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Agafya visited

Agafya at 69 years

Russian photographer and naturalist Igor Shpilenok, with two nature reserve inspectors, visited 69-year old Agafya Lykov recently. The Siberian Times profiles the visit in an August 15 article titled “The woman who time forgot – Remarkable new pictures of the hermit Agafya Lykova.” Includes several Shpilenok photos.

They had spent just 20 hours with this remarkable Siberian woman, before leaving her once again to the solitude into which she was born.

“This short time provided fodder for many reflections on the distant and recent past, the meaning of life, the power of the human spirit, faith,” Igor wrote in his blog. “No, I do not feel that Agafia Karpovna’s life is a dead end in the taiga.”

URL: http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/the-woman-who-time-forgotremarkable-new-pictures-of-hermit-agafya-lykova/; also in Russian on Shpilenok’s blog.

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Vietnam forest recluses

Vietname forest hermit

An 82-year old man, Ho Van Thanh, and his 44-year-old son, Ho Van Lang, lived as hermits in the Tra Bong District of coastal south-central Vietnam since 1974. They were known to live in seclusion about nine years ago, but efforts to persuade them to emerge from the forest failed at that time. Now the two men have been persuaded to leave the forest and will “reintegrate into the community,” according to the Vietnamese Tuoi tre News website.

The elderly Ho Van Tranh was a war veteran who apparently fled to the forest in a bout of mental instability in quarrels with his family. He took his then year-old son Lang with him into the forest. The two hermits lived in a tree hut and used a variety of makeshift tools produced by Thanh, a blacksmith. Thanh is weak and receiving medical attention, but both father and son, while expressing wishes to return to the forest, are apparently accommodating to society, benefiting from public services that will enable them to built a house. One aspect of connecting to the modern world for Ho Van Lang is replacing betel with cigarettes, learning to operate a television set, and listening to music on a mobile phone.

URLs: http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/12154/why-did-veteran-lead-4decade-hermit-life-in-jungle
http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/12020/2-jungle-men-found-after-40-years-living-in-vietnam-forest

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Mississippi hermit: Jean Guilhot

Jean Guilhot (1878-1959) was the “Hermit of Deer Island” off Biloxi, Mississippi. Born in France, he traveled to Key West, Florida, and then to Deer Island off the Mississippi coast. His life was a series of hard times, as the SunHerald.com notes in an article titled”‘Hermit of Deer Island’ will get his due at Biloxi Cemetery.” Guilhot’s grave site will be rededicated, with a new marker, and a dramatic recreation of his life presented.

URL: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/08/07/4856287/hermit-of-deer-island-will-get.html

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Japan’s elderly male recluses

A recent study by Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows, according to Vox Populi (Asahi Shimbun) that “elderly men who live alone are more prone than their female counterparts to becoming social recluses.”

This is not a surprise given the history of reclusion and hikikomori in Japan, which has always been an especially male phenomenon, but the study surveys a more mainstream population wherein the loss of family and friends tends to isolate elderly men versus elderly women. This information further delineates the differences between men and women in general, and essentially identifies it with larger social patterns in contemporary Japan.

URL: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/vox/AJ201307260049

Related article on the study: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201307260005