![]() ![]() Each gas company is expected to ensure its supply in its distribution area. There is no single gas transmission system operator (TSO) as trunk line networks have developed separately around LNG terminals and are often not connected to each other. The country is very active both in the region and globally, and successfully initiated the “LNG Producer-Consumer Conference”, held every year since 2012 to facilitate dialogue among key stakeholders. ![]() Japan’s long-term gas security policy relies on diversifying its long-term supply contracts and on ensuring these contracts include enough flexibility to increase imports during an emergency. There is no obligation for the industry to hold emergency gas stocks nor to report stock levels, which might hamper situational awareness in a disruption. In 2019, Australia was the largest supplier, representing less than half of total imports. Japan’s natural gas supply is well diversified. With its archipelago geography, Japan’s imports are entirely in the form of liquefied natural gas, through 37 dedicated LNG import terminals. While Japan produces more gas than oil, domestic production is still very limited, bringing the dependence on imports to over 90%. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear accident resulted in the closure of all nuclear plans, which led to an increase in the demand for natural gas. If Abe wants to bring the hikikomori back into society, it might require changing that culture, too.The share of natural gas in Japan’s total energy supply increased significantly over the past decade, driven by growing demand from the electricity generation sector. ![]() “Doctors, aware of the sensitivity of the families, avoid diagnosing major psychopathology to the extent that it is possible,” she wrote in a 2008 paper. Princeton cultural anthropologist Amy Borovoy has argued that the reason Japan has comparatively low self-reported mental illness isn’t an indication of society-wide mental health, but heavy stigma. A 2011 pilot study found that similar sorts of social withdrawal exist around the world surprisingly, some Japanese clinicians thought it didn’t demand intervention, while other countries recommended hospitalization. The researchers reference a 2008 study of 97 clinical hikikomori patients which found that 26 percent had anxiety disorders, 8 percent had schizophrenia, and 23 percent had some sort of personality disorder - indicating that what manifests as hikikomori may be the result of one or more underlying, and possibly underdiagnosed, conditions. A 2010 Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease paper proposed that hikikomori is used by laypeople to describe other mood disorders that they may not be familiar with, and that mental-health professionals may use it as a gentler way to talk about other issues, since clinical depression and its ilk are so highly loaded. The prevalence of hikikomori also speaks to the culture of mental health in Japan. It could be that “overdependent” youths grew up in smothering families where they never gained autonomy or learned to trust people “maladaptive interdependent” youths grew up in dysfunctional families, leading to bullying and unsatisfying relationships at school and “counterdependent” youths are so burdened by high academic and career expectations that they withdraw. From a health perspective, that kind of self-enforced solitude is brutal: American researchers have found that loneliness poses an increase of risk in mortality comparable to obesity.Ī 2015 review proposed three possible reasons someone might turn hikki. Now, Takahashi reports, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to mobilize the nation’s shut-ins to contribute the world’s third-largest economy as it faces a massive population drop. Linguistically, the word a combination of the hiku, or “draw, pull” and komoru, or “seclude oneself.” The standard definition is “acute social withdrawal.” The phenomenon was first identified in 1978 as “withdrawal neurosis,” then further described by Japanese psychiatrists in the 1990s, before turning into a subject of national and international interest in the 2000s, being added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a loanword in 2010. ![]() The Japanese government defines them as people who have stayed at home for at least six months and haven’t had any social interactions beyond their family, Maiko Takahashi reports for Bloomberg. They’re called hikikomori: the 541,000 people across Japan between ages 15 and 39 who live as shut-ins. France Has More Babies Than Everybody in Europe Because of Day Care and Prussia ![]()
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