Noritoshi Furuichi

Furuichi was born in Tokyo in 1985. He graduated from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.[1]

In his books, articles and TV appearances, Furuichi focuses on the circumstances of young people living in contemporary Japan. His most well-known book is The Happy Youth of a Desperate Country (Zetsubō no Kuni no Kōfuku na Wakamono-tachi; see short review and further links at [2]), a best-selling book released by Kodansha in 2011 where Furuichi makes the argument that, regardless of looming problems with the social security system and a host of other societal challenges, Japanese youth (those in their 20s) are now happier than ever before (for details, see [3]). This assertion contrasts with widespread assumptions, established in the 2000s, that young people in Japan are either 'slackers' with a low work morale, or the pitiful victims of partially de-regulated labour markets that have subjected young people to increasing uncertainty and low wages.

Furuichi is also a Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo, a visiting scholar at Keio University's SFC research centre, as well as an executive at Zent, Ltd. Zent, Ltd. is a consulting firm at which Furuichi engages in marketing work and IT strategy planning. As of mid-2012, Furuichi is also investigating young Japanese entrepreneurs as well as the Japanese government's entrepreneurship policy. He is due to publish a new book in late 2012 on related issues.

Furuichi's other publications (in Japanese) include: The Hope Refugees: Peace Boat and the Illusion of Communities of Recognition (2010, Kobunsha: Tokyo) and The Era of Excursion-Type Consumption: Why Your Wife Wants to Shop at Costco (with Akiko Nakazawa; 2011, Asahi Shimbun Shuppansha: Tokyo). A contributor to various literary magazines, Furuichi has recently critiqued the arbitrariness of institutionalized job-seeking practices that university students are expected to engage in, demonstrating the severe dilemmas of "most-popular employer" rankings (which seem to predict future company performance only very poorly; see Shincho 9/2012). He has also contributed accounts on new work-styles among Japanese youth, including that denoted by the category of "nomad workers" (nomado wākā). In June 2012, KOTOBA published a long dialogue between Furuichi and Tuukka Toivonen, an Oxford-based sociologist of youth and social innovation, which treated comparative elements of youth problems as well as the role that social entrepreneurs are playing in the restructuring Japanese society.

• Pilling, David (2012) 'Youth of the ice age', Financial Times, July 6, 2012 External link.
• Furuichi, Noritoshi（古市憲寿）, Toivonen, Tuukka（トイボネン・トゥーッカ）, Terachi, Mikito（寺地幹人） and Ogawa, Tomu（小川豊武）(2012) 'Japanese Youth: An Interactive Dialogue: Towards Comparative Youth Research', The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 35, No. 3, August 27, 2012. See external open-access article
• Furuichi, Noritoshi. The Happy Youth of a Desperate Country: The Disconnect between Japan's Malaise and Its Millennials. Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017.