As the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant disasters slowly start to be addressed, one of the hopeful images is that of young people volunteering. Shaken, literally, out of their daydreams, quite a few young people have signed up to help with recovery in the devastated region and with shelter and aid for evacuees. The numbers may not be large yet, but any number is better than passivity.
Youngsters around the world are prone to listlessness and moodiness, but Japanese young people have seemed especially stuck of late, like Hamlet, inside a thousand small indecisions. The number of hikikomori (shut-ins), futoko (school refusers) and teen suicides remain at tragically high levels. These serious problems are not all going to be cured by cleaning up debris in Tohoku, of course, but volunteering may just be one way to help push some young people out of their doldrums.
Japanese youth now have a chance to pull their energies away from the artificial world of cell phones, video games, Facebook and anime to look more directly at reality — a very frightening reality in this case. By volunteering, young people will connect to others outside their peer group, see life — and death — from varied points of view, and participate in an important social project far beyond their usual experience.