“japan”

Professors interviewed on several campuses say that in their experience men seem to cluster in a disproportionate share at both ends of the spectrum—students who are the most brilliantly creative, and students who cannot keep up.

What is beyond dispute is that the college landscape is changing. Women now make up 58 percent of those enrolled in two- and four-year colleges and are, over all, the majority in graduate schools and professional schools too.

Since the process of human development crosses all borders, it makes sense that Europe, too, now has more women than men heading to college. The disengagement of young men, though, takes different forms in different cultures. Japan, over the last decade, has seen the emergence of “hikikomori” — young men withdrawing to their rooms, eschewing social life for months or years on end.

At Dickinson [a U.S. College], some professors and administrators have begun to notice a similar withdrawal among men who arrive on campus with deficient social skills. Each year, there are several who mostly stay in their rooms, talk to no one, play video games into the wee hours and miss classes until they withdraw or flunk out.

And, really, what’s so wrong with getting lost on the Internet; watching soccer or baseball on satellite television; devouring Us Weekly or Time Asia; and organizing solo marathons of Tim Burton or Kurosawa movies? The craving for media sprees runs deep, and, like so many Internet-era developments, Gran Cyber Cafés seem to answer an almost carnal need for uninterrupted access to pixels and screens and Web sites and instant-messaging and iTunes. And when that need is satisfied, you can always return to life in the city, at least for a while.

“Once long ago, when Japan was still struggling to enter the modern age, we let ourselves be ruled by our military. Soldiers were our masters, and they led us into an evil war, to conquer nations that had done us no wrong.”

“We paid for our crimes when atomic bombs fell on our islands.”

“Paid?” cried Aimaina. “What is to pay or not to pay? Are we suddenly Christians, who pay for sins? No. The Yamato way is not to pay for error, but to learn from it.”