A Five-Year Diary of a NEET’s Life After High School Graduation

He has been a NEET for over 10 years. What kind of life gave birth to him?
What happened at school, what TV was popular in class, what cartoons he enjoyed after school, his youth with his friends….
He looks back on the thoughts and feelings he had at the time, along with nostalgic memories of those days.

The introduction to the book, “Until Neeto is Born” (Parade Books), describes it this way: “The book is about the author, Mr. Processed Starch. The book is said to be a “diary” of the author, Mr. Kakoh Denpun, from the second year of junior high school to after high school graduation. However, when I picked up the book and opened it to the pages, I was frozen by the contents, which were completely different from what I had expected. For example, the first page reads as follows

4/7 Opening Ceremony Hey, Hey, Hey, Smash!
4/8 Evangelion doujinshi at the bookstore
4/9 At school I get an Eva flyer
4/10 Write Mincho and Gothic in art
4/11 Switch groups Read Champion
4/12 3×3EYES Read books related to Eva
4/13 Kochikame, you think you know? Yutaka Ozaki on “You think you know?
4/14 Night of the Ginga Tetsudo (bank robbery) Organize rooms
4/15 Physical measurements, lots of Eva fans
4/16 Gifts, Rurouken, Weiss
4/17 Fan road and anime-related books

A line of “notes” a day, or rather, the names of TV programs and manga titles that I probably watched or read that day. It is mostly a list of words, and there are few descriptions that are a single sentence. And although there were some parts missing, this continued for five years.

How exactly does this read?　There is no foreword or afterword in the book that explains it. People who pick up this book out of the blue may have no idea what it is about. At first glance, it looks like a book of poems or a collection of phrases.

However, there is one line that seems to be a phrase, and it really seems to be “deep”.

9/28 The gymnastic festival was a bit dull, I got burnt, and the committee chairman lost his temper.
11/27 The word “happiness” is not for individuals but for everyone
5/19 Positives and negatives, not so much hope and despair

The titles of TV shows, cartoons, comics, and songs that are listed so many times in the diary may stimulate the nostalgia of those who were in middle and high school around the year 2000. The lack of specifics in the book also makes one feel as if one’s imagination can expand endlessly about Mr. Kakushi-Dempun’s days in junior high and high school surrounded by all these things.

To get a “hint” on how to read this book, we asked the author, Mr. Kako Denpun, for an interview. He responded , “I can’t speak very clearly, so it’s easier to talk by e-mail,” so we exchanged more than a dozen e-mails to get his story.

After graduating from high school, Mr. Processed Dempen said he had been a NEET for 12.5 years. He said he struggled to get out of the NEET lifestyle, cutting off the Internet and reading books on his own, without understanding from his family until he was finally diagnosed on the autism spectrum after undergoing tests at a hospital. He is now looking for a job while working part-time.

He said, “Originally, I wanted to become a manga artist and turn my middle school days into a daily life manga like “Resident in Kobe” (Kon Kimura). But I couldn’t draw manga at all. Parade Books was offering a free diagnosis of my manuscript, so I sent it there.”

Regarding the reason for publishing “Until a Neat is Made,” Mr. Processed Dempn responds, “I wanted to keep a diary of my daily life, so that I could remember what I was doing. He says that he kept a diary since the eighth grade so that he would not forget about his daily life, but that he compiled only the “main points” of the diary and had no clear intention in writing one line a day.

When asked why he wanted to make a comic about his middle school years,
I asked him why he wanted to make a comic about his junior high school days, and he replied, “I can’t really put it into words, but it was the most fun and the most important time of my life.
I can’t really put my finger on it, but I feel like junior high school was the most fun and most important time of my life. The following are some of his happy memories.

Almost everyone in the class had a nickname.
After school, I could go to the bookstore or convenience store to see my friends.
Talking about his favorite music on the balcony.
On weekends and holidays, he would ride his bicycle alone along unknown roads.
Some of my friends didn’t go to school and became like yankees.

In junior high school, there was no such thing as a school caste, and the atmosphere was still like that of elementary school students, where you could talk to both boys and girls alike. Mr. Processed Dempen was a very ordinary junior high school student who did not participate in any club activities, but would hang around on his bicycle after school or play at his friends’ houses. He also liked to ride his bicycle alone sometimes to distant and unknown places.

In contrast, however, high school was not a very comfortable place for Mr. Kabushiki-Dempun.

“There were a lot of nonsensical school rules, and it was like, ‘It’s a rule, follow it, and if you don’t like it, quit,’ and they would just get the whole school together and just get angry and preach to each other, and there was no point.”

‘After school I would hang out with some of my old friends, but things have slowly changed and I may be doing more things on my own. I think after school I would hang out by myself, browsing, shopping, etc.”

Unlike junior high school, where he knew all the familiar faces, in high school, “I felt like a bunch of strangers. Even so, he had friends in his first year of high school, but not many in his second and third years. Even his friends from junior high school gradually drifted apart.

Indeed, when reading the book, the high school diary is somewhat dark in tone. The diary in junior high school, which was filled with manga and anime titles, seems very innocent and joyful.

He explains why he did not have many friends in his second and third years of high school : “I did not try hard. It may be my own fault that I didn’t try to enjoy school life,” says Mr. Processed Dempn. This may have something to do with the fact that, at that time, descriptions of the Internet could sometimes be found in his diary.

I got addicted to the Internet and my life went crazy. I stopped studying, became a night owl, and started missing school. I think it was easier and more fun to talk to people online than in real life.”
He continues, “I think I was addicted to the Internet as a whole because I enjoyed it, as well as the conversations. If there had been video games at home, I might have been addicted to them.”

He said he was aware of the fact that “too much internet is not good” and “internet communication is not proper communication,” but he could not stop.

As his time in high school was drawing to a close and many of his classmates were deciding to go on to college, Kakushi-Dempun said, “I was only thinking that it would be nice if I could become a manga artist by writing manga while working as a freelancer. However, he was determined not to go to college.

I wasn’t studying, my teachers were unmotivated and uninterested in me, and I didn’t talk to my parents, so I didn’t think about going to college at all. I just wanted to graduate as soon as possible.”

3/1 Graduated, no part-time job.
5/16: Job interview.
“5/17, interview, going on Monday.
《Did not go on the 7th day, quit, unemployed》.

There are almost no descriptions of the last three months. What did he do?

I was busy, or rather, I was lax. My part-time job failed at the interview, I was fired from my job because I was unserious, I failed the entrance exam for a manga vocational school, and I was leading a lax night-time NEET life, thinking I could manage.”

The seemingly meaningless days recorded in this diary over a period of about five years are the days from his most enjoyable junior high school days until he became a NEET.

Until a NEET is born” (written by Kakoh Denpun, Parade Books)