ABSTRACT
The discussion of freeter, hikikomori and nito those Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) in terms of literary streams with distinct thematic features is part of a larger critical discourse on Heisei fiction that incorporates topoi from media discussions and activist debates on what sociologist Yamada Masahiro back in 2004 was the first to call Japan's gap society. By subverting the hegemonic narrative of Aum converts through stressing their hidden aspirations for power, Individual projection shifts from a discussion of youth precarity as agency to a general problematization of agency versus authority within cultish organizations by pointing to the general limitations of individual autonomy inherent in their totalitarian structures themselves. The questions that Individual projection as counter-narrative thus raise are not only those of Aum converts' hidden aspirations for power in joining the cult, or how these aspirations might be influenced by and based in culture.
