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A place to belong is needed in these unstable times

Please tell us how you started working on the research topic of "place."

I specialize in "social education" outside of home and school in education. As the term "parent gacha" suggests, families are not something you can choose for yourself, and there are disparities and inequalities that arise. It is actually difficult to re-enter a different school just because the school you attended didn't suit you.

However, there is too little hope for people to say, "I was born and raised in this family, and I go to this school, so I have no choice but to live this way." While thinking about creating a place where children and young people can learn and grow independently, rather than being limited to easy-to-understand places of learning like schools, I came across the keyword "place to be."

One of the areas I have focused on is research into supporting young people through places to belong. I have been exploring the possibility of creating a society in which young people can restart their lives without shouldering personal responsibility, even if they deviate from the straight and continuous path of transition that is graduating from school, getting a job, and continuing to work.

Professor Abiru's book "Sociology of Loneliness and Places to Stay" (Daiwa Shobo) unravels the structure of difficulties in living from the perspective of "places to stay"

What do you think a place to belong is, Professor Abiru?

What many people need is a place to belong, a place where they can feel accepted psychologically and that it is okay for them to belong, or a place where they can feel useful and feel that they are useful to someone. Behind this desire for a place to belong lies an increasingly unstable society.

In today's society, where the idea of lifetime employment has collapsed and the stability of life is unstable, we must bear the consequences of our life choices. A society where people are responsible for themselves is free, but also anxious and lonely. That is why people need a place where they can feel relieved and secure.

Having multiple places to go frees you from "school values"

Why do we need a place to live?

Many people consider school or work to be their main place of residence. However, if that is your only place of residence, the pressure to gain recognition and approval there increases in order to maintain your place. Not having a choice in where you live can sometimes lead to a feeling of suffocation.

"Deschooling Society" by Ivan Ilyich (Tokyo Sogensha)

In his book "Deschooling Society," philosopher and social critic Ivan Ilych criticized the entire society for being covered in "school values." "School values" refers to values that uniformly consider what is considered good in school education to be the correct answer, such as higher grades being evaluated highly. This is not limited to schools, but is a value that is rampant throughout Japanese society today. For example, the trend of favoring a high level of education and getting a job at a large company is an example of school values. The desire to get away from a place where you are evaluated under such uniform values is also one of the reasons for needing a place to belong.

In general, in society, before we even think about how we want to be, we are looked at and judged by those around us as an "object to be evaluated." We are evaluated without even saying a word, with people asking us, "How many points do you get for your studies? How many points do you get for your appearance? How many points do you get for your personality?", and we are expected to behave in a way that matches the "character" that people around us perceive us to be.

You also internalize that evaluation and take it in, which can lead to anxiety and conflict, for example, thinking, "If I say this, I might be thought of as rude," or "I wonder if it's okay for me to behave like this."

However, if you change your place, the people you interact with will also change, and the way others see you will also change. Having a different place allows you to relativize specific evaluation axes and gain a multifaceted perspective.

Is it necessary to distance yourself from the evaluations based on "school values" in order to make life easier?

That's true. However, even though we think "I don't want to live in a society based on such an evaluation axis," we feel frustrated because we have internalized that value system and are therefore unable to be completely free.

For example, when listening to Waseda University students who are job hunting, I sense that they are under a lot of stress and fear due to the "school values." There should be no right or wrong answers when it comes to finding a job, but the social axis of evaluation that values academic background and high salary as status makes them anxious about whether their choice is the "right one," that is, whether it will be evaluated positively by others.

While a separate place is necessary to get away from society's standards of evaluation, I also think it's important to have experiences that allow you to realize that you don't need to be swayed by the gazes and evaluations of others that you care about. In my case, I worked as an employee in the private sector before becoming a researcher, which helped me realize that I would be happier living in accordance with the values I want to realize, rather than the high income and stability that are generally considered to be the correct answer. This also applies to job hunting. I feel that life becomes much easier when you have the experience of relativizing the evaluations of those around you and social values and becoming aware of your own values.

"Unlearning" - loosening existing concepts - will create a society where people can make diverse life choices

What efforts do you think are necessary to ensure that each individual can maintain their mental health and build a society where it is easy to live?

Many of the recluses I meet and young people I support in finding employment believe that they have failed in life, for example by not being able to graduate from university or keep a job. However, through dialogue, they begin to ask themselves, "Was that really a bad thing?" and "What kind of life do I really want now?", and through work experience they discover what they are good at, and I have seen them begin to interact with society in a positive way again.

What is creating this change is unlearning*, which loosens the existing concepts that we have internalized as if they were putting a curse on ourselves. If we can put this into practice before we leave society, we may be able to reduce the number of young people who suffer. By unlearning our perceptions of ourselves and the values of society, we should be able to diversify the choices we have in life.

(※) Selecting and discarding knowledge and understanding gained from past learning and relearning it anew.

Please tell us about your ideal vision of society.

In one word, it would be "a society in which everyone can freely make life choices at any time they like."​

"The Age of 'Full Body Activity': Social Theory Seen from Job Hunting, Marriage Hunting, and Childcare Hunting" by Hirokazu Ouchi and Mieko Takenobu (Seidosha Publishing)

There is a book called "The Age of 'All-Out XX Activities' - A Social Theory Seen from Job Hunting, Marriage Hunting, and Childcare Hunting" that talks about the unavoidable "XX activities" that we do to achieve something, such as job hunting, marriage hunting, and childcare hunting. As exemplified by the "XX activities" discussed in the book, there are certain "correct" life choices and timing in modern society. However, I think it's strange that we live in a society where if you don't live in a way that is considered "correct," you'll be left behind or be considered lonely.

Of course, by choosing a straight, unconventional path, you may lose some of the social benefits you would have gained. Still, a life full of benefits doesn't necessarily mean you're happy.

I hope we can create a society where people can make life choices while thinking about their own happiness, without the preconceived notion that they can only be happy if they follow a certain life course. This will naturally relieve the feeling of suffocation and make it easier to achieve peace of mind.

What is needed to realize such a society?

Society can change if more people choose to live the way they want to. For example, there are various factors behind the trend of young people not marrying, but each person's "selective non-marriage" often makes marriage no longer a given.

This means that every one of our behaviors contributes to shaping society.

When job hunting, choosing a company based on its reputation or annual salary rather than the company you would actually like to join, or forcing yourself to go through interviews in order to avoid becoming a social dropout, will only reinforce the job hunting society that makes you think "I really don't want to do this..."

No matter how small the action, it doesn't matter. I believe that by choosing actions that bring us closer to the kind of society we want to live in, to the extent possible, we can create a better society.

At the same time, I believe that we need to change the current structure of our society, where people are overly responsible for themselves and must bear all responsibility for the consequences of the actions they choose.