The world today is saturated with information. A single search yields everything—from reviews of unknown restaurants and routes to faraway countries, to rankings of the most painless ways to die. The truth is, we now take for granted how easily we can learn about toxic workplaces or avoid employers that crush human dignity.

  
But back then—during Japan’s so-called “IT revolution”—there was no Google as we know it, no social media, and no trustworthy system of knowledge. What little existed was fragmented, chaotic, and unverified. In this void, one site became the unlikely gathering place for an entire generation: 2channel.

  
It was an anonymous message board, disorganized and raw, often dismissed as a “toilet wall scribbled with insults.” It had no moderators, no accountability, and no promise of salvation. Yet every night, young people logged on. They wrote. They fought. They bared their exhaustion, their loneliness, their anger—one post at a time.

  
It was here that the term _“black company”_ took hold—shorthand for the kinds of employers who saw workers as expendable. These were the sweatshops of the salaryman era, where unpaid overtime, bullying bosses, and soul-crushing quotas were everyday realities. And it was here that the broken—too tired to scream, too proud to surrender—gave those places a name.

  
It was here, too, that awkward, love-starved youths documented their fumbling hopes, sometimes met with the warmth of total strangers. Even knowing their words could change nothing, they kept writing—not to save the world, but to save themselves from disappearing inside it.

  
This work embodies that contradiction. Like graffiti scrawled on a forgotten wall, glowing with desperate color, the words are both invisible and indelible. They speak for a generation who understood they were powerless, and still—perhaps for that very reason—chose to speak anyway.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Graffiti in the Corner - The Echoes of a Lost Generation on 2channel : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

This artwork reflects a façade of translucent glass from a building in Ginza—its surface catching fragments of blurred silhouettes. We cannot know who these figures are, but their presence is undeniable. For me, these ghostly reflections conjure the image of those who made it—those who crossed the thresholds of elite exams, prestigious jobs, and stable lives. They are both near and unreachable, shimmering just beyond the glass, just beyond my grasp.

  
This piece is not merely personal—it is generational.

  
I came of age during Japan’s Employment Ice Age, when the doors of opportunity were slammed shut on an entire generation. Like many, I failed to secure a full-time position upon graduation and began my adult life as a dispatch worker—a disposable cog in a system that offered no future, no growth, and no dignity. Each month was a coin toss of survival, and the very act of imagining a future felt like a luxury I could not afford.

  
In the early 2000s, Japan was captivated by China’s rapid rise. I had studied Chinese and, driven by despair, convinced my parents to let me study in China. I returned, full of resolve—only to learn that the job market didn’t want me. I was competing with native Chinese speakers fluent in Japanese. I was told, even by recruiters, to hide my language skills. My attempt to rise above my circumstances became a mark of “unnecessary difference.”

  
I didn’t want to return to the void of dispatch work, so I grasped at another path: teaching Japanese abroad. Taiwan offered a chance to rebuild, and for a time, it worked. I gained experience, stability, a sliver of hope. But the wall returned—this time in the form of graduate degrees I couldn’t obtain. My undiagnosed developmental disorder made it impossible to study subjects I had no passion for. My peers moved forward—earning master’s and PhDs, securing positions at universities. I stood still, watching their futures unfold while mine quietly disappeared.

  
This glass, this light, this distortion—they all carry the weight of a time that betrayed us. The dreams I once chased remain visible, like distant reflections beyond a translucent surface—flickering, distorted, but still unbearably present. I made this artwork to mourn not just my own loss, but the shared grief of a generation that was never given the chance to begin.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Hope Beyond Translucent Glass- A Defeat Etched in My Era : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

Postwar Japan once valued corporate loyalty, treating employees “like family” and making layoffs nearly impossible. Unlike in other countries, dismissing workers in Japan required extraordinary justification. Even during economic downturns, companies couldn’t easily reduce labor costs—forced resignations were rare and often ended in court, where the law typically sided with the worker.

  
While this system promised job security, it also made workforce downsizing difficult during recessions. In the prolonged stagnation of the 1990s, traditional stopgaps like internal transfers or reassignments reached their limit. Business leaders increasingly demanded flexible labor. Among them was a high-profile economist, “T”, who began championing the liberalization of employment practices. He loudly called for the deregulation of temporary staffing, framing it as essential for Japan’s economic revival.

  
At the same time, a new Prime Minister, “K”, rose to power with slogans like “No Sacred Cows” and “Postal Privatization.” He became a symbol of hope for a struggling public. His policies—presented with media fanfare and nationalistic fervor—included T’s proposal for sweeping deregulation of temp work. T, now an economic advisor, encouraged K to act. Though T later insisted it wasn’t solely his idea, the damage had already begun.

  
Under K’s populist regime, temporary agencies proliferated. Once-stable roles, such as clerical or assistant positions, were outsourced. Entire industries embraced precarious labor. A split emerged: regular employees retained stability, while a growing underclass of temp workers faced constant uncertainty. Unlike full-time staff, temps were employed not by the companies they worked at, but by agencies—making it easy to terminate them at will.

  
Salaries were stagnant, skimmed by agencies, with no path for advancement. Discrimination was routine—temps were called “the temp,” excluded from training, banned from cafeterias, and forced to eat alone, often with cold food from home, while employees enjoyed warm, subsidized meals.

  
When temps spoke up, they were silenced by Japan’s unforgiving doctrine of “self-responsibility.”

_You chose this path—shut up and endure._

  
During the height of the Employment Ice Age, I graduated into a market where nearly half of my peers couldn’t secure full-time work. Most didn’t _choose_ to be temps—it was all that was left. For us, the consequences of K and T’s reforms weren’t abstract; they were a lived reality.

  
What stunned many of us was learning that T—who designed this exploitative system—had become a director at a major temp agency, one so embedded in public institutions that government offices could no longer function without its workers. He got rich off the same policy he once pitched as necessary reform.

  
It was not mere discontent that temps felt toward K and T—it was something darker, deeper: a **shared, silent fury**, something close to murderous intent.

  
Temp workers earned too little, couldn’t marry or leave their parents’ homes, and lost even the right to complain. Over time, their voices faded, buried beneath stigma and exhaustion. They became invisible, disposable, a natural part of the landscape.

  
But the rage never disappeared.

  
This artwork embodies that quiet, burning resentment. The blade, abstract and rusted, represents both the rage and resignation—rusted by the “blood of the heart” spilled silently by those crushed by this system. It is a silent monument to those who were used, discarded, and gaslit into accepting their suffering as their own fault—while those responsible thrived, untouched.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

A Shared Murderous Intent Toward Those Who Gave Birth to Precarity : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

Amid the ruins of Japan’s Employment Ice Age, I struggled not only with economic collapse but with the crushing weight of inherited values—beliefs that manhood demands income, that marriage is an obligation, and that failure is a personal shame. I resisted these expectations quietly but relentlessly. Yet the cost was immense: exploitation, bankruptcy, depression, and the slow erosion of self.

  
Over time, the world itself began to shift. Even the skyline—those towering office buildings that once symbolized stability—appeared warped and unreal. The sky took on a sickly hue, heavy with anger and resignation. Everything I saw was tinged with distortion, as if my very perception had been corrupted by the weight of loss and betrayal. This artwork captures that unraveling: a moment when reality no longer looked normal, and I began to doubt the ground beneath my feet.

  
What I witnessed was not simply misfortune—it was a system that devoured its youth and then blamed them for disappearing. This artwork emerges from that silent battlefield, where grief smolders beneath the surface, and where anger, though muted, never dies. It reflects a world distorted by contradiction: to endure without hope, to speak without being heard, to live while being erased.

  
This piece is both confession and confrontation. It is a scar, not only on my body, but on the social fabric that allowed so many to fall unseen.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Skyscrapers and Shattered Dreams : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

We are the children of the postwar dreamers—the baby boomers who fueled Japan’s rapid economic ascent. They believed, with unwavering conviction, that education was the golden path: go to university, and a secure future awaited. For many of them, such an education had been out of reach; for us, it was a promise.

  
From the time we were young, we were handed this dream like a family heirloom—told that if we worked hard, earned our degrees, and followed the path our parents carved, we too could build stable careers, happy families, and peaceful lives. But when we, the so-called _“Employment Ice Age Generation,”_finally reached the gates of adulthood, we found them shut.

  
The economy had collapsed. The jobs were gone. That dream—so vivid and solid in our youth—vanished before our eyes like melting snow. Except for graduates of elite universities, there was no place for us in the system. Regular employment, once considered a given, became an elusive prize. Most of us were pushed into precarious, low-paid temp work—“disposable labor” with no prospects for advancement, no recognition, and no future.

  
We were told to get qualifications. We did. But experience, we were told, only counted if you were already “inside.” And we weren’t. We aged outside the walls of the system, frozen in time while the world moved on. Even now, with labor shortages and economic recovery, many of us remain on the margins—too old, too experienced in the wrong way, still invisible. Our experience echoes global struggles—from the Lehman Shock that shattered lives in the United States to the 880,000 won problem that left Korea’s youth on the margins—uniting us in the quiet heartbreak of broken promises.

  
This artwork gives shape to the quiet heartbreak of our generation. The corporate office towers that once symbolized success for our parents now loom like distant monuments to a dream we were never allowed to live. And as we age, that dream recedes further still—dissolving, year by year, like snow that never quite settled.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Beyond the light, a dead end : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

Dreams held high and hopes fading. All I wanted was to live a normal life as an office worker... : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

In early 2000s Japan, temporary workers faced deeply unstable employment conditions. Every three months, we lived in fear of losing our jobs — our contracts were fleeting, our futures uncertain. I, too, was part of this system. Trapped in monotonous work with no real opportunity for growth or skill-building, I felt constant frustration and anxiety. There was no path to stability, no increase in wages, and no space to imagine a better future.

  
This artwork speaks to the quiet despair of living under a system that failed us — and continues to fail others even now. It reflects the emotional toll of being caught in a structure that offered no security, no dignity, and no recognition of our humanity. The environment was so precarious and dehumanizing that even confronting it felt like staring into a void. There is anger here — not loud or dramatic, but deep and enduring. It’s the kind of anger that simmers beneath resignation: a quiet fury at a society that looked away while we were made invisible. We wanted to scream, to resist, to break something — but we knew nothing would change. So we endured. This piece is not just about personal survival, but a muted protest against a system that chose to discard us.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Anxious Pulse- Surviving Japan’s Lost Decade of Labor : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

In the early 2000s, my generation—known in Japan as the “Employment Ice Age” generation—was pushed into unstable, low-wage temporary work. We faced constant uncertainty, with little chance for advancement or dignity. Over time, hope eroded. The city around us began to feel fractured, like a mirror of our internal collapse—our egos strained, our spirits weighed down by quiet rage and sorrow. We endured, day by day, trapped in a system that offered no future.

  
This artwork is a reflection of that time—a visual testimony to the emotional and social landscape we inhabited. It is filled with the things we could never say out loud: the urge to cry, the sting of betrayal, the helpless fury of being discarded by a society we once trusted. At times, the desire to destroy everything—to burn it all down in protest—felt overwhelming. But even that, we knew, would change nothing. That’s the cruelty of it: not just the pain, but the silence that surrounds it. This piece exists within that silence. It is both personal and collective—a portrait of alienation within modern labor systems, seen through the gaze of a city quietly falling apart.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Cracks in the City, Cracks in Hope : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

_“I see there’s a two-year gap on your resume. What happened? And quite a few job changes… Why so many?”_

This was said to me in an interview—for a gig job, no particular skill required. Just hands, presence, silence.

  
But in Japan, even the simplest jobs come with silent barriers. A résumé is not a record of experience—it’s a test of flawlessness.

You’re asked to explain every pause, every shift, every deviation. Not just your past jobs, but the story of your life—neatly, without damage.

  
Those of us with irregular timelines—with mental illness, neurodivergence, or gaps we needed to survive—are quietly passed over.

It doesn’t matter how much we want to work, or how far we’ve come.

If we don’t fit the shape, we are not accepted.

  
This artwork captures that silent exclusion.

The figure—part skull, part shadow—is barely there, submerged in neon colors that overwhelm rather than illuminate. It is _visible_, yet unseen. Just like many of us.

We carry histories that are heavy, but invisible to those who only look for perfection. Our scars are not loud. They don’t scream. But they remain.

  
The saturated colors represent not vibrance, but overexposure—our lives held under harsh, unforgiving light. We are scanned like vegetables in a supermarket: is the shape correct? Is the skin smooth? No marks? No irregularity?

  
Even now, in a labor shortage, we are filtered out—not for what we cannot do, but for what we have endured.

  
And still, like the fragile remnants of the figure in this piece, we face forward.

Not out of hope, always—but out of necessity.

We move forward because we must, even if the future keeps refusing our presence.

  
This is not a scream. It is a quiet, exhausted truth.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

No Bruises Allowed-Flawless Labor, Flawless Produce, Flawless Japan : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

This work speaks to the quiet crisis experienced by Japan’s “Employment Ice Age” generation—those of us who graduated into a broken labor market in the early 2000s. Unless you were among the elite graduates of top universities, securing stable, permanent employment was nearly impossible. Like the Lehman Shock in the U.S. or Korea’s 880,000-won generation, we faced systemic exclusion: over 50% of us were pushed into temporary or part-time roles. Even today, despite a labor shortage, over 40% continue to work under non-regular contracts, trapped in poverty.

  
At the time, Japan’s seniority-based hiring system left no second chances. Missing out on new graduate recruitment meant being permanently locked out. Through a small metaphorical hole in the wall, we could see others—those with stable jobs—striding forward. Meanwhile, those of us on the outside, myself included, watched our modest dreams—marriage, a car, a stable life—slowly dissolve with age.

  
Now, even as the economy recovers, we are no longer considered “young,” and without skills or experience, there is little left but despair. This artwork is our voice—a cry rendered in color. It is an expression of collective frustration, grief, and resignation. More than a personal story, it is a visual record of a generation failed by the system.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

The dreams and walls of the employment ice age generation. The longing and despair seen beyond the hole : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

Machiavelli once wrote that to reach Heaven, one must know the road to Hell.

But for Japan’s Employment Ice Age generation, knowing that road did not lead to salvation—it became a one-way descent.

  
This artwork captures the cruel illusion of that descent: a path lit with seductive colors, seemingly inviting, yet ultimately guiding us deeper into a systemically designed failure. The shimmering pavement reflects not opportunity, but a mirage engineered by those who needed us to disappear quietly.

  
In the long recession of the 1990s and 2000s, companies protected older, permanent employees by cutting off entry to the younger generation. Hiring freezes became policy. We—unlucky simply by timing—were labeled “irresponsible,” “freeters by choice,” and were denied even the right to protest.

The myth of “freedom” was weaponized against us. “You chose this life,” they said, as we were forced into precarious, underpaid, unstable work.

  
This piece is not a depiction of Hell itself—but of the journey toward it. The false promise of the glowing path, the institutional gaslighting disguised as empowerment, and the social abandonment masked as meritocracy.

  
We were not free. We were abandoned. And this is what that abandonment looked like: vivid, seductive, and ultimately, devastating.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

The Road to Hell Glows Like Heaven — inspired by Machiavelli’s warning: “The surest way to reach Heaven is to know the road to Hell.” : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

Japan proudly boasts one of the highest recycling rates in the world—over 90% of its aluminum and steel cans are reborn into new products with cutting-edge technology and near-religious public compliance. But among all that is reclaimed and reused, one thing remains systematically discarded: human labor.

  
After falling into bankruptcy and developing a mental illness, I found myself unable to work for years. Now, I scrape by doing short-term day labor—“light work,” they call it. Simple tasks like sorting, packing, and lifting, jobs that don’t ask about your education, past, or pain. Here, I work alongside others: people with mental illness, the elderly living off insufficient pensions, young dropouts, and foreign workers. We rarely speak. We move like ghosts.

  
It’s a place I’ve come to think of as society’s graveyard—a landfill of lives no longer considered useful.

  
Why do we end up here? In Japan, if you leave school, quit a job, or—worst of all—have a gap on your résumé due to mental illness, you’re marked. At every interview, you’re asked to justify your past. Tell the truth, and you’re silently disqualified. A single scar on your history is enough. You are no longer “clean.” No longer fit for the shelf.

  
This work juxtaposes Japan’s obsession with recycling cans against its casual disposal of human beings. The colorful, shiny surfaces of discarded drink cans mirror our own vitality—still glowing, still functional—but society refuses to see it. We are treated as defective, tossed into obscurity, and left to rot in silence.

  
This is my quiet rage: that in the world’s most recyclable society, people remain disposable.
  
  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Recyclable Waste, Irreplaceable Lives : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

This work emerges from the shadows of Japan’s “Employment Ice Age,” a period marked by despair, erasure, and a silent national trauma still unresolved. Graduating in 2003, I stepped into a world where only 55.1% of new graduates could secure jobs—a statistic not seen since the war. This painting is both testimony and protest: against economic structures that discard human potential and against the quiet normalization of psychological violence under the guise of employment.

  
The chaotic layering of textures and clashing hues evokes a landscape of uncertainty—disrupted, scraped bare by time and institutional neglect. A single tulip blooms defiantly in the foreground. Is it an emblem of hope? Or a cruel reminder of all we’ve lost? That tension holds the center of this work.

  
What lies beneath this floral resilience is a deeper grief: the invisible labor of survival, the lost futures of a generation silenced by temp contracts, stress interviews, and systematic exclusion from stability. My own story—sending resumes that went unread, enduring humiliation under the pretext of “stress tolerance,” losing love I could not afford to keep—echoes the experiences of thousands who came of age in a country that had no place for them.

  
This is not just a personal narrative. It’s a mirror held up to a society that still refuses to reconcile with the human cost of its economic policies. The soil may be cracked, the sky fragmented—but this bloom dares to rise. And in that defiance, we still search for clarity. For meaning. For a future.

  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

The Future Wears Away at Our Hearts — Do These Vivid Blooms Whisper Hope? : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

In Tokyo’s soaring skyline, aging workers from Japan’s “employment ice age” face ongoing instability. Excluded from thriving industries, they carry the weight of economic uncertainty and eldercare responsibilities. This distorted cityscape mirrors their inner unrest—witnessing urban progress while feeling left behind. Their experience parallels the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis in the U.S. or South Korea’s “880,000 won generation,” revealing a shared global pattern of generational precarity. This story of urban alienation echoes the struggles of precarious workers in cities worldwide, caught in the tension between growth and exclusion.
  
  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

Steel Towers, Fragile Lives: The Invisible Weight of Precarity : Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose

What you see here was once sacred—a piece of a _Shimenawa_, the twisted rope that adorns Japanese shrines, marking the boundary between the human and the divine. This fragment, called _Shimenoko_, is meant to protect, to purify, to invite the presence of gods.

  
But for us—those from Japan’s _“Employment Ice Age Generation”_—there was no protection, no divine grace.

  
This work is born from a life shaped by relentless misfortune and societal abandonment. It speaks for a generation left behind by the economy, even as the country now prospers again. We watch as younger generations receive job offers, stability, and futures that were denied to us—solely because of when we were born. The bitterness is sharp: _Is the difference between hope and despair really just timing?_

  
For the artist, the struggle runs even deeper. A late diagnosis of a developmental disorder explained why work never lasted, why stability never came. A promise of marriage was lost—his partner, waiting endlessly for the security that never came, fell into the hands of a religious cult. When art finally offered a glimmer of light, it was stolen through an online scam, leaving him bankrupt and drowning in debt. The weight of it all—failure, betrayal, loneliness—spiraled into severe depression and forced dependence on welfare. Society moved on; he was left behind.

  
In this state of despair, shrines and temples—once symbols of hope, reverence, salvation—became hollow, even mocking. What gods would allow this? What Buddhas watched and did nothing?

  
This artwork is not just a destruction of the _Shimenoko_. It is a cry. A rupture. A refusal to remain silent in the face of spiritual abandonment and systemic cruelty. Through violent color and form, it captures the anguish, resentment, and godless rage of a person who can no longer believe in salvation.
  
  
**What’s about “Scars from a fight I Didn’t Choose”?**

This piece is part of my ongoing series “Scars from a Fight I Didn’t Choose”, which reflects my personal and generational struggle as a survivor of Japan’s Employment Ice Age. Each work in the series stands alone, yet collectively they reveal the invisible pain of a fight we never asked to join.

  
**Tag**

#ScarsFromAFightIDidntChoose #DigitalArt #PoliticalArt #OutsiderArt #SocialTrauma #InvisiblePain #EmploymentIceAge #Japan

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