銀行◆英文題庫下載題庫

   Of the many oddities that are culturally specific to Japan—from cat cafés to graveyard eviction notices to the infamous Suicide Forest, where an estimated 100 people per year take their own lives—perhaps none is as little known, and curious, as “the evaporated people.” Since the mid-1990s, it’s estimated that at least 100,000 Japanese men and women vanish annually. They are the architects of their own disappearances, banishing themselves over indignities large and small: divorce, debt, job loss, failing an exam. “Evaporations” have surged in Japan at key points: the aftermath of World War II, when national shame was at its apex, and in the aftermath of the financial crises of 1989 and 2008.    A shadow economy has emerged to service those who never want to be found—who want to make their disappearances look like abductions and their homes look like they’ve been robbed, with no paper trail or financial transactions to track them down. Nighttime Movers was one such company, started by a man named Hatori. He’d run a legitimate moving service until one night, in a karaoke bar, a woman asked if he could arrange for her to “disappear, along with her furniture”. She said she could not stand her husband’s debts, which were ruining her life. 

   In many ways, Japan is a culture of loss. According to a 2014 report by the World Health Organization, Japan’s suicide rate is 60 percent higher than the global average. There are between 60 and 90 suicides per day. It’s a centuries-old concept dating back to the Samurai, who committed suicide by ritual disembowelment, and one as recent as the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II, who flew their aircrafts into enemy ships. Japanese culture also emphasizes uniformity, the importance of the group over the individual. “You must hit the nail that stands out” is a Japanese maxim, and for those who can’t, or won’t, fit into society, adhere to its strict cultural norms and near-religious devotion to work, to vanish is to find freedom.