Michael Zielenziger is the author of Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation published in September, 2006, by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday books. He is a research scholar at the Institute of International Studies, University of California - Berkeley where he works on issues related to US-China relations, and the impacts of globalization on competitiveness and innovation. For more than seven years, until May 2003, he was the Tokyo-based bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers, publishers of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Jose Mercury News, and more than thirty other American newspapers.

As a long-time enthusiast and student of Japanese Culture and history, I always strive to find innovate material to further my understanding of the archipelago. Zielenziger's literature is precisely that: a ground-breaking collection of moving interviews and well-reasoned systemic observations that illustrate the grim reality of the plights affecting Japanese youth and ultimately society at large. Zielenziger eloquently tackles very disappointing, yet imperative issues that are otherwise scarcely touched upon in the academic realm of Japanese Studies.

Enter the world of "Hikikomori": reclusive individuals who have elected to physically and emotionally barricade themselves from society, living a life of seclusion as meals are set outside their bedroom doors by their concerned parents. Zielenziger takes great car to transport readers into the minds of the Hikikomori by documenting their interpretations of the causes of their plights: the harsh demands of the education system, the suppression of individuality, and a struggling economy and job market still recovering after a downward spiral in the 1990s.

In conjunction with the Hikikomori, Zielenziger also investigates several other social dilemmas in Japan. The overarching thesis of his analysis claims that the source of these issues lie in the ramifications of the country's rigid social institutions, which manifest across multiple sectors of society. From a low national birth rate due to decrease in marriage to a rising case of depression and suicides, Zielenziger argues that Japan's social order, which condemns the independent thinking boasted in western media, largely reinforce and nurture these phenomena, as youth rebel against these institutions that were established after World War II.

Extremely well-researched and extraordinarily insightful, I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in Japan whatsoever, and especially to those scholars of Japanese Studies who wish to broaden their knowledge of the nation's inner-workings and sociology.

- Keenan Holmes