori son – partly
apparently, in fear that his son would commit some similar assault on children.
When the kids were noisy, Eiichiro Kumazawa would grow furious and utter
threats. Would he end up emulating the Kawasaki attack? Desperate, the father
reportedly felt he had to do something before it was too late.
 Social recluse 2

Are these merely isolated incidents, or an early sign of worse to come? The
hikikomori population aged 40-50 stands at roughly 610,000. Author Ryo
Arakawa who has researched and written about the issue, is dubious about
labor ministry measures to move them into the workplace now that a labor
shortage has opened up. The ministry underestimates, he says, the degree of
support these people need after having been out of circulation for decades.
There’s a lot more to it than simple job training.

Moreover, “it’s not just one problem called hikikomori” psychiatrist Hideki Wada
says. The term covers many personality types, wounded differently and
responding differently. Some failed to form social ties in school and have been
isolated since then. Others were abruptly laid off at work, and never recovered
from their distrust of other people. There are many ways to go off the rails or fall
through the cracks.

“Killing my son was the only thing I could do,” Hideaki Kumazawa reportedly
said. It suggests the state a family can sink into without adequate social and
expert support.