Transformational Akihabara has its finger on the pulse of pop culture

Tokyo’s Akihabara district is always transforming itself.

Once promoted as the nation’s largest shopping area for home electronics and computers, where vendors thrived in line with Japan’s postwar surge in prosperity, Akihabara — or “Akiba” for short — is now the center of the nation’s pop culture as well, as typified by pop idol music groups such as AKB48.

The groups regularly perform shows at a special “live house” in an entertainment complex called Pasela Resorts Akiba, where an outlet of major electronics vendor Ishimaru Denki once stood.

In stark contrast with the chilling cold outside, there was a fiery scene inside earlier this month as young men waving penlights cheered on their favorite idols as they danced to blasting music on a smoky stage bathed in colorful lights.

Indeed, the areas around what is now Akihabara, home to lower-ranking samurai warriors in the Edo Period, were prone to fires back then. “Fires and fights are common scenes of Edo,” an old saying goes.

After a fire swept through in 1869, the Meiji government built a shrine, later known as Akiba Shrine, to a fire-fighting god. A train station built in 1890 was named Akihabara.

Akihabara’s rise to the center of pop culture today, however, has its downsides.

The main street was the scene of a tragic killing spree in June 2008, when a truck driven by Tomohiro Kato plowed into a crowded intersection on a busy Sunday.

Kato, then 25 years old, got out of the vehicle and began stabbing pedestrians, killing seven and injuring 10 others.

Kato, whose death sentence is still pending at the Supreme Court, is said to have nurtured a grudge against his company and society and targeted Akihabara because young people flock there to have fun.

After the incident, the vehicle-free “pedestrians’ paradise” on Sundays was suspended, and didn’t resume until 2011. But the closed-off streets where visitors are free to stroll are becoming popular again, according to local merchants.

With the help of the nationwide “Cool Japan” campaign to promote anime, “cosplay” (large-scale costume parties) and other things peculiar to Japanese pop culture, Akihabara is drawing the attention not only of young people in Japan, but also overseas.

Local residents hope that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will provide a platform to promote Akihabara to the world.

The walk of life in Japan

These mountain paths date back to the 10th century and link the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, Tanabe and Wakayama to the three grand shrines of Kumano. These three grand shrines - Kumano Hongu Taisha, Kumano Hayatama Taisha and Kumano Nachi Taisha - started out as popular pilgrimage destinations for the imperial family and aristocrats, before gaining popularity with commoners during the 15th century.


In 2004, Unesco declared the Kumano Kodo along with its sacred sites and shrines to be World Heritage sites - making this only one of two pilgrimage routes to achieve this status, the other being the more famous Camino de Santiago in Europe.

Many sections of the ancient mountain paths have been restored and with comfortable traditional guesthouses along the way (known as ryokan and minshuku) it is now possible to undertake your own pilgrimage and walk your way into a small part of Japan's history.

The beauty in undertaking this pilgrimage is threefold - you get to see amazing mountain scenery and actually have the time to appreciate it; you get to immerse yourself in the traditional Japanese way of life, including how they sleep, eat and bathe; and you get to take part in something much bigger than yourself, a sense of achievement that comes from successfully completing your pilgrimage, whatever your motives, as others did so many hundreds of years ago.

We started our adventure by taking the train from Kyoto to Tanabe. Near the train station there is an excellent tourist information office where they will answer any of your questions (in perfect English) and have many maps and brochures on the Kumano Kodo. We stopped here to have lunch before catching a local bus to our pilgrimage starting point, Takajiri.

Our four-and-a-half-day pilgrimage took us 70km along the Nakahechi route, through remote mountain paths and forests, past innumerable oji shrines and, most importantly, to two of the Kumano grand shrines - Hongu Taisha and Nachi Taisha.

The pilgrimage does test your fitness and endurance, with many long, lung-cleansing inclines followed by steep and slippery, joint-jolting declines. The scenery throughout the whole trail is breathtaking - from pristine mountain vistas, to misty wooded forests, to bamboo groves and lush river valleys.

We stayed in five quaint little villages along the Nakahechi route, where our hosts were always welcoming and very helpful, even if they didn't speak much English. Our dinner each evening was a gastronomical delight, each meal cooked freshly by our hosts and consisting of pickles, noodle soups, fried fish, tempura seafood and vegetables, sashimi and sticky rice. We washed down all this wonderful food with delicious local sake.

Each guesthouse had a lovely traditional communal Japanese onsen for bathing. An onsen is a hot spring bath, which the Japanese believe to have healing properties. Whether it does or not, soaking in a lovely hot bath is the perfect end to a tough day of hiking and a great remedy for aching muscles.

Each night we stayed in tatami mat rooms and pulled our futon mattresses out of the closet to convert our living room to a bedroom. We would leave the window open to enjoy the cool mountain breeze throughout the night, and slept the wonderful deep sleep of those who have earned it.

Our pilgrimage came to an end at the grand shine of Nachi Taisha, in a lovely little tourist town called Nachi-san and which is also home to the sacred Nachi-taki waterfall. Here we had a communal dinner with other pilgrims and shared stories of our experiences on the Kumano Kodo. We all agreed; it had been a tough but highly rewarding experience.

Ōmisoka- Second-most important day in Japanese tradition.

New Year's Eve in Japan is observed by settling financial accounts (kake ), eating a special noodle dish known as okake, which is hot soup over noodles, and taking a hot bath followed by a well-earned rest. Widely celebrated on December 31, Omisoka marks the end of the preparations for New Year's celebrations, which go on for the next three days. It is a popular time for visitors to drop in to exchange New Year's greetings over cups of hot sake and decorated mochi cakes.

The city of Ashikaga, 50 miles north of Tokyo, is the site of the 1,200-year-old Saishoji temple, headquarters for the Akutai Matsuri, the "naughty festival," or "festival of abusive language." On New Year's Eve there, participants walk (or take a bus) up a dark mountain road led by a man blowing a horagai, a shell that is supposed to fend off bad tidings. Some carry lanterns and wear cardboard hats bearing the picture of Bishamonten, one of the seven gods of fortune in Japanese Buddhism. The Saishoji temple was built in honor of this god.

The festival originated more than 200 years ago so repressed workers could let off steam; therefore, this is not simply a midnight stroll. Those hiking toward the temple atop the 1,000-foot-high hill scream curses into the night. They curse politicians, teachers, bad grades, low pay, and any other complaints of modern daily life in Japan. They release pent-up frustrations with words they ordinarily would not say directly to anyone. Bakayaro is one of the words most frequently heard. It means, roughly, "you idiot."

After the 40-minute walk the crowd storms into the temple, the bell is rung, prayers are offered, and the cursing continues. But when the new year arrives at midnight, the curses end and more typical celebration begins. Then the celebrants turn to another unique ceremony: when the priest calls the name of each worshipper, the individual kneels with a wide red lacquer bowl at his or her lips. Sake is then poured onto the person's forehead, runs across his or her face, into the bowl and is consumed. All this occurs while the priest reads the worshipper's personal wishes for the new year to the pounding of a taiko drum. This ceremony is supposed to ensure that happiness will flow in the new year.

On Omisoka, people wearing kimonos fill the streets as they go to visit shrines. But millions watch the "Red and White Song Contest" on TV. This marathon song festival, first organized in 1950, has become an indispensable ritual of the New Year. The show, lasting up to four hours, usually has 50 performers, 25 on each team. The Red team is comprised of women, the White team men. When the performances are over, the audience and a panel of judges decide which team won. Typical past performances include an orchestra playing Mozart and a group singing Okinawan folk music; a bit less typical was a female singer in a gown of feathers that made her look like a bird; as she finished her song she flapped her arms and flew away, suspended by a wire.

The TV show ends shortly before midnight in time for an older tradition: the tolling of the great bells in Buddhist temples at midnight. Priests strike the bells 108 times, a reminder of the 108 human frailties or sins in Buddhist belief. By the end of the 108 strokes of the bell, the impure desires of the old year have been driven away.

An ancient folk ritual of a very different sort is observed on the Oga Peninsula, Akita Prefecture, on New Year's Eve. Young men play the part of hairy devils called Namahage, dressing in grotesque red and blue masks and straw cloaks. They stomp through the streets shouting, "Any wicked people about?" and then pound on people's doorways, the idea being to frighten children and newly married women so that they won't be lazy. After being admitted to a home, they sit down for rice cakes, first scaring the wits out of children with stories of what will happen to them if they are naughty.

Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

The hikikomori is considered a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. The hikikomori is typically a male (80% are male), teenaged to 30 years old, who has quit school, has no technical skills, and is unemployed, living in his room in his parents' house, never coming out, taking meals left at his door by his parents, passing the day reading, websurfing, viewing television, idling.

Hikikomori are not strictly hermits (who have a strong psychological or intellectual motive for solitude) and are more properly recluses. But the youth of the hikikomori, their radical withdrawal, and their dependence on the tolerance of parents -- especially the mother -- is considered unique to Japan. A related term or acronymn speciifically referring to the hikkikomori's social status (but including non-hikikomori as well) is NEET, meaining young people "Not in Education, Employment, or Training."

Michael Zielenziger notes in his book Shutting Out the Sun that [Hikikomori] cannot be diagnosed as schizophrenics or mental defectives. They are not depressives or psychotics; nor are they classic agoraphobics, who fear public places but welcome friends in their own homes.

Richard Lloyd Parry adds that neither is it the same as what in Japan is called "school refusal", although inevitably sufferers from hikikomori abandon their educations. Some are teenagers, but most are in their twenties or older.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, which long ignored the problem, in 2003 defined hikikomori as avoiding social participation, including avoiding school attendance, compulsory education, entering the workforce -- including part-time jobs -- and associating with somebody outside the home; generally remaining at home for six months or more.

The Ministry also maintains that although as a general rule we define hikikomori as nonpsychotic phenomenon ... it is not uncommon that hikikomori includes schizophrenia before a definite diagnosis is made.

But according to the American Psychiatric Association's standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM4), there is no known psychiatric ailment from which hikikomori suffer. Other observers have argued for symptoms of Asperger's and for what the DSM4 calls "social avoidance disorder," but there is no clear evidence. Zielenziger also suggests post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which further identifies the key element within Japanese opinion, that hikikomori are suffering not a psychiatric but a social disorder.

Modern Japanese Society

To argue that social conditions are a chief source of a psychological conditions in specifically traumatized individuals is not favored by modern medicine or science. (A valiant exception is the physician Gabor Mate, M.D.). Yet this thesis is familiar to sociologists. Examining recent Japanese societal change provides a context for understanding the hikikikomori experience as a result of a long historical process.

Japan was always an insular nation until in 1853 United States gunboats under Admiral William Perry "opened" the country to Western domination. Japan was forced into economic dependence and regime change. With establishment of the Meiji government in 1868, Japan set out to centralize the imperial government and build a strong military in response to Western humiliations it had suffered, a fate paralleling recent European control of China.

Religious, cultural, and technological change overthrew Japan's semi-feudal ethics and culture. Militarism and rapid social and economic displacement grew, culminating in imperial wars (against Russia, Korea and China) and, eventually, World War II.

The humiliating defeat of Japan in World War II was compounded by subsequent U.S. occupation and thorough-going dismantling of Japanese institutions. Japan's elites effectively scorned the vestiges of a traditional agrarian economy and its social values to embrace not only industrialization (already dominant since the Meiji) but specifically, capitalism and globalization.

Post-World War II children were shunted into a high-stress school system, and the populace into factories and bureaucracies. Japan suffered speed, noise, urbanization, population shifts, and characteristic family breakdown from extended ie or stem structure families to Western-styled nuclear family as the defaul social unit. Suburban sprawl and ubiquitous technology became the norm in the crowding islands of Japan. The culture feverishly attempted to redress humiliation while technocrats exploited the Japanese character of cooperative stoicism.

In 1980's, the feverish economic bubble burst. But there could be no return to the past. Coincidentally, the hikkikomori phenomenon begins to emerge at this time, accelerating in the 1990's.

All observers have noted the relentless pace of schooling in Japan, rigorous entrance exams beginning before elementary school, high expectations of financial and career success placed on children (especially males) beginning in elementary school, career tracking of youth as early as junior high school/middle school for university versus technical training, 18-hour classroom and study days up to seven days a week, plus bullying, peer pressure, conformity, and burn-out. Maggie Jones notes: "As the Japanese saying goes, 'The nail that sticks out gets hammered in.'"

As the disparity between parents and children widens, so does the enormous disparity between the myth of hard work for success and the dismal economic and social reality of post-boom Japan.

If men, especially, were driven by a "manic defense" in striving for psychological redress after World War II, then post-boom Japan accelerated the relentless pace. For males especially, burning out by high school means no academic or social future.  

The dilemma of the hikkokomori is the initial experience of alienation followed by the psychological but also practical inability to reenter society. Zielenziger quotes one mother of a hikikomori as saying:

Hikikomori value the intangibles ... but cannot speak out because there is no place in Japanese society that allows them to. ... A person who challenges, or makes a mistake, or thinks for himself, either leaves Japan or becomes a hikikomori.

One articulate male hikikomori blogger writes that he is aging, that he knows his parents will pass away some day, that he should work as soon as possible. "I know," he admits. "But I'm not able to overcome my Hikikomori."

Conclusion

Hikikomori is in part a unique social and cultural circumstance of Japanese society, but no observer has perceived hikikomori as the transformation of a long history of eremitism characteristic of agraian, semi-feudal Japan -- and the apparent disfiguration of eremitism in hikkikomori. Granted that the psychology of modern society will not preserve this continuity. It is not difficult to imagine the modern young hikkikomori as the hermits, wanderers, and monks of a bygone era. As the mother quoted by Zielenziger noted, hikkokomori simply do not fit in the modern age, but cannot go back to the past either.

The great irony in hikikomori lost to Western observers is the theme of solitude and isolation in Japanese history, culture, and lore. The ancient Shinto creation myth describes the female deity Amaterasu lost in isolation in the emblematic world of the dead after failing to create a proper life for herself and her mate. She is forever destined to hide her disfigurement. This Japanese archetype culminates in the story of the contemporary Japanese Princess Masako (born in 1963), who lives in seclusion, said to suffer depression but, perhaps, suffering a too-realistic view of her world.

And now, the fate of the Japanese people so historically beset by disaster and tragedy, culminates in the unspoken probability of Japan's destruction by nuclear radiation and the ironic disdain of the West after centuries of hostile attention and exploitation, an entire nation ruefully represented in the hikikomori.

Japanese Clothing: YUKATA

The Yukata is a casual light cotton kimono for wearing in summer. Yukatas normally have very brightly coloured designs on them. Today thesekimonos are mainly worn to the traditional Bon-Odori and summer festivals. The relative simply design of Yukata means Japanese women can, with some practice, put thiskimono on unassisted. 

The name yukata comes from the word -yu- (bath) and -katabira- (under clothing). In the Heian era (794-1185), court nobles wore linen "yukata" which were draped loosely after taking a bath. The yukata was later also worn by Japanese warriors and by the Edo era (1600-1868), it was widely worn by the public when public bath became a popular recreation in Japan.

Today, the yukata is widely worn as a casual wear in summer, as well as in festivals. Further, the yukata is also widely worn in "ryokan" (traditional Japanese inn). The yukata is loved for its lightweight cotton material. Fabric designs vary from the traditional plain cross hatch pattern to the more colourful designs. A cotton sash is usually worn with the yukata for casual daily or nightly wear. In attending festivals and public occasions, the yukata is worn with a wider belt, which can be simply wrapped around the waist and tucked in at the end. For a more formal appearance, the yukata is worn with an obi belt, along with a matching geta (wooden sandals) and purse to complete the attire.

Today, the yukata is widely worn as a casual wear in summer, as well as in festivals. Further, the yukata is also widely worn in "ryokan" (traditional Japanese inn). The yukata is loved for its lightweight cotton material. Fabric designs vary from the traditional plain cross hatch pattern to the more colourful designs. A cotton sash is usually worn with the yukata for casual daily or nightly wear. In attending festivals and public occasions, the yukata is worn with a wider belt, which can be simply wrapped around the waist and tucked in at the end. For a more formal appearance, the yukata is worn with an obi belt, along with a matching geta (wooden sandals) and purse to complete the attire.

Japanese girls and young Japanese women both here in Australia and in Japan enjoy the opportunity to dress in their Yukatas. Today there are not as many suitable chances to wear this colourful traditional Japanese outfit.

How to: Visit a Sento (Japanese Public Bath House)

At the end of a long day, a hot sento public bath can wash away your troubles, and that’s a pleasure worth sharing. Sento are a fading tradition but still dotted throughout Japanese suburbs, and even central Tokyo has a few ornate temple-like baths left. You’re likely to be the only non-Japanese at a sento, so to avoid standing naked and tongue-tied, find out what to bring, what to do there and which bath is electrified. Yes, electrified.

1. Pack your kit

You’re going to get naked. Completely. So the most essential item is a small towel to cover your privates. Everything else is optional. Most sento don’t provide soap and shampoo (although they sell them) so take these if you wish, along with a loofah, toothbrush and other toiletries. Don’t bring valuables, and expect some stares if you're heavily tattooed - many Japanese people still associate this with the yakuza, although it's highly unlikely you'll be mistaken for one.

2. Come to your sento

Sento range from small suburban baths to ‘super sento’ in the centre of Tokyo. When you enter, leave your shoes in a shoe locker. Pay the entrance fee (around ¥450) to either an old lady at a counter or at a vending machine for tokens.

3. Undress to impress

Men and women bathe separately, so look for the characters 男 for male and 女 for female to avoid embarrassment. Once through, you’ll find a change room with lockers for your clothes and belongings. After undressing, all you should be wearing is that small towel and a locker bracelet. Cross through the sliding doors with your toiletries to the tranquil baths.

4. Brush up on etiquette

The baths are a large, tiled space with deep rectangles of water and wafting steam. Speaking is kept to hushed, library levels. You’ll find open shower cubicles or basins lining the walls. Sit at a stool facing the wall and use the small bucket provided to wash yourself with warm water (soap optional). The baths are not for washing yourself in, so make sure you are sparkling clean before getting in. And find the toilets if you need to go! Hang up your towel and scrub yourself head to toe of any dirt, soap and shampoo.

5. The right bath

Enter a bath naked, or use your towel to tiptoe over if you are shy, but remember: the only thing that goes into a bath is your nude clean body. Choose your pool of water carefully. Maybe not the one with the lightning bolt symbol above it, unless a mild electric shock thrills you - the theory is that electricity contracts the muscles, thus relaxing you when you get out. Be careful also of the scalding bath - you’ll know it the moment you dip your pinkie in. Start instead with the hot bath, entering slowly to test the temperature. If there are other bathers, there’s no need to say a word or make eye contact, just enjoy. Relax, leave behind the world outside hurtling at bullet speed, and reflect upon the mural of ancient Mount Fuji.

6. Double dip

Once you have soaked enough in the hot bath, try the icy cold bath to snap you out of drowsiness. Some sento also have a mineral bath with rich, cola-black water.

Now step out and repeat the process, washing yourself again on a stool, then sinking into another bath - this is the centuries-old ritual of sento.

7. Lights out

To leave, go Japanese style - don’t wash off the minerals of your last dip, get changed into your pyjamas, try a milk from a vending machine, and stroll back to your bed, totally at ease with the world and ready for a deep sleep.