![]() “Police will not intervene unless there’s another reason – like a crime or an accident. Privacy is fiercely protected: missing people can freely withdraw money from ATMs without being flagged, and their family members can’t access security videos that might have captured their loved one on the run. “In Japan, it’s just easier to evaporate,” says Nakamori. Divorce rates were (and still are) very low in Japan, so some people decided it was easier to just up and leave their spouses instead of going through elaborate, formal divorce proceedings. He says the term ‘jouhatsu’ first started being used to describe people who decided to go missing back in the 60s. Sociologist Hiroki Nakamori has been researching jouhatsu for more than a decade. “What we did was support people to start a second life,” he says. At first, he thought financial ruin would be the only thing driving people to flee their troubled lives, but he soon found there were “social reasons”, too. But there’s also sad moving – for example, like dropping out of university, losing a job or escaping from a stalker,” says Sho Hatori, who founded a night-moving company in the 90s when Japan’s economic bubble burst. ![]() “Normally, the reason for moving is something positive, like entering university, getting a new job or a marriage. ![]() They help people who want to disappear discreetly remove themselves from their lives, and can provide lodging for them in secret whereabouts. ![]() These operations are called “night moving” services, a nod to the secretive nature of becoming a jouhatsu. Regardless of their reasons, they turn to companies that help them through the process. But having that role foisted upon him caused him such distress that he abruptly left town forever and told no one where he was going.įrom inescapable debt to loveless marriages, the motivations that push jouhatsu to “evaporate” can vary. “I just kind of escaped.” He says that back in his small hometown, everybody knew him because of his family and their prominent local business, which Sugimoto was expected to carry on. I took a small suitcase and disappeared,” says 42-year-old Sugimoto, who’s just going by his family name for this story. That’s the Japanese word for “evaporation”, but it also refers to people who vanish on purpose into thin air, and continue to conceal their whereabouts – potentially for years, even decades. In Japan, these people are sometimes referred to as “jouhatsu”. Adapted by Bryan Lufkin.Īll over the world, from the US to Germany to the UK, some people decide to disappear from their own lives without a trace – leaving their homes, jobs and families in the middle of the night to start a second life, often without ever looking back. doi:10.3389/ piece is based on this BBC Reel video produced by Andreas Hartman, and is a text reversion of this radio piece for the Rulebreakers series from BBC World Service in collaboration with the Sundance Institute. Taking a stand for office-based workers’ mental health: the return of the microbreak. Mainsbridge CP, Cooley D, Dawkins S, et al. Isolating the effect of opposite action in borderline personality disorder: A laboratory-based alternating treatment design. Sauer-Zavala S, Wilner JG, Cassiello-Robbins C, Saraff P, Pagan D. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System. doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000097338.75454.29Ĭommittee on the Health and Medical Dimensions of Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults, Board on Health Sciences Policy, Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, Health and Medicine Division, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. ![]() Immunological effects of induced shame and guilt. Dickerson SS, Kemeny ME, Aziz N, Kim KH, Fahey JL. ![]()
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