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Hikikomori – update

The Japan Times among other media news sites reports on the status of hikikomori in Japan. A recent survey by the Cabinet Office concludes that there are 1.5 million hikikomori in Japan, the number having increaed because of the societal affects of the COVID period. About 2% of the population aged 15 to 62 have become recluses.

“The cabinet office surveyed 30,000 people between the ages of 10 and 69 across Japan last November. The poll found that just over a fifth of respondents aged 15-39 had been socially isolated from six months to less than a year. More than 20% said they had experienced problems with interpersonal relationships, while just over 18% cited the pandemic.” — The Guardian.

URLs: Japan Times: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/04/01/national/hikikomori-numbers-pandemic/; The Guardian (UK): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/03/japan-says-15-million-people-living-as-recluses-after-covid

A review of statistical and sociological methods applied to the study of hikikomori is offered by a 2023 article published by the International Journal ofEnvironmental Research and Public Health titled “Hikikomori: A Scientometric Review of 20 Years of Research.”

URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/9/5657

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Edward A. Burger’s “The Mountain Path” – 3 conversations

Three video conversations with The Mountain Path film director Edward A. Burger. The conversations followed public screenings of the film.

1. Video recording of the conversation between Edward A. Burger and John Kieschnick, professor of Buddhist Studies at Stanford University.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAyOdj_ZIjI

2. Video recording of the conversation between Edward A. Burger and Buddhist monk Rev. Heng Sure, Vice-President for Religious Affairs and Dean of Translation and Language Studies at Dharma Realm Buddhist University.
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAVpO1ZqEnA

3. Video recordingof a conversation between Edward A. Burger and Bill Porter, moderated by Gaetano Kazuo Maida, Buddhist Film Foundation Executive Director/Chief Programmer. Sponsoredby the California Film Institute and the Buddhist Film Foundation .
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZvKpeKikBM

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Devil turned hermit – book illustration

Old Book Illustrations features “Devil Turned Hermit,” from an early 19th-century book titled Cent Proverbes.

The book describes the illustration:

“The Devil, in the guise of an old man with horns, has a female visitor shown to the door and his worldly paraphernalia swept away while he immerses himself in prayer among symbols of asceticism.” Adds the website editors: “The caption reads in the original French: Quand le Diable devient vieux, il se fait ermite. This proverb has a loose English equivalent in The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be.“

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“Life on the Rocks” – film

Life on the Rocks is a 20-minute documentary film about a newsly-wed husband and wife naturalists who spent three years in virtual isolation on a rugged Scottish island studying the bird population. From Psyche Films:

“Two newlyweds carve out a life on a small rock island, among the seabirds

The Bass Rock is a small volcanic island just off the east coast of Scotland. Prominent in the Scottish imagination for its steep terrain and location in the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, the island has had a sparse and intermittent human population across the centuries. Its most notable and sustained inhabitants are the northern gannets that have dwelled on the island’s jagged cliffs throughout recorded history. With a population of roughly 150,000 birds, their colony is the largest in the world.

The English naturalist June Nelson is one of the few people who have lived on the Bass Rock. For three years in the early 1960s, she and her late husband, the ornithologist Bryan Nelson, who was researching gannets at the University of Oxford, made the island their makeshift home. Living and working out of a small, derelict chapel, they dedicated themselves to observing and recording the behaviours and ecology of the birds. The then-newlyweds had little contact with the outside world, but forged a happy life together, thriving in conditions most would find gruelling.

In the short documentary Life on the Rocks, Nelson revisits her full and focused years on the Bass Rock. Combining sweeping, cinematic black-and-white shots of the island with a string score, the UK director George Pretty crafts a poignant account of Nelson’s cherished time there, as well as her emotional return. Mining Nelson’s memories and old photographs, the film explores how the husband-and-wife team found happiness on this peculiar patch of Earth, and among its many avian inhabitants. But, more than just a fondness for the past, Nelson communicates an impassioned urgency to protect the plummeting global sea-bird population – which has declined by 70 per cent in her lifetime – asking ‘What right have we to deprive [future generations] of this wonderful place?”

URL: https://psyche.co/films/two-newlyweds-carve-out-a-life-on-a-small-rock-island-among-the-seabirds; also available at https://vimeo.com/376345749

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Hermits in photos: Nepal

Nepal media source MyRepublica offers a gallery of photographs featuring “Hindu hermits from different countries [who] have come to the Pashupatinath Temple to celebrate the Mahashivaratri festival.” Estimates suggest that “about two million pilgrims will visit the Pashupatinath Temple during this Mahashivaratri.”

URL: https://myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/in-photos-hindu-hermits-arrive-in-pashupatinath-to-celebrate-mahashivaratri/