Mentioned at a BBQ!
Shutting out the Sun is a book on the current demise of Japan. Here is the description from the author’s website – www.shuttingoutthesun.com/
- The world’s second wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Even more troubling are the more than one million young men who shut themselves in their rooms ("hikikomori"), withdrawing from society, and the growing numbers of "parasite singles," the name given to single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children.
Don Love, missionary to Japan, had been reading the book and brought it to our attention. In fact, his teenage sons had also been reading it. They will return to Japan in a few weeks and see this phenomenon up close and personal.
Interestingly, the author, Michael Sielenziger (a secular Jew), has some commendation for Christianity as the solution to some of the ills of Japanese society.