The Unbearable Loneliness of Being- half a million people in Japan live the life of a social recluse- Isolate the problem - Japan has appointed a Minister for Loneliness.

More disturbing than odd is the revelation that in 2020, 20,919 people in Japan took their own lives --- 750 more than 2019

It has been reported that in Japan half a million people live the life of a social recluse, they don’t leave their house for years: Shutterstock

Upala Sen   |  TT   |    28.02.21  :  Odd it might be, the sound of it --- a loneliness minister, such as the one Japan has announced following the spike in the country's suicide rate through the pandemic. But more odd is the fact that it should sound so --- a tad amusing. As if finance and home and education and food and roadways and waterways and environment are all deserving of dedicated ministries and not loneliness. More disturbing than odd is the revelation that in 2020, 20,919 people in Japan took their own lives --- 750 more than 2019. The new appointee, Tetsushi Sakamoto, said something about hoping to “promote activities that prevent loneliness and social isolation and protect the ties between people”.

Mind the portfolio

It has been reported that in Japan half a million people live the life of a social recluse, they don’t leave their house for years. There is a term for them — hikikomoris. Lawmakers in the world’s third-largest economy are in discussions to formulate a clear definition of loneliness before they put in place effective policies, perhaps to make a clear distinction between loneliness and solitude. In the Japanese language a single word, kodoku, suggests both. A large section of experts believe that hikikomoris are the product of a technology-driven technology-dependent life. The United Kingdom also has a ministry of loneliness; it was instituted in 2018, soon after a report was published claiming that nine million of the country’s 67 million were lonely. A study from the Office for National Statistics revealed that young people between 16 and 24 are more prone to loneliness than others. The UK is currently onto its third loneliness minister. In 2016, the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates announced the creation of a minister of state for happiness. A new post of minister of state for tolerance was also created. Ohood Al-Roumi, who is possibly the first happiness minister in the world, has degrees in economics and public administration. She ensured that more than 50 of her chief happiness and positivity officers received appropriate training at UC Berkeley and Oxford. She said, “We have no intention as a government to impose happiness, or mandate it, or force it… We’re just doing the right thing for our people.”

PS

It takes all kinds. So there is one country in the world though that has a dedicated department for propaganda and agitation. It is the responsibility of this department to portray prosperous and peaceful neighbours as poverty stricken, dangerous; they rah rah about racial purity and racial pride; national emergencies are played down; the film industry is under its control; and songs are composed only to be dedicated to the political boss. North Korea, of course. Why, what did you think?

EDITORIAL

The Editorial Board   |  TT   |   28.02.21:  The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, was wrong. Hell is not other people, but the lack thereof. Social isolation and the resultant loneliness are more lethal than smoking 15 cigarettes a day or obesity, according to research published by Brigham Young University. Some researchers even say that loneliness increases heart disease, dementia and death rates. The pandemic has turned a bad situation worse, with some studies showing as much as a 90 per cent rise in loneliness globally. Public health experts in many countries have been debating how to address the “loneliness epidemic” that confronts and corrodes modern life. Japan, where suicide rates shot up precariously during the pandemic, has now appointed a Loneliness Minister, following in the footsteps of the United Kingdom, which in 2018 became the first country to create a similar cabinet position. This is a welcome move: a ministry of loneliness should accord gravity to a mental health concern. But the British experience also shows that ministering loneliness can be a rather lonely occupation with tokenism triumphing over meaningful policy — the unwillingness to implement the suggestions offered by Britain’s loneliness ministry since its inception is indicative of a deeper, troubling institutional and public apathy.

In order to fully comprehend the depth of the crisis, the question that needs to be asked is why do so many people feel isolated at a time when human company, apparently, is a mouse-click away? The emergence of technology promising to connect the world and end social isolation has — ironically — achieved the opposite result, shutting people into the private, soulless, yet all-consuming cocoons powered by handheld devices. A second reason for the uptick in social isolation, research suggests, can be attributed to the broader social churning. The Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness found that the social conditions that allow loneliness to proliferate — the decline of the State’s commitment to the collective and the fraying of ties within community and family — aggravate deviance, violence as well as ennui. Cox, the British parliamentarian after whom the Commission was founded, was killed by an assailant who exhibited all the signs of loneliness-induced mental health ailments. Such transgressions can no longer be ignored. Research by the University of California found that lonely males are prone to hostility and adversarial views.

This perhaps explains the flurry of measures undertaken by governments around the world to confront the social malaise of loneliness. These include programmes that encourage conversation, friendship, and empathy: the founding of community allotments where the lonely might gather, knock-on-door initiatives with volunteers reaching out to those who believe they have been forsaken, exchange programmes between schools and colleges and old-age homes. India, where chronic loneliness is rising not only among the aged but also the youth, must study these templates of intervention to design effective, compassionate models that are likely to be efficient under Indian conditions. Otherwise, the country, in spite of its populousness, would have to confront a different version of Sartre’s Hell.