SYSTEM 01 - Three Acts of Silent Burnout

When I had my first real contact with image-making, it was during a mentorship. At the time, I developed a styling project and I wanted to talk about Japan, but not the Japan everyone knows. I wanted to explore what’s embedded in the daily lives of Japanese people, the things that go unnoticed, that no one really pays attention to.

And when I shifted my perspective, I saw it clearly: burnout.

A silent feeling that hangs in the late afternoon for so many people.

But it’s a taboo. It’s avoided in conversations, in bars, in families.

In my first project, I touched on this only on the surface. This time, I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to understand why Japanese culture avoids addressing something so common.

Back when Japan was closed to the world, samurais ruled a mostly agricultural society. Work was seen as ritual. But after the Kanagawa Treaty, the country was forced to open its ports. And when the Japanese got a glimpse of the outside world, they realized how “behind” they were compared to other nations. That’s when the frantic pursuit to catch up began.

A sense of urgency was born. It was either modernize or be colonized.

A national reform began. The Japanese Industrial Revolution.

They copied British factories, the Russian army, the French education system, German law.

Japan became a lab: the goal was to build useful, productive citizens.

And they did. Even after being devastated by war, Japan became an economic powerhouse.

But at what cost? At the cost of itself.

They’re still paying for it with high rates of depression, suicide, and a culture of silence.

A society that romanticizes pain and sacrifice as national virtues.

Today, the Japanese seem conservative, but not because of a deep attachment to ancient roots.

It’s an attachment to a new, rewritten identity: rigid, controlled, collective.

What I realized is that the Japanese system wasn’t organically developed, it was engineered.

On the inside: a machine. On the outside: a serene, zen-like aesthetic.

And Japan embodies this contradiction.

To be too much yourself is to threaten the group.

And they love the group so much that they’re willing to burn for it.

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So I chose to divide this narrative into three visual acts:

Act One is Japan before all of this. Hope.

I used an umbrella as a symbol of cultural richness.

The character believes. She looks up. She’s full of faith.

There’s innocence — she doesn’t think about consequences.

She truly believes change is bringing something good to her culture.

Act Two is perception. The model stares into the camera, in a trance.

She’s starting to understand where she is, and what’s happening.

The cultural weight is already there.

She drags the umbrella but keeps walking.

The styling brings in samurai silhouettes, rigid shapes, and echoes of the militarized era.

This is the battle.

Act Three is exhaustion.

She leans, lets the umbrella hang, a sign of surrender.

Now, time is her greatest enemy — and the only force that can stop everything.

The veil is heavy.

It represents the inner mourning of someone who walked until they couldn’t anymore —

who reached the edge of what body and mind could carry.

This project is, above all, an act of awareness.

A reminder to not forget what we’re fighting for.

A reminder to honor the limits of our own bodies and minds.

And a cry for a society free from the weight of its own expectations.

( I used crayons to bring out what I was feeling about it.)