🍂Fascinating essay by Katherine Dee 🍂

It’s Western-centric, which is understandable—but from the other end of the world, Japan, the “lonely man” archetype exists too, often as male hikikomori, socially withdrawn, alienated, performing masculinity through absence rather than dominance.

Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫) sculpted his body, his rituals, his life into theater, not for material gain, becoming a kind of “alpha male” figure if read through a Western lens, even as reception in Japan remains to this day quite ambivalent. Osamu Dazai (太宰治)’s men crumble under expectation, trapped between societal norms and personal failure (No Longer Human / 『人間失格』,1948). Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎潤一郎) obsesses over control, desire, and aestheticized relationships (Quicksand / 『危険な関係』, 1928); Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成), a Nobel laureate, subtly maps male alienation and sexual desire as possession of women, a quiet, almost imperceptible form of power (Snow Country / 『雪国』,1947).

In other media, postwar yakuza films—Battles Without Honor and Humanity (仁義なき戦い, 1973) directed by Kinji Fukasaku (深作欣二) and later works by Takeshi Kitano (北野武)—dramatize male hierarchy, loyalty, and honor, while samurai classics, such as Akira Kurosawa (黒澤明)’s Yojimbo (「用心棒」, 1961) and Seven Samurai (「七人の侍」, 1954), expose strategy, performance, and isolation. Even modern dramas like Kiyoshi Kurosawa (黒沢清)’s Tokyo Sonata (「トウキョウソナタ」, 2008) depict men retreating into domestic withdrawal, becoming hikikomori in all but name.

Anime and manga such as Welcome to the NHK (NHKにようこそ!, 2002) by Tatsuhiko Takimoto (滝本竜彦) or ReLIFE (リライフ, 2013–2018) by Yayoiso (夜宵草) explore young men trapped in social withdrawal, internet addiction, and failure to meet societal expectations.

Across these works, we see men measuring themselves against invisible codes, performing strength, withdrawing, or failing spectacularly. Different culture, different aesthetics, same old question—what does it mean to be a man when the world won’t make space for you, and some men respond by retreating entirely from it?

This question is becoming more urgent in recent years, especially in light of Japan’s somewhat aloof approach to gender equality. Reforms and slogans alone do little in a society that remains deeply patriarchal, where structural pressures in work, family life, and social expectation continue to shape male identity, performance, and the possibilities for withdrawal or failure. It is in these quiet, unremarked spaces—the bedrooms of young men, the domestic retreats, the abandoned ambitions—where we see the lingering, almost spectral presence of the lonely male, performing or receding, and asking the same question across generations: what does it mean to be a man in a world that has little room for you?

And vice versa: what does it mean to be a woman in a society so deeply codified by patriarchy, expectation, and hierarchy? Where male identity is measured by withdrawal, performance, or domination, female identity is often circumscribed by compliance, invisibility, or the careful negotiation of desire and decorum.

From Tanizaki’s women, who are objects of aestheticized control, to Kawabata’s, who are entangled in subtle webs of male possession and longing, to contemporary Japanese life, where women navigate corporate barriers, reproductive expectations, and social scrutiny, the pressures are relentless, though differently expressed. In some ways, female agency in Japan can be as constrained, as codified, and as quietly perilous as male retreat—though it manifests less as withdrawal and more as negotiation, endurance, and the careful performance of socially sanctioned roles. Always performance.