Alain Julian is a cultural anthropologist and philosopher. His work explores how people in increasingly atomized societies grapple with isolation, the loss of meaning, and the search for community. Beyond anthropological and philosophical analysis, he examines how Japanese rituals, literature, and aesthetics open new perspectives on living and finding meaning.
Since 2023 he has been conducting extended fieldwork in Japan, where he lived in rehabilitation centers and private homes of so-called hikikomori—individuals who withdraw from society for prolonged periods of time. Drawing on these experiences, he writes about the interplay between social structures, cultural expectations, and existential questions.
Alain is currently conducting doctoral research on loneliness and social withdrawal in contemporary Japan, developing a philosophical-anthropological framework to understand how modernity erodes connectedness—and what cultural forms of resonance and renewal remain. He graduated cum laude in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and studied Cultural and Political Philosophy. His work combines fieldwork, cultural critique, and philosophy to explore how people in late-modern societies grapple with isolation, meaning, and the search for community.
His work has appeared in De Groene Amsterdammer, and he is currently writing a book that situates the phenomenon of hikikomori within broader questions of community, modernity, and spiritual emptiness. Alongside his academic work, he engages in public debate, offering contributions that combine philosophical depth with literary imagination.
