Hikikomori

Hikikomori (ひきこもり or 引き篭り lit. "pulling away, being confined," i.e.. "acute social withdrawal") is a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive adolescents and young adults who have chosen to withdraw from social life — often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement due to various personal and social factors in their lives.

The term "hikikomori" refers to both the sociological phenomenon in general, such as the hikikomori issue, as well as those individuals who display behaviors considered within the boundaries of the social label as in Hiroshi is a hikikomori. As the word 'hikikomori' is taken directly from the Japanese language, it is often used for both the singular and plural form in English without modification: I.E. a hikikomori, those hikikomori, the hikikomori phenomenon.

While there are mild and extreme degrees, the Japanese Ministry of Health defines a hikikomori as an individual who refuses to leave their parent's house, and isolates themselves away from society and family in a single room for at period exceeding six months, though many such youths remain in isolation for a span of years, or in rare cases, decades. Many cases of hikikomori may start out as school refusals, or tohkohkyohi in Japanese. According to estimates by psychologist Saito Tamaki, who first coined the phrase, there may be 1 million hikikomori in Japan, 20 percent of all male adolescents in Japan, or 1 percent of the total Japanese population. Surveys done by the Japanese Ministry of Health as well research done by health care experts suggest a more conservative estimate of 50,000 hikikomori in Japan today. As reclusive youth by their very nature are difficult to poll, the true number of hikikomori most likely falls somewhere between the two extremes.

Though acute social withdrawal in Japan appears to affect both genders equally, due to differing societal expectations for maturing boys and girls, the most widely reported cases of hikikomori are from Japanese families with male children who seek outside intervention when their son, usually the eldest, refuses to leave the family home.

Causes

Sometimes referred to as a kind of social problem in Japanese discourse, the hikikomori phenomenon has a number of possible contributing factors — young adults may feel overwhelmed by modern Japanese society, or be unable to fulfill their expected social roles as they have not yet formulated a sense of personal tatemae and honne needed to cope with the daily paradoxes of adulthood. The dominant nexus of the hikikomori issue centers around the transformation from young life to the responsibilities and expectations of adult life — indications are that advanced capitalist societies such as modern Japan are unable to provide sufficient meaningful transformation rituals for promoting certain susceptible types of youth into mature roles within society.

Three contributing factors

As with many advanced capitalist societies with an affluent middle class, there exists a great deal of pressure on adolescents and young adults in Japan by family and society to be successful and perpetuate the existing social status quo. The pressure comes from a number of different sources, though there appear to be three primary factors encouraging hikikomori tendencies:

1) Middle class affluence in a post-industrial society such as Japan allows parents to support and feed an adult child indefinitely in the home. Lower income families do not have hikikomori children because a socially withdrawing youth is forced to work outside the home if he cannot finish school, and for this reason isolation in the room stops at an early stage.

2) The inability of Japanese parents to recognize and act upon the youth's slide into isolation, soft parenting, or even a codependent collusion between mother and son known as amae in Japanese. When a youth withdraws from life, parents fail to act or respond in such a way that causes the child to become even more seclusionary.

3) A decade of flat economic indicators and a shaky job market in Japan makes the pre-existing system requiring years of competitive schooling for elite jobs a pointless effort. While Japanese fathers of the current generation of youth still enjoy life employment at multi-national corporations, incoming employees in Japan enjoy no such job guarantees in today's job market (See Freeters and NEET for more on this). Young Japanese people are savvy enough to see the system in place for their grandfathers and fathers no longer works, and for some the lack of a clear life goal makes them susceptible to social withdrawal as a hikikomori.

Social pressures to conform

The Japanese education system, like those found in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea is demanding upon the youth. High expectations, high emphasis on competition, and the rote memorization of facts and figures for the purpose of passing entrance exams into the next tier of education in what could be termed a rigid pass-or-fail ideology, induce a high level of stress. Echoing the traditional Confucian values of society, the educational system is still viewed as playing an important part in society's overall productivity and success. In this social frame, students often face significant pressure from parents and the society in general to conform to its dictates and doctrines. These doctrines, while part of modern Japanese society, are increasingly being rejected by Japanese youth in varying ways such as hikikomori, freeter, NEET, and parasite singles.

Beginning in the 1960s, the pressure on Japanese youth to succeed began successively earlier in their lives, sometimes starting before pre-school, where even toddlers had to compete through an entrance exam for the privilege of attending one of the best pre-schools. This was said to prepare children for the entrance exam of the best kindergarten, which in turn prepared the child for the entrance exam of the best primary school, junior high school, high school, and eventually for their university entrance exam. Many adolescents took 1 year off after high school to study exclusively for the exam hell of the university entrance exam. The higher the prestige of the university, the more difficult the exam, the most prestigious university with the most difficult exam being the University of Tokyo.

Since 1996, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Monbukagakusho, has taken steps to address this 'pressure-cooker' educational environment and instill greater creative thought in Japanese youth by significantly relaxing the school schedule from six day weeks to five day weeks and dropping two subjects from the daily schedule, with new academic curricula more comparable to Western educational models. However this may be too little too late, as highly competitive Japanese parents are sending their children to private cram schools to 'make up' for the newly lax curricula in the Japanese public schools.

After graduating from high school or university, Japanese adolescents also have to face a very difficult job market in Japan, often finding only part time employment and ending up as freeters with little income, unable to start a family.

Another source of pressure is from their co-students, who may harass and bully some students for a variety of reasons, including physical appearance (especially if they are overweight or have severe acne problems), educational or athletic performance, wealth, ethnicity, or even having lived overseas even for a short time. Some have been punished for bullying or truancy, bringing shame to their families.

Withdrawal symptoms

While many people feel the pressure of the outside world, and may feel uncomfortable in public, a hikikomori reacts by complete social withdrawal to avoid all outside pressure. Typically male, they may lock themselves into their bedroom or another room of their parent's house for prolonged periods of time, often measured in years. They usually do not have any friends. Hikikomori males have been reported to have a penchant for pornography. A hikikomori's days are characterized by long spells of sleeping, while their nighttime hours are spent watching TV, extensively playing computer games (role-playing games), surfing the internet, reading, or simply staring at the wall in angst over their plight.

This refusal to participate in society and fulfill their expected roles on the way to maturity makes hikikomori an extreme case and subset of a much larger group of the younger Japanese generation that includes parasite singles and freeters. All three groups seem to be rejecting the current social norms society has placed upon them in their own unique ways, with lifestyles considered deviant by society at large.

The withdrawal from society usually starts gradually before the hikikomori locks the door of his room. Often they appear unhappy, lose their friends, become insecure, shy, and talk less. Frequently they are bullied at school, which, atop the already high pressures of school and family, may be the final trigger for the withdrawal.

The phenomenon's effects on its victims

Typical patterns for hikikomori behavior

The lack of social contact and prolonged solitude has a profound effect on the mentality of the hikikomori, who gradually lose their social skills and the necessary social references and mores of the outside world. Anguished about their isolation and acutely self aware of their problem, they immerse themselves into the fantasy worlds of manga, television or computer games, which in turn becomes their only frame of reference. As time passes, the hikikomori, lacking interpersonal stimulus, developmentally stagnates into routine behaviors of sleeping all day and staying up all night only to sneak out into the kitchen for food when the family is asleep. Eventually, hikikomori may abandon their diversions of books and TV and simply stare into space for hours at a time.

If the hikikomori finally - often after several years - re-emerges voluntarily or through the aid of a care worker, they must face the problem of lacking social skills and years of education that their peers already possess through normal daily interaction with society. Also making reentry into society difficult for recovered hikikomori is the recent social stigma that has come to be attached to the condition due to mass media attention since 1998. The fear exists that others will discover their hikikomori past, and so they often feel uncertain around people, especially strangers, in how they should act. Also detrimental is the fact they lack a work history, making anything beyond menial labor jobs difficult to acquire.

Violence and hikikomori

Their fear of the social pressure and the inability to effect change in their situation may also turn into frustration or even anger— some hikikomori have even physically attacked their parents, though most of the time anger manifests in others ways such as nightly harassment by banging on walls while the rest of the family sleeps.

This hostility often arises when parents continue to exert pressure on the hikikomori to come out of their rooms after many months of isolation, despite the fact a status quo has been allowed to develop between the parents, usually the mother, and the hikikomori. This status quo, called the Strange Peace, occurs because parents passively allow their child to stay withdrawn and has many reasons but mostly centers on an amae relationship between mother and son, the fear and social stigma of the local community knowing the family has a hikikomori, and the simple notion that it is better to have the child in the house even in isolation than as a runaway.

It was initially argued in the mass media when hikikomori came into public spotlight in 2000 that the loss of a social frame of reference might also lead hikikomori to commit violent or criminal behaviors. However, it has been argued by hikikomori experts that ‘true hikikomori’ are too socially withdrawn and timid to venture outside of their rooms, let alone venture outside the home and attack someone. If hikikomori physically attack anyone, it is usually confined to family members.

Media and the hikikomori

Part of the reason that hikikomori gained worldwide attention was the fact that the media attributed a number of high profile crimes to hikikomori. In 2000, a 17 year old labeled as a hikikomori by the press hijacked a bus and killed one passenger. In fact, it was discovered later that the hijacker was originally a hikikomori but his parents didn’t know how to deal with him, so they admitted him to a mental hospital for two months of observation. Feeling betrayed by his parents, it was the period in the hospital that disintegrated the boy’s self esteem and made him mentally unstable— the violence during the bus hijacking was directed at his mother by proxy. In the coming days, the media reported other extremely violent cases as perpetrated by hikikomori, such as one man who kidnapped a young girl and held her captive for nine years or a young man who killed 4 girls to reenact scenes of his pornographic hentai manga. As a result of the media spotlight, a great social stigma of hikikomori being violent and mentally ill came to be attached to the condition that exists to this day.

Reaction of the parents

Having a hikikomori in the family is often considered embarrassing, so usually it is acknowledged as an internal private matter of the family, and many parents wait for a long time before seeking help by a third party within the hikikomori support industry. Also, in Japan the education of the children is traditionally done by the mother, and the father may leave the problem of a hikikomori to the mother, who feels very protective of her child. Initially, most parents simply wait and hope that the child will eventually overcome his problems and return to society by his own will. They see it as a phase the child has to overcome. Also, many parents are uncertain about what to do with a hikikomori, and wait simply due to lack of other options. An aggressive approach by the parents forcing the child back into society is usually not taken or only after a considerable waiting period.

School homeroom teachers and social workers may make inquiries, but usually do not get involved with the situation. In recent years, due to widespread media attention, having a family member who is a hikikomori has come to have a social stigma attached to the condition akin to mental illness though it is debatable whether or not hikikomori deserve such a pariah status in society. Due to this stigma and the resultant shame, many families strive to keep their child's hikikomori condition a secret from those in the community, thus further delaying parents from seeking outside intervention for their child.

Treatment

There are different opinions about the treatment of a hikikomori, and the opinions often split into a Japanese and a western point of view. Japanese experts usually suggest waiting until the hikikomori reemerges, whereas western doctors suggest dragging the hikikomori back into society, by force if necessary.

While there are a growing number of doctors and clinics specialized in helping hikikomori, many hikikomori and their parents still feel a lack of support for their problems on an institutional level and feel that society at large has been slow to react to the hikikomori crisis. In the last several years, a hikikomori support industry has sprung up in Japan, each with its own style or philosophy in treating hikikomori cases. Despite this diversity, there seem to be two general camps for treatment:

The Psychological argument on hikikomori

The first approach suggests psychological help is needed for these isolated young people, as many parents are overwhelmed with the problems of a hikikomori child whom they don’t understand. The standard psychological approach to hikikomori behavior in a youth is to treat the condition as a behavioral or mental disorder and so admit the child to a hospital ward in order to administer counseling, observation, and drug therapy using standard institutional procedures.

The Socialization argument on hikikomori

The other approach to hikikomori treatment views the problem as one of socialization rather than mental illness. Instead of clinical treatment in a hospital, the hikikomori is removed from the original environment of the home into a shared living environment and encouraged to reintegrate into social groups through daily activities with other hikikomori who are already in various states of recovery; this approach shows the person that they are not alone in their condition and appears to be successful for most cases.

Worldwide

While total social withdrawal seems to be mainly a Japanese phenomenon, there are reports of similar phenomena developing in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong which possess similar high pressure educational systems. With the appearance of NEET in the United Kingdom and Twixters in the United States in recent years, there are indications that hikikomori may be part of a larger global phenomena in affluent and highly developed Post-Industrial countries.

Western youths who feel similar social pressures or bullying from peers and adults may become depressed, withdraw similar to hikikomori, or even lash out with hate and aggression. In some instances of the latter, their actions may escalate to the extreme, such as in the deadly violence of Columbine High School massacre and Red Lake High School massacre in the United States, or the Erfurt massacre in Erfurt, Germany.