Disappearing to Start a New Life - The Phenomenon of Jōhatsu
from Jōhatsu│© Andreas Hartmann & Arata Mori
Every year, nearly 100,000 Japanese people voluntarily disappear to get rid of their past and start anew. Men, women, entire families try to start a new life under another identity, as stowaways. This phenomenon, which we call “evaporation”, or jouhatsu, remains a taboo subject despite the scale of this practice and the media coverage made possible in the West by the book by Léna Mauger And Stéphane Remael, The Vanished: The "Evaporated People" of Japan in Stories and Photographs (2016). This work, composed of texts and photographs, constitutes an investigation carried out over several years into the phenomenon of voluntary disappearances, and lists touching testimonies of those who disappeared and decided to leave everything overnight.
A story goes like this: a man named Norihiro is fired and loses his job as an engineer but, covered with shame, prefers not to tell his family. Every morning, he puts on his shirt and tie, kisses his wife goodbye and heads to his office. With no place to go, he spends the day in his car, sometimes staying late to appear as if he is drinking with his co-workers.
The days pass, he no longer receives any salary. He can no longer continue to lie to those close to him, and rather than face this terrible situation, he resolves to disappear without a trace. Norihiro is a jouhatsu, one of the many evaporated people who choose to let go of their past out of a feeling of shame or dishonor.
Dealing with distress
The phenomenon of evaporation gained momentum in the 1990s following the bursting of the speculative bubble which led to bankruptcies and insurmountable debts. If disappearances increase in times of economic difficulties, it is mainly because financial factors play an important role in this radical decision. Indeed, in a culture where leaving a company can be considered shameful, disappearing is an attractive alternative, and people who decide to leave want to escape the distress that this implies. It is sometimes even the only alternative in order not to lose face in the face of the problems that must be faced in a context of social pressure that is increasingly difficult to manage.
The phenomenon is not recent, however, as evidenced by the filmmaker Shōhei Imamura who addresses the subject in his film A Man Vanishes in 1967, based on a news story. However, in this country of more than 126 million inhabitants, voluntary disappearances tend to increase. Japanese society is historically group and community oriented, but is now composed of separate, individualized people. Living on the margins of society seems unacceptable, and many jouhatsu, after their disappearance, mostly live under a false identity.
Why do these people disappear?
Several factors contribute to the increase in the jouhatsu population in Japan, and economic causes are only part of the identifiable elements. Some people may want to escape an abusive partner, the pressures and restrictions of everyday life, flee religious cults or oppressive employers, or simply seek freedom. Academic failure is also a factor that affects the youngest, who cannot cope with the teasing and pressure inherent in the competition that exists from a very young age.
There is an adage in Japan which says that “the nail that sticks out calls the hammer”, meaning that it is difficult to accept to deviate from the norm, to be out of the crowd, and that conformity and social harmony should be preferred to independence and individual expression. This results in social pressure which can become unbearable, unbearable for some, and which can explain the emergence of this phenomenon.
"Moving"
Most individuals disappear without any real preparation. Many are men who leave their wives and children behind without warning, claiming that everything is going well before disappearing without a trace. Others prepare more and call on “moving” companies that offer logistical assistance to the jouhatsu, going so far as to temporarily house them in secret locations.
Every year, hundreds of people use their services, paying substantial sums of money, sometimes to flee with their entire family. If the number of disappearances is increasing, it is also because the right to disappear is respected. Japanese legislation considers that individuals are officially “absent” after seven years of disappearance: their marriage is dissolved, their inheritance opened. In the absence of suspicion of a crime, the police rarely carry out an investigation to find an adult who appears to have disappeared voluntarily. The families of the missing then turn to private detectives specializing in the search for those who have disappeared. Their prices being very high, some offer their service on a voluntary basis, in an associative context, often because they have themselves been confronted with cases of evaporation (especially in their family).
Overall, the evaporated choose to drown in megacities to blend in with the crowd, which makes them difficult to spot. However, several of them are found, but do not express the desire to reconnect with those they abandoned, sometimes several decades earlier...
Life after
The decision to leave everything is not made without difficulty, and the majority of those who evaporate have in common that they live in poverty, in unsanitary housing, with poorly paid and dangerous daily work. The great fragility of these voluntarily disappeared people makes them easy prey for mafia organizations, which hire a workforce carrying out work that no one wants to do. The country's thriving underground economy makes it possible to disappear and find undeclared work without identification or written records. This encourages some jouhatsu to flee their past, because they know that a new beginning remains possible despite the difficulties. The government does not hesitate to turn a blind eye to these cases of disappearances, and respects the choice of these individuals. In a way, admitting their existence would amount to recognizing the limits of Japanese society and its harmful effects on its citizens.
On the other hand, they serve the country's economy. For example, evaporated people were hired to clean up radioactive sites following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. No matter how dangerous the work to be done, no matter the potential risks of cancer, these outcasts survive more than they live.
The Vanished
A book published in 2016 deals with this taboo subject. Written by Léna Mauger, journalist, and Stéphane Remael, photographer, the work entitled The Vanished: The "Evaporated People" of Japan in Stories and Photographs brings together various testimonies from missing people and families who have experienced this loss. Throughout work spanning from 2008 to 2013, their investigation took them to the underbelly of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, where they were able to carry out real in-depth work to shed light on a little-known part of Japanese culture. Composed of a series of portraits gleaned from their five years of wandering, the book contains unpublished testimonies from the families of the missing as well as the missing themselves. Very often, the people contacted by the authors talk about their story for the first time, and provide edifying testimonies. Some of them have been missing for decades, and detail their harsh and overwhelming journeys. Also, families recount the suffering linked to the disappearance of a loved one, generally without going into details, touching on the reasons and refusing the facts, as if to avoid reliving these unexplained tragedies.
The two authors used intermediaries to get in touch with people who initially did not want to confide, continuing to live with the weight of the past. One of the first difficulties was finding a willing translator to approach these men and women lost to their sad fate. Subsequently, their work led them to night moving contractors, private detectives, police officers, associations supporting the families of the missing, which made it possible to approach jouhatsu who were often fragile, tired, sometimes threatened by alcoholism and subscribed to precarious jobs.
The texts are accompanied by magnificent photos by Stéphane Remael, illustrating the decline and sadness of these disgraced men who agreed to be photographed, as well as the families and private detectives. Sometimes faces, sometimes places in which the evaporated wander to withdraw from the world they sought to escape. The tenderness of these photographs adds to the melancholy of the striking testimonies, and makes this work a unique, fascinating, poignant document, rich in emotions.
A French woman disappeared in Japan
More recently, the disappearance in Japan of the French woman Tiphaine Véron sees the rebirth of debates on police inaction and the failures of the Japanese judicial system. Tiphaine disappeared on the morning of July 29, 2018 while taking a solo trip to Japan. Since then, her family has started a fight for the truth told by Damien and Sibylle Veron, brother and sister of the deceased. They published a book whose title Tiphaine où es-tu ? (Tiphaine where are you?, 2022) sounds like hope for clarifying a matter that the Japanese authorities seem to consider as yet another evaporation. A concrete case of a much larger phenomenon, this disappearance illustrates a fundamental problem masked by the apparent grandeur and wealth of Japan. However, let us remember that the phenomenon of “voluntary disappearance” is not unique to Japan, and that the increased number of those who have disappeared sheds light on an even greater anomaly, that of not feeling adapted to one's environment, of not being integrated, of not being happy, and of wanting to change one's life at all costs.
This is evidenced by the chilling story of Ayae, who has disappeared for more than twenty years: “My son was at school. Abandoning your son: can you do worse? I did this. I knew where I was going. Leave, start from scratch. Being ready for anything... It took me fifteen years to gather my courage and call home. My son told me: “I was alone in the world, I needed you. I wanted you. » He wasn't talkative, it was too late. He won't forgive me."
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