Transcript

CAMPBELL: It’s 3 am in the centre of Tokyo and the night is just getting started. Kiyomi Hirayama has come to see her favourite bands – Despair, Euthanasia and Death Wish. Most nights she works as a bar hostess, being paid to flirt with drunken businessmen she finds disgusting. Tonight she’s escaping to the dark side.

KIYOMI HIRAYAMA: Usually I have to talk cheerfully at work but this is when I can really be myself – when I can be natural. Releasing myself from oppression.

CAMPBELL: Kiyomi still lives at home but says she hates her father. Her real family only comes out after midnight. Its name is Goth-Lolita. Goth-Lolita is one of Japan’s biggest youth trends, combining the black nihilism of western Gothic with baby doll sexuality. “Gosuroli” as they’re called, express themselves by dressing in outlandish costumes. More radical followers practice self-mutilation.

KIYOMI HIRAYAMA: If I had a hobby it might have been different, but I had no hobby and I wanted something I could be absorbed into. And by chance it was wrist-cutting. When I cut myself, my mind went faint and it was a mental state that stopped me thinking – but it was relaxing. I was always thinking about something so it was relaxing not to have to think about anything.

CAMPBELL: Rika Kayama is a Professor and psychologist who counsels disturbed youths.

PROFESSOR RIKA KAYAMA: Recent wrist-cut cases explained that they did it because they wanted to actually feel they were alive. That is, they could reassure themselves that they are alive, for the first time from the pain of cutting or by seeing the blood run. I think there are people who do that to confirm they are alive.

CAMPBELL: On one level, Goth-Lolita is just one more fashion for bored Tokyo youths. There’s a myriad of sub-groups so many that they’re becoming almost mainstream. Young Japanese have long immersed themselves in groups and trends with an almost tribal zeal but today it’s driven by far more than fashion or temporary rebellion. Many people simply can’t relate to the core values that define post-war Japan – career, corporate loyalty, self sacrifice, marriage and family.

Unlike their parents, they’ve grown up with little expectation of lifetime employment or prosperity. In the early 90s, Japan’s bubble economy burst and it’s stagnated ever since. Now around one in five people aged fifteen to twenty five is out of school and out of work. The promise that hard study and unquestioning loyalty will bring rewards, has turned increasingly hollow.

KIYOMI HIRAYAMA: I feel like there’s a wall in front of me that I can’t push against – and it’s the opposite of darkness. But compared to that I feel more comfortable on the dark side.

CAMPBELL: Unable to cope with the real world, many young Japanese are retreating to an imaginary one. Toru Honda has never had a girlfriend and has no desire for a real wife. He has a virtual family and he keeps them in his laptop.

TORU HONDA: [Showing picture on laptop] This is my inner brain wife, Misaki. She is relatively kind-hearted. I’ve never been treated kindly by real women that much.

CAMPBELL: Toru is known as an “Otaku” – an extreme form of the Western geek. He has virtual sisters, a virtual pet – even a virtual maid.

TORU HONDA: [Showing picture of topless maid on laptop] This is a maid that appears on a game called “Maid in Heaven”. I feel like I’m simply a dangerous person.

CAMPBELL: Toru would not let us come to his one room flat, saying it was too full of computer and video equipment to sit down. Instead he invited us to this Alice in Wonderland themed café, part of a chain that’s become popular with Otaku. Waitresses dress as Alice and call the customers master. He’s given up looking for a girlfriend, believing all women want these days is money.

TORU HONDA: First of all, I’m not good looking and have no interest in fashion – and no interest in hobbies that make you popular, such as cars. I invest everything in Otaku hobbies.

CAMPBELL: Like millions of lonely young men, he spends his days perusing Manga and Anime, Japan’s popular, often sexual and frequently violent cartoon art. Toru has become a hero to fellow Otaku after writing a book arguing that this world is better than reality.

TORU HONDA: Make a sculpture and fall in love with that sculpture – or draw an ideal woman. We had those from old times, but it was limited to some artists. Now, everybody has become an Otaku and they’re turning to two dimensions because internet and technology improved and made it possible for anybody.

CAMPBELL: There’s still expectation that young people will strive to work for big corporations but ever since the boom days ended, the idea of being a lifelong salary man has been losing its appeal. Too much pressure, too much competition, too little reward.

NAOMITSU ONDA: I tried to make a go of university, but I failed so it was a severe blow. It was a severe blow inside of me.

CAMPBELL: Naomitsu is known as “NEET” meaning not in employment, education or training. He found he simply couldn’t take the pressure of Japan’s intensive education system. He dropped out of school and when he finally went to university, left after just one day. He hasn’t looked for work in almost three years.

NAOMITSU ONDA: When I wasn’t doing anything I talked with my parents and argued about something every day. I just stayed around the house. What would I do everyday? Watch TV... basically nothing... walk my dog.

CAMPBELL: There are thought to be around seven hundred thousand NEETS in Japan and the number is growing fast.

PROFESSOR RIKA KAYAMA: Unfortunately there are many young people who are just scared of going to work, or feel troubled. Or they withdraw because they feel working is too hard.

CAMPBELL: Naomitsu’s parents have now sent him to a government-assisted boot camp to learn to work. Today he’s being taught how to make a coffee.

NAOMITSU ONDA: When I was at nursery school I wanted to be a soccer player... an astronaut. The goal was decided from then and there to do what everybody else did. I thought I’d find out what lay in the future when I got there – but maybe that was wrong.

CAMPBELL: The daunting rigidity of Japan’s workplace has itself been blamed for stymieing the economic recovery but it’s now being challenged by yet another sub-group. To a Western outsider, it looks like the most normal of all. In Japan, they had to invent a word for it.

Tadayuki is a “freeter” meaning freelancer. He’s one of about four million Japanese who now work part time or move from job to job. A few years ago he decided he’d had enough of working for a company when all he really wanted was to play samba on his drums.

TADAYUKI KAMINE: The reason I quit is simply because I wanted to live in Brazil. Work was fun but balance is important. I cherish what I really like – being where I want to be and spending my time doing the things I enjoy.

CAMPBELL: It’s a phenomenon that began after the bubble burst and some corporate leaders have viewed its rise with as much horror as they have the NEETS but not everyone.

Yasayuki Nambu was a close friend of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and runs one of Tokyo’s biggest recruitment companies.

YASAYUKI NAMBU: I think “freeters” will change Japan’s economy. It was okay until now, but from now on confident people will start their own companies without being tied up. They’ll earn their own income and employ people.

CAMPBELL: To help freeters do that he’s built a giant hydroponic farm under this corporate headquarters in the centre of Tokyo. It challenges one of the economy’s core institutions.

YASAYUKI NAMBU: In Japan there is no opportunity to enter the agriculture field. It’s a lifelong employment system and an hereditary system. However, as we made the infrastructure for the agriculture course young people came at once – there was a big response. They said they didn’t want to work in an office from morning to night but they wanted to do agriculture and feel at ease.

CAMPBELL: And Tadayuki is one of the most enthusiastic trainees, learning boutique farming during the week and retreating to a rented paddy field on weekends where he can grow enough to live and play his drums.

TADAYUKI KAMINE: I think these days society needs “freeters” with initiative. I don’t need anything if I have plants and agriculture that I like, music that I like and if I can spend good time with my friends.

CAMPBELL: Japan is at a turning point, struggling to recover its momentum while Generation Z struggles to find its place in a world it’s found wanting. Not everyone is succeeding.

KIYOMI HIRAYAMA: I haven’t found what I want to do. For example, I haven’t found what kind of job I want – what I want to be. So that’s the most dissatisfying thing in my life.

CAMPBELL: But many see hope in the fact that at least they’re trying something different.

PROFESSOR RIKA KAYAMA: I often see people giving up, saying you can’t change the world. But at the same time, more and more young people are trying to realise their individuality differently from the older generation or trying to do something they want to do without silently obeying their seniors.

CAMPBELL: How Japan meets these challenges could decide the country’s future. The turmoil of its post-bubble youth may just be the darkness before dawn.