Hands tremble in front of a kiosk (self-service terminal) for fear of keeping the person behind waiting, and in a cafe one holds one’s breath lest the next table hear the voice. To keep up with the perfect order that produces urban efficiency, people must desperately self-censor at every moment. The more society becomes ‘comfortable’, the more the individual inside it suffers from ‘discomfort’a paradox of the modern city.

The Japanese psychiatrist Toru Kumashiro describes the phenomenon of humans being remade for a comfortable city as ‘social bleaching’. It erases heterogeneity such as noise, slowness, and clumsiness, leaving only ‘harmless citizens’ suited to the city. In particular, he warns that Seoul and Tokyo, which lure people with comfort, are ‘huge black holes’ where the humans inside, unable to withstand the pressure to maintain the system, burn out.

To ask about the ‘extinction’ hidden behind the city’s glittering ‘prosperity’, we met him on the 8th at the Kyunghyang Shinmun office in Jeong-dong, Seoul. Having recently published the Korean edition of <The Discomfort of a Comfortable Society>, he began, “I wrote the book from the outset with phenomena seen in Korean society in mind.”

-You likened Seoul and Tokyo to a vast ‘black hole’. What do you mean?

“People drawn in from the regions to Seoul or Tokyo do not easily return to where they came from. From the perspectives of capitalism and individualism, the glittering life of the city appears more desirable. The problem is that people gathered into the narrow confines of Seoul cannot help but constantly be conscious of and tighten the screws on one another ‘so as not to fall behind’. In this process, they suffocate under pressure to become harmless beings who do not impose on others. What happens in a black hole is appearing in Seoul and Tokyo.”

-Do you mean we are unconsciously pressured simply by living in a city?

“For a high-density city to function smoothly, ‘high-order rules’, that is, a predictable order, are necessary. On a packed subway or in a tight apartment complex, there should be no smells, no noise, no sudden behavior. The problem is that as such conditions are reinforced, people come to regard order not merely as ‘rules to be followed’ but as a ‘sacred zone that must not be violated’. As Emile Durkheim said, ‘in a monastery where order is perfectly maintained, even small deviations are regarded as grave sins’, and society today is just like that. Mistakes or noise that once would have been laughed off now become unforgivable ‘nuisances’ and are labeled as ‘evils’ to be eradicated. The more comfortable society becomes, the wider the category of ‘offenders’ grows.”

-For example, what do you mean?

“The most representative case is children. Children inherently cannot act according to utilitarianism (the greatest happiness of the greatest number) or efficiency. They cry and run around regardless of time and place. In other words, they are by nature violators of the city’s first principle of ‘not imposing on others’. In the past, the community endured this as a natural part of a child’s growth, but in a bleached society a child’s noise is defined as ‘static’. Korea’s ‘no-kids-zone’ debate and the ‘sports-day noise’ apology incident amount to a social declaration that we will not keep uncontrollable beings by our side. The more the city becomes comfortable, the more the vulnerable who cannot conform are the first to be excluded.”

-Some counter that it is ‘natural’ not to tolerate inconvenience in places you paid to enter.

“The idea that, because money was paid, one cannot accept discomfort has emerged as the sense grows that any situation or environment can be converted into money. In the 1970s, before capitalism had penetrated as deeply as now, such an attitude was not taken for granted to this extent. During the rapid modernization process, this way of thinking was internalized quickly. I want to stress that what is considered ‘natural’ is what is tolerated within a given historical context; it does not necessarily mean it is right.”

-Is the surge in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses, and the rise in psychiatric diagnoses more broadly, part of the same context?

“The phenomenon of excessive ‘medicalization (Medicalization)’ is a representative example that shows this. People who in the past might have been regarded as a bit unusual or distractible are now classified as ‘patients to be corrected’. This is because the scope of what society demands as ‘normal’ has become extremely narrow. Cities demand high levels of communication skills and concentration from workers. If you fall short of that standard, you are branded a ‘villain’ or must obtain a hospital certificate. It is not that medicine has advanced and patients have increased; rather, as society’s tolerance has narrowed, ‘patients’ are being mass-produced. We need to reflect on whether we are now operating a vast checkpoint that asks one another, ‘Are you normal?’”

-What about labeling those who lack ability or social awareness as ‘villains’ and treating them as sinners?

“‘Lack of ability (incompetence)’ and ‘moral depravity (evil)’ are strictly different issues. In the past, doing a job poorly did not lead to condemning that person as bad. But in societies like Korea and Japan, where efficiency has become the supreme task, the two are equated. Failing to process work quickly is treated as imposing a ‘nuisance’ on others, and the ‘evil’ frame is slapped on immediately. In reality, do Korea and Japan not favor individuals who are compatible with capitalism and systematically exclude those who are not? Outwardly they champion the value of ‘diversity’, but in reality a harsh gap emerges in which cold selection and exclusin take place. In particular, Korean society appears to have even stronger ‘upward standardization’ pressure than Japan. A society that evaluates human worth solely by ‘function’ is bound to become cruel.”

-If order is emphasized and filtering is strengthened, should society not become more placid? In reality, conflict and anxiety persist.

“The sense of ‘not imposing on others’ is the flip side of ‘not tolerating others who impose’. The more desperately I self-censor to maintain perfect harmlessness, the less I can tolerate even trivial static or heterogeneity from others. As urban order grows more solid, the gaze that monitors others becomes sharper, and the ‘checkpoint’ logic that tolerates no small deviation comes to dominate daily life. When this is compounded by the spread of individualistic lifestyles and the feeling that ‘I know nothing about my neighbors’, psychological anxiety can only grow no matter how much physical safety improves. This becomes the fundamental reason why conflicts do not cease in modern cities.”

-What is the end point of a society that pursues ‘harmlessness’?

“It is that the city loses its reproductive function and withers. Under high-density pressure, telling young people who must constantly self-censor to live as ‘harmless citizens’ to take responsibility for an uncontrollable being (a child) is like telling them to fight the system. The resistance of ‘it is hard enough for me alone to survive harmlessly, so how could I bring a harmful being (a child) into the world?’ appears as the outcome of low birthrates. In the end, the black holes of Seoul and Tokyo draw in the surrounding young energy and radiate dazzling light, but inside them people will be extinguished and the glow will fade.”

-Lastly, is there anything you would like to say to people in Korea?

“A society that filters out individuals can never be a utopia. While efforts by individuals to adapt to society are necessary, I want to make clear that it is also wrong to shrink everything excessively into individual problems. Society is not absolutely right, and society is like a river that constantly changes. The standards for what is ‘normal’ are surprisingly uncertain. Now, rather than ‘how to screen out the misfit’, we should together consider what is needed so that more people are regarded as ‘normal’ and recognized as ‘sound’.”