Every year, more than 80,000 people in Japan quietly disappear from society, choosing to live in the shadows, far removed from their past lives. Known as “johatsu,” a term meaning “evaporated people,” these individuals drift away from families, jobs, debts and expectations, slipping through the cracks of one of the world’s most orderly societies.
Hideki Nishida, now 57, is one of them. Recalling his second “disappearance” eight years ago, he said: “Without a job, without money, buried in debt… what else could I do? My only escape was to find an opening and vanish into it.”
As a young man, Nishida left Kansai for Tokyo to enter the adult film industry. But reality hit hard. For a time, he managed to survive on a meager salary of just 5,000 yen a day (about $32). His fortunes changed in the 1990s during the AV boom, earning as much as 600,000 yen ($3,840) a month. “Not bad for a guy with no real talent” he mused.
But his success was short-lived. Ten years ago everything collapsed. In 2018 he disappeared again. “I inherited it from my mother” he said, referring to his passing after a business failure. Today he works as a freelancer for a digital content company and temporarily lives in their office.
Like Nishida, tens of thousands each year choose to leave it all behind. Their reasons vary from divorce, to debt, to academic failure, to job loss, but the root often lies in Japan’s ruthless social expectations. Failure, in any form, is often considered shameful, and for many, disappearing seems like the only way to reset.
Shogo Nomura, 42, now lives under the identity of a friend. Once an excellent student at a prestigious school in Tokyo, the pressure has crushed him. He dropped out of school, fell into drug abuse and was eventually dragged to the police station by his father. That humiliation became the turning point for his demise.
Nomura wandered the underbelly of Tokyo: working for a phone scam ring, dealing drugs, and assuming a false name to get a license, buy insurance, and even get married. “The only joy I had in those years” he confessed, “he was secretly seeing my son.”
But not all “johatsu” stories end in despair. Yoshihiko Sakai, 53, first disappeared at the age of 17 while in Paris. Lost in a foreign city, he survived thanks to new friends, learned to pickpocket, and was eventually deported to Japan. Returning home, he continued to wander, working as a fisherman, photographer and eventually opening his own photography studio in Tokyo.
These hidden lives offer a sobering glimpse into the silent rebellion against social norms, where “fading away” becomes a survival strategy in a society where conformity reigns supreme. For some it leads to ruin; for others it becomes a path to rediscovery and unconventional freedom.
Sources: AU News
