Hikikomori Moses

In Japan, a cultural phenomenon is affecting men who can’t commit. Often suicidal, they’re withdrawing from society and shutting themselves off from the world.

Japanese writer and television personality, Yoko Haruka, has a dim view of love and marriage.

In Japan she says, husbands work late and then go out bar-hopping with their buddies. They expect their wives to stay home and clean house. If the kids are brats, then it’s the mother’s fault. If he has an affair, it’s her fault.

Japanese men don’t get it. They propose with lines like, “I want you to cook miso soup for me the rest of my life.”

Japanese women aren’t buying.

And it’s causing up to one million Japanese men — who are totally bewildered by the new female assertiveness — to slip into hikikomori, an affliction characterized by withdrawal from society, and thoughts of suicide.

They’ll shut themselves up in their rooms for weeks at a time, preferring isolation to integration. Easier to battle one’s own demons alone and in the darkness, than to attempt to interact with impertinent Japanese women who insist on having a real life of their own — with or without a husband.

Reminds us of Moses,...