The year is 1941. Most landscapes in pre-independence Malaya are expansive. The paddy fields seem just as infinite as the seas that reach to the ends of the horizon. Living in the secluded villages of Kedah is a middle-aged man named Hadi. Like the rest of the village people, Hadi is Malay, and works out on the farm.
The Japanese term Hikikomori refers to a form of social phenomena principally found in Japan. The term — first coined by Saitō Tamaki, a psychiatrist — is used to describe the phenomena of the complete withdrawal of Japanese people from society. The term also generally describes the people suffering from said phenomenon, with an individual that has withdrawn from society for longer than six months at a time is deemed a ‘social recluse’ or Hikikomori. According to a survey conducted by the Japanese government, it is estimated that there are currently more than 1 million Hikikomori living in Japan. From the same survey conducted, the age can range from as low as 15 to as high as 64 years old, with men constituting approximately 76.6% from the survey’s total participants.
“My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.” – Anna Sewell, Black Beauty.
Look 214,000 million kilometers away from Earth, and you will find our sister planet, Venus. Named after the eponymous Greek goddess of love, this planet shines as one of the brightest celestial bodies in our night sky. Mankind has always looked towards colonising potential planets such as Mars. Yet, Venus is rarely brought up as a possible candidate. Have you ever wondered why that’s the case? Well, the truth of the matter is that Venus is entirely uninhabitable. Ravaged by the long-lasting effects of climate change, our sister planet has completely metamorphosed from having similar atmospheric conditions to Earth to a fiery sphere of literal doom.
People often say that most of the time, the world works like clockwork: things always happen the way they were meant to. However, if any one person were asked over a year ago what they had imagined their next decade would look like, no one would have an accurate answer on depicting the following months, days or even years. No one would have foreseen the world at a complete standstill, at its wits’ end. No one would call this clockwork. It has been 523 days since COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China. 447 days (as of 8th June 2021) since the very genesis of Malaysia’s MCOs and yet here we are, almost 500 days later, back at square one.
