What is Johatsu?
Johatsu, which translates to “evaporated people” in the Japanese language, refers to individuals who have consciously decided to shed their previous identities as a result of failures in their lives.
Shame is one of the primary causes of johatsu. Some people frequently vanish after experiencing a job loss, a broken marriage, or significant debt. Many Japanese emigrate to Japan, abandon their previous identities, and begin fresh.
When a French journalist named Lena Mauger heard from a friend in 2008 about a couple disappearances, the phenomena was made public. Around midnight, the people suddenly vanished into thin air without being taken hostage or dying.
Mauger’s buddy also informed her that the yearly phenomena of thousands of individuals hiding out to become “Johatsu” is a common occurrence. This piqued Mauger’s interest in investigating the inexplicable disappearances in a developed nation like Japan and utilizing all available tools to locate the missing.
As a result, Mauger and her photographer husband Stephane Remael continued to record the information they discovered over the following five years.
