What if Mali and Liel were Japanese? Inside Japan’s culture of voluntary disappearanc

They told Superintendent Walter Kogan, the Israel Police representative in South America who became the hero of the day, that they had simply wanted to disappear, for reasons of their own. Since there was no suspicion that they had committed a crime, they were allowed to continue on their way. Public attention soon moved on. But if they had been Japanese, the entire story might have looked very different.

“In Japanese, there is a word for people who one day decide to disappear: johatsu, meaning ‘to evaporate,’” Dr. Maya Guez wrote in a Facebook post after returning from a short stay in Japan.

“These are people who simply decided to erase the lives they had: work, home, friends and sometimes even spouses and children. They move to another city and try to start over somewhere no one knows them.”

Guez went further. “In Japan, voluntary disappearance is such a familiar phenomenon that it has not only a name, but even an industry built around it,” she wrote. “These are escape companies known as ‘night moving’ services. You call, pay, and they help you move somewhere else discreetly.”

The phenomenon was documented in the 2024 film Johatsu: Into Thin Air, directed by Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori, which aired on yes Docu and is available on VOD. The film tells the story of a woman who runs a “night moving” company and follows a mother searching for her missing son, including with the help of a private investigator.

Another case featured in the film concerns a man who inherited a family business and lost its entire fortune. Overcome by shame, he decided to kill himself, but because he lacked the courage, he instead chose to disappear and begin a new life, hoping to earn enough money to repay the debts he had left behind.

People who choose to vanish also appear in the book A Japanese Experience by Shifra Horn, who lived in Japan in the late 1980s. “There are homeless people there who, because of shame, were forced to leave their lives behind, cut themselves off from their families and preferred to live on the margins of society,” she said.

“They don’t beg. They live on food leftovers they receive from restaurants, 24-hour cafés and soup kitchens. They have only basic equipment such as a futon or blankets, sleep in parks, under bridges or deep inside subway stations, and use public toilets.”

“People disappearing by choice is certainly something known in Japan,” said Ayelet Eidelberg, an anthropologist and researcher of East Asian cultures and religions who specializes in Japan and travels there several times a year as a tour guide.

“You have to understand that this is a huge country. Some 123 million people live across an area of 380,000 square kilometers. You can disappear easily there, something that is almost impossible for us because everyone knows everyone.”

During the major economic crisis of the 2000s, particularly around 2008, she said, a large wave of layoffs helped produce a new pattern. “People who lost their jobs could not bear the shame, because a man’s role is to provide for his family, and if he cannot do that, he loses the justification for his existence,” Eidelberg said.

“Some didn’t even tell their families they had been fired. They simply disappeared. They moved to another city, changed their name and cut all ties with their former lives.”

How many people are we talking about today, on average?
“There are no official figures, but apparently several thousand every year.”

Why do you think this happens specifically in Japan?
“I don’t know another place where this could happen, because in Japan there is emotional alienation. When I lived there in the 1990s, I quickly understood that the best way to live in Japan as a foreigner was to sit on the fence. On the one hand, enjoy everything the culture has to offer, and on the other, not become part of the system.

“Anyone who lives there sees the heavy price they pay for living in a very orderly, organized and disciplined society, where the most important thing is to ‘be proper.’ They do not raise children to be individuals but to be part of a group.

“That means the collective is always more important than the individual, and the individual matters as part of society. They are educated to be good cogs in the system and carry the Japanese economy on their shoulders.

“A place like that, which sees them mainly in terms of what they contribute to the system, requires them to meet strict rules. A Japanese man who loses his job is no longer fulfilling the role assigned to him, providing for his family, and loses the essence of his life.

“In the past, suicide was considered an honorable way out in cases such as job loss, debt or even failure to get into school. Today, disappearance is essentially a kind of suicide. They do not physically die, but when they vanish and leave everything behind, their entire former life dies.”

How is it possible today to disappear without leaving a trace?
“In Israel, there is no real possibility of being anonymous. In Japan, people do not intrude on your privacy, ask questions or share other people’s personal information.

“People can live alongside one another for years without knowing anything about each other, and if someone arrives in a new place, nobody will ask them for details about themselves.”

How does Japanese society treat the family of someone who disappears this way?
“It’s not something people talk about. A woman whose husband disappeared, or children whose father disappeared, feel deeply ashamed and usually tell only people close to them.

“In addition, Japan respects people’s right to privacy. Since in most cases the disappearance is not connected to a crime and the person left voluntarily and by choice, even if the family wants to search for them, the ability to find them is limited.

“The police do not cooperate because the right to privacy is respected, and if the person has done nothing criminal, they do not intervene. Someone looking for a missing relative cannot obtain phone records, bank statements or credit card records and so on.”

And if someone who ‘evaporated’ suddenly turns up, voluntarily or otherwise, are they punished by the authorities?
“If they disappeared without committing a crime, there is no reason to punish them.”

Do women also choose to disappear, or is this mainly a male phenomenon?
“In the past, it was exclusively a male phenomenon. Today there are also women who flee their homes because of violence or financial trouble, but it is still mostly men.

“When a man gets into business trouble, owes money and decides to disappear, he leaves his wife and children with the debts, and his wife is expected to cope alone.

“In most cases, it is unlikely that a woman would abandon her children and disappear. That said, today there are also women who leave home, usually because of violence, but they are generally women without children.”

Keren Zohar, an Israeli content creator who has lived in Japan for the past four years and works as Kan 11’s correspondent in Japan, argues that johatsu should not necessarily be described as a phenomenon. “It’s more of an urban legend than a practice embedded in society,” she said.

“The use of the term johatsu, describing a disappearance from ‘something’ into ‘nothing,’ comes from the film Johatsu: Into Thin Air. The film deals with people who fled debts, fear of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, or family disputes.

“In practice, the term johatsu describes many different kinds of disappearance under one umbrella, and some of those cases include kidnapping or murder.

“In a way, it has been romanticized beyond what it really is. It’s not something people talk about in the media, certainly not as a phenomenon. Essentially, all the information we have in the West is based on the film and articles published about it, and there is no information from Japanese sources.”

Among those you prefer to call ‘missing people,’ are there also women, or is it only men?
“There are women too. It’s not a gender issue. There are women in Japan who are entangled with criminal organizations they are part of, and there are women who want to break away from their family or a partner. Society is still conservative.”

Still, how do you explain the fact that in Japan a person can voluntarily disappear without leaving a trace?
“Surprisingly, Japan does not have an identity card. There is a personal number, but it is not something you receive at birth and the government does not require you to obtain it.

“So the process of starting a new life or changing a name is simpler. It is not difficult to stop one life in one place and start another somewhere else.

“In addition, in Japan people do not pry into someone’s personal life the way we do. If someone introduces themselves by a certain name, people do not check it.”

In her post, Maya Guez also listed prices charged by companies that help people disappear voluntarily. “In Japan, there are businesses known as yonige-ya, loosely translated as nighttime escape companies,” she wrote. “You call, pay, and in some cases a team arrives during hours when there is less chance of being seen, packs your belongings and helps you move somewhere else discreetly.

“Some companies also help find a new place to live and help with arrangements for life after the disappearance. In other words, there are people whose profession is helping other people disappear.

“According to prices currently advertised by Japanese companies in the field, a simple escape with few possessions can start at around 30,000 to 100,000 yen, or approximately 600 to 2,100 shekels.

“A more complicated move or one over a greater distance, for example from Tokyo to Osaka, can reach around 300,000 to 500,000 yen or more, approximately 6,300 to 10,500 shekels.”