LEVEL 0 -JAPAN IN THE 90S
I think it’s important I mention the environment that Serial Experiments: Lain sprang from to understand its initial appeal when it came out in Japan.
Part of the reason that Lain became so popular in Japan is better understood if you know some basic background about Japanese society at the time Lain was created. In the 1990s Japan went into a period of recession called “The Lost Decades.” Japan had been an economic powerhouse during the 1980’s so when the bubble burst things changed exponentially in Japan. It changed the economy and financial life of Japan, but Japanese society began to change as well.
Parents began to work all the time, leaving children at home, and the children began to spend more time alone on electronics. This had begun in the 1980s but became much more prevalent in the 1990s. The rise of the Internet and cell phones also created a world where Children did not need to leave their homes or connect in person.
During this time as well the individual was also not seemingly valued very highly. Most institutions such as work or schools value homogenized society and fitting in and not standing out. Schools would often press group activities and they taught children from an early age that they were just a small part of the larger machinations going on.
The older generation worked long hours and often went out drinking with senior members of their companies to further ingratiate themselves with superiors. During this time the shutaisei (which is a Japanese word, that kind of means individuality, experiences and feelings, and personal opinions based on lived experiences.) was very weak for most of the work-age people. It is not surprising that teens and children of this time became a different type of culture than Japan had ever had before.
The younger generation saw how soulless and depersonalized the older generation was and many of them decided they did not want this life at all. Many people think that this was mostly due to the influence of Western countries where individuality is highly valued. Fashion became edgier, not as many college graduates found jobs straight out of school, and juvenile crime and bullying went up. Many Students purposely rejected their parent's ideals to explore their shutaisei and they sought connection mainly through meetups, pop culture, and the internet but it was being observed that this generation was less social with one another. Because of economic issues, it was more difficult for them to live how their parents had anyway, the housing market was insanely expensive after the late eighties and because Japan was competing with labor from China and South Korea salaries were slashed all across the Japanese job market. This is also part of the reason Japan’s birth rate fell, it was simply not as feasible for young Japanese people in the 90s and even continuing today to raise a family as their parents had. Everything was just coming together and the Japanese society in the 1990s was beginning to splinter and found themselves in anomie.
This period also saw the rise of the Hikikomori, which is the Japanese term for young adults and teenagers who become recluses and do not leave their homes often, and sometimes not at all for months or even years in extreme cases. The rise of the Hikikomori in Japan is directly related to the rise in technology and the internet.
Since World War Two technology has been embraced by the Japanese, and in the 1990s they had many robots which were also replacing jobs. But also service industry jobs were being replaced. One example of this is the prevalence of Vending Machines, where a person may buy anything from a cold or hot drink to shoes, an umbrella, or even wigs for dogs. With the rise of an automated society, Japanese people interact less and less face to face, and starting in the nineties it is arguable that it became easier and easier for vulnerable people to get lost and disappear from society, and find themselves isolated.
You can probably see how these events inspired a lot of what Lain is about. Lain is a lonely and shy young outcast who explores her shutaisei both gaining and losing it throughout the series. This is very similar to Japanese society at this time which was both losing its old-world cultural identity and gaining a new one. Lain is a series that explores identity very deeply, and it makes sense that it was created at a time when Japan’s identity was changing so drastically. Lain also becomes more and more connected with technology much like modern Japan was. Also, some themes reflected the time at which Lain was created. It was made to reflect the ennui that many Japanese people were feeling. The series also has a running theme of isolation and as I mentioned before this was becoming a societal issue in Japan.
I just thought these were interesting side notes about the environment Serial Experiments: Lain came from. I also think it is interesting that Producer Yasuyuki Ueda explained that he created Lain as "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II". He wanted it to be distinctly Japanese and be something that Americans couldn’t understand and I guess he was really upset when Americans understood the series in much the same way that the Japanese did.
As years passed the United States almost has caught up with Japan and the rest of the world has become more tech-heavy and online. This has had both positive and negative effects of course. I think that there are a couple of things that have happened as our preoccupation with modernity and tech has grown, and as we progressively become more and more online that have really caused Lain to become timeless and even more poignant now and to younger generations than it was when it initially came out.