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Hikikomori
Mezama Shidoke
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
[quote=The New York Times]One morning when he was 15, Takeshi shut the door to his bedroom, and for the next four years he did not come out. He didn't go to school. He didn't have a job. He didn't have friends. Month after month, he spent 23 hours a day in a room no bigger than a king-size mattress, where he ate dumplings, rice and other leftovers that his mother had cooked, watched TV game shows and listened to Radiohead and Nirvana. "Anything," he said, "that was dark and sounded desperate."[/quote]
Quietly suffering in their rooms, the plight of hikikomori--in Japanese, "pulling inward"--has been an uncomfortable subject, unseen and unheard in conversation. Nonetheless, the subject casts a long, strange shadow over the nation. With an estimated one million people--mostly young men--withdrawing from society, sometimes years at a time, there is no question that it is a dire issue.
Hikikomori, as defined by the Japanese Ministry of Health, is a state in which one does not leave their room for a period of over six months, and does not have another condition such as agoraphobia or schizophrenia. Occasionally hikikomori converse with their mothers, or will leave handwritten notes: Buy me a magazine, Do something about the neighbor's dog that keeps barking.
Paraphrasing Michael Zielenziger's (sp?) book, Shutting Out The Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, group harmony is given much greater importance in Japan than in the West. It is theorized that agricultural practices in early Japan demanded intense cooperation and self-sacrifice from those working the land: if one person didn't pull their weight, they could endanger the entire rice crop. As a survival mechanism, group uniformity became a social virtue--it kept everyone fed. Japanese see the West, however, as a hunter-gatherer society: there is no strong connection to one's place. It is possible to move about, find something better, reinvent and live from a clean slate.
This is one explanation of the hikikomori phenomenon. A younger generation, forced through the intestines of a Prussian-inspired school system where students go to same-looking buildings, wear the same uniforms, and read the same textbooks? There has never been a women's movement in Japan. There has been no unrest, even after nearly two decades of economic stagnation.
In Japan, the nail that sticks out is hammered down. Rather than give voice to the oppression they feel, the hikikomori kowtow to the machine that runs their lives: I don't want to study these tests, I don't want to be a salary man in the same company for the rest of my life, and I don't want to be what you want me to be. Where we in America might shout "I'm angry and I'm not going to take it any more!", all the hikikomori can muster the strength to say is "You win. Just leave me alone."
Then they disappear, sometimes for years at a time. There exists now support structures for hikikomori and their families, but I do not know how successful these are. Hikikomori is not a disease; it is not a bug, it is not in the brain (or so it is most often argued). Hikikomori, it is thought, are symptoms of a sick society. So what do we do? Some hikikomori find help in work rehabilitation programs, others in group counseling/homes. Still others are told "Abandon Japan. Live in Australia or America. You cannot be happy in this society."
The more I read, the more I am inclined to agree with that sentiment. Is Japan a country withering from the death of its post-war boom? Or do people suffer from suffocating social mores such as seikente ("keeping up appearances", the necessity of always appearing unflawed--a mirror-smooth lake churning with rusted machinery just below the surface)? Or is hikikomori caused by the depressing ideal set for children: do well on your exams, and you can make decent money at some desk job. Is hikikomori then the expression of distaste for this soulless, gray path?
I think Japan is sick (but then what country isn't these days...). I do not think it is a good place to raise children, and I do not think it is a place where one can have beautiful dreams or beautiful hopes. I do not think it is just the hikikomori who suffer. No, they are simply the ones who cannot play along.
I hate to condemn an entire culture--it feels so Republican--but I cannot stomach the Rite of Spring disregard for individual worth embodied by some aspects of Japan. Under this social dynamic, I feel every person suffers.
I didn't cover all the angles--the strange amae relationship, honne and tatemae, sexual conflict between parents, bullying...--but if someone wants to we can get into that. I'm sure there are other (disillusioned or not) Japanophiles out there.
Or maybe you think I've just been reading crazy anti-Japanese literature. Hey, that's fair too, if you can explain why. I highly recommend Zielenziger's (sp?) book, by the way. It seems very critical of Japan, but I think it's valid criticism (and anyway it's about a social problem, so what can one expect?).
Finally, there is a tangentially related question: what happens to a society that devalues the individual? If it is indeed true that Japanese society values group unity as highly as it is sometimes claimed, what does this do to people? Is it ethical? Is it ugly? Is American-style individualism better or happier? I say yes on both counts.
Quietly suffering in their rooms, the plight of hikikomori--in Japanese, "pulling inward"--has been an uncomfortable subject, unseen and unheard in conversation. Nonetheless, the subject casts a long, strange shadow over the nation. With an estimated one million people--mostly young men--withdrawing from society, sometimes years at a time, there is no question that it is a dire issue.
Hikikomori, as defined by the Japanese Ministry of Health, is a state in which one does not leave their room for a period of over six months, and does not have another condition such as agoraphobia or schizophrenia. Occasionally hikikomori converse with their mothers, or will leave handwritten notes: Buy me a magazine, Do something about the neighbor's dog that keeps barking.
Ibid wrote:In other societies the response from many youths would be different. If they didn't fit into the mainstream, they might join a gang or become a Goth or be part of some other subculture. But in Japan, where uniformity is still prized and reputations and outward appearances are paramount, rebellion comes in muted forms, like hikikomori. Any urge a hikikomori might have to venture into the world to have a romantic relationship or sex, for instance, is overridden by his self-loathing and the need to shut his door so that his failures, real or perceived, will be cloaked from the world. "Japanese young people are considered the safest in the world because the crime rate is so low," Saito said. "But I think it's related to the emotional state of people. In every country, young people have adjustment disorders. In Western culture, people are homeless or drug addicts. In Japan, it's apathy problems like hikikomori."
Paraphrasing Michael Zielenziger's (sp?) book, Shutting Out The Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, group harmony is given much greater importance in Japan than in the West. It is theorized that agricultural practices in early Japan demanded intense cooperation and self-sacrifice from those working the land: if one person didn't pull their weight, they could endanger the entire rice crop. As a survival mechanism, group uniformity became a social virtue--it kept everyone fed. Japanese see the West, however, as a hunter-gatherer society: there is no strong connection to one's place. It is possible to move about, find something better, reinvent and live from a clean slate.
This is one explanation of the hikikomori phenomenon. A younger generation, forced through the intestines of a Prussian-inspired school system where students go to same-looking buildings, wear the same uniforms, and read the same textbooks? There has never been a women's movement in Japan. There has been no unrest, even after nearly two decades of economic stagnation.
In Japan, the nail that sticks out is hammered down. Rather than give voice to the oppression they feel, the hikikomori kowtow to the machine that runs their lives: I don't want to study these tests, I don't want to be a salary man in the same company for the rest of my life, and I don't want to be what you want me to be. Where we in America might shout "I'm angry and I'm not going to take it any more!", all the hikikomori can muster the strength to say is "You win. Just leave me alone."
Then they disappear, sometimes for years at a time. There exists now support structures for hikikomori and their families, but I do not know how successful these are. Hikikomori is not a disease; it is not a bug, it is not in the brain (or so it is most often argued). Hikikomori, it is thought, are symptoms of a sick society. So what do we do? Some hikikomori find help in work rehabilitation programs, others in group counseling/homes. Still others are told "Abandon Japan. Live in Australia or America. You cannot be happy in this society."
The more I read, the more I am inclined to agree with that sentiment. Is Japan a country withering from the death of its post-war boom? Or do people suffer from suffocating social mores such as seikente ("keeping up appearances", the necessity of always appearing unflawed--a mirror-smooth lake churning with rusted machinery just below the surface)? Or is hikikomori caused by the depressing ideal set for children: do well on your exams, and you can make decent money at some desk job. Is hikikomori then the expression of distaste for this soulless, gray path?
I think Japan is sick (but then what country isn't these days...). I do not think it is a good place to raise children, and I do not think it is a place where one can have beautiful dreams or beautiful hopes. I do not think it is just the hikikomori who suffer. No, they are simply the ones who cannot play along.
I hate to condemn an entire culture--it feels so Republican--but I cannot stomach the Rite of Spring disregard for individual worth embodied by some aspects of Japan. Under this social dynamic, I feel every person suffers.
I didn't cover all the angles--the strange amae relationship, honne and tatemae, sexual conflict between parents, bullying...--but if someone wants to we can get into that. I'm sure there are other (disillusioned or not) Japanophiles out there.
Or maybe you think I've just been reading crazy anti-Japanese literature. Hey, that's fair too, if you can explain why. I highly recommend Zielenziger's (sp?) book, by the way. It seems very critical of Japan, but I think it's valid criticism (and anyway it's about a social problem, so what can one expect?).
Finally, there is a tangentially related question: what happens to a society that devalues the individual? If it is indeed true that Japanese society values group unity as highly as it is sometimes claimed, what does this do to people? Is it ethical? Is it ugly? Is American-style individualism better or happier? I say yes on both counts.
Mezama Shidoke on
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After your little debacle with the Brazillian chick Im surprised you didnt Hikikomori-out and do this
I'd hardly say it's better than the US or other western countries though. Their non-white collar crime rate is something like 1/8th of the US one. Their societial pressure is inward instead of "go find your place in the world and prove yourself to be a man" so that nullifies pretty much that entire attitude. Of course, the lack of guns also helps quite a bit, but that doesn't really account for the sharply fewer number of things like arson or robbery.
Is one culture better than the other? Probably not. Are the societal differences and how humans cope with them sharply different between collectivist and individualistic cultures? Very.
Is it that people are ashamed to talk about their lazy-fuck children to the point where they deny that there is anything wrong with them to begin with? I could see that being more responsible than lack of individualism; but maybe thats just my twisted perception of Japanese society and social politics.
If it's not a mental health issue, Japan is suffering from a wave of laziness. Weird.
It's a combination of a lot of things, not the least of which that you have to remember is that Japan was kind of nitroed out of more or less a Feudal society with the end of WWII and into ultra-tech and overcrowding land immediately. 50 years ago, it was still "you will grow up living with your family your entire life, marrying your second cousin is great, time away from your family is what we call work" (which is part of why Japanese work life is so crazy as well). And it comes out in different ways too. The college system is more or less the same, but it's not unusual for someone to live at home after high school graduation and go to preparatory schools for a year or two in order to get into a better university (test score based admissions). So living at home until you're 20 or so is, while I don't believe the norm, I don't think it's particularly unusual either.
I'm pretty sure in most countries, it would be treated as a mental illness, but remember... collectivist culture at heart. They're really not too big on treating people as the fluffy unique shining stars of the world that most western cultures do.
Its so tempting just to lose yourself in technology and the endless array of distractions it provides. I'm guilty of doing so, though I of course not to this extent.
I don't think these kids are lazy as much as they are trapped. Emotionally, mentally trapped by there own willingness to escape from reality. They have found something that doesn't shame them, doesn't hurt them, and they can't give that up that easily.
It's nothing new.
But because it's Japanese, it becomes a sensational culture, just as weird as the moe thing and before that the otaku thing. And then they get a manga and anime about it (Welcome to the NHK).
Not all vampires suck blood.
Not all of them die for love.
Yeah, I don't understand why they are comparing them to American rebellious youth. We have plenty of shut ins here, we just don't pay attention to it enough to make it a hot cultural phenomenon.
Mario Kart DS: 3320 6595 7026 5000
Heh
At any rate, the group harmony thing has a hell of a lot less to do with ancient agricultural bullshit than the fact that, for most of the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate Japanese villages were organized into 5 family groups that were essentially mutual responsibility spy rings. Everyone kept tabs on everyone else in the group, and everyone was ready to come down on anyone in the group that acted out, because if one person or family got caught doing something wrong, the whole unit was held responsible. That kind of thing has long term repercussions.
This is completely untrue. This is completely untrue. Depending on how you define unrest, there's been a great deal of it over the bubble burst. And even if you take it to mean widespread anger and rioting, "never" is completely wrong. Just look at the Security Treaty riots in the 1960s.
I don't think you understand what you are writing. In a society in which they feel that there is no alternative to a rather crappy school system, they are revolting in the simplest way possible: given a lack of alternatives, they're refusing to participate at all.
Not at all. It is suffering from the continuing repercussions of schizophrenic US policies in Japan: imprisoning war criminals, then putting them back in power for expediency; writing the "peace constitution", and then requiring them to rebuild the army for the cold war; giving them democracy, and then using the CIA to run billions to the LDP to ensure an almost continuous one-party rule since the war.
All in all, you're making this book sound like ignorant trash. Read the excellent "Japan: A Reinterpretation" if you want a real analysis of the flaws of the country, and what the root causes may be. At any rate, if the book is indeed painting an unrelenting horrible picture, you can safely assume it isn't a complete picture. There is no such thing as a uniformly happy or unhappy or fucked up or un-fucked up country; every place has its good and shitty elements.
I mean, maybe not completely shitty, but damn close.
So given that, how factual do you suppose a uniformly horrible picture of a first-world democracy is?
Living at home until the mid-late twenties isn't uncommon here, its a combination of more relaxed power relationships within families and financial pressure (and, around here, bit of a housing shortage, especially in the rental market). I don't think staying at home past 18 is really a phenomenon worth commenting on - past 30 is weird though :P
as for the main part of this, it actually really irritates me when people from individualistic societies get on their high horses over collectivist social phenomena. All this bleating about freedoms being restricted, with absolutely no attention paid to the rampant social ills in their own backyard. Its such a myopic viewpoint.
I don't know anything about the Security Treaty riots. *shrug* As far as a women's movement... um, really? I mean, I guess there are certainly feminists, that one old diet member, or something... but AFAIK (which seems less and less talking with you) there was nothing approaching what we in America might consider a movement of any significance.
As far as unrest, I believe the general conclusion is that there should've been a change in government after such a long period of poor economic results. You make me very unsure of what I think I know, but I'm fairly sure it's been LDP since there have been elections.
In any case, point taken, there are sometimes riots in Japan.
Oh, sorry, that was unclear of me. I portray the refusal to participate as a surrender. But I suppose you're also right to say it is a revolt. Sort of a "I'm taking my toys and going home." or something like that.
As regards hikikomori, I don't think it is directly related to US meddling (which is disturbing/interesting--I hadn't thought of that at all). The economic downturn, declining population--I think people see these things and lose faith in their country. Of course, maybe you weren't referencing the hikikomori problem there. I wasn't very clear.
Well I do get stuck on the negatives, particularly anything that threatens ones individuality. And remember it's all through my lens, and I actually haven't finished reading it. :oops: You should pick it up, if only to pick it apart.
Oh, sorry. I'll be sure to talk about every problem in America before discussing any other society. :roll:
Come on. I'll talk about the ills in my backyard in some other thread. This one isn't about those, though. Now, if there's some fallacy in bleating about freedoms being restricted, or if indeed there are any genuine freedoms being restricted, let's discuss that.
I'm not asking you to do that. But in your final paragraph, you labelled Japan as a uniquely 'sick' culture because of one relatively rare social phenomenon, and that crossed the line in my mind. Its pretty clear that you have a distorted view of the country and the phenomenon itself, and that you've decided to demonise the entire place as a result. It signifies a lack of broader reading and objectivity.
The fact that the women's rights movement started later, adopted different tactics, and has had more modest success is not the same thing at all as there never having been one. No one style of push for social change fits everywhere, and there are several reasons the Japanese push went the way it did. In terms of sexism they're probably still 30-40 years behind North America if you want to put it on some kind of time line, but change is happening.
There had been. Economic unrest sparked a massive voter swing to other parties in 1993, and a non-LDP coalition took the Diet. It lasted a year and a half or so, which isn't half bad for a minority coalition in a parlimentary government, before falling appart. The LDP took power again after that, and the opposition kind of fell off because a couple of parties reorganized or fell apart or just in general were run incompetently, but now the DPJ has been stable since formed in 1998 and made serious inroads against the LDP, who currently form a minority government with the BNK. It took a long while, because the LDP had a massive head start and decades of illicit funding, but democratic balance has really come together in the last ~20 years.
Surrender or kowtowing to the pressure would generally take the form of going along with the brutal status quo, I would think.
The assertion, which isn't really mine as it comes from the book I recommended, is that the functional result of those policies is that Japan since 1945 has been trapped in a sort of twilight state between what it was before and the liberal democracy it is slowly becoming. The desire is and was there for social change, but the government was purposefully filed with the old guard and their disciples and held that way for 30+ years, so effective change was impossible, and a lot of the older generation got bitter and frustrated and resigned themselves to having all these post war promises of reform broken, something that's only really started to change in the last couple of decades.
Well, I don't think it's unique in being sick, but perhaps its sickness is unique.
Yeah, I think you're right in that I need to do more reading before I can throw around pronouncements like that. I have a philosophical need, or something, for individuality and I'm really disappointed to see attempts at squelching it. Over reacting? Perhaps.
At the same time, though, I don't think any element of any culture gets a free pass from criticism.
Finally, I am interested in getting a better understanding of anything, so if you could point out my major misunderstandings--if you're not too busy, perhaps that would take a while
Everything has its good side and its bad side, at least. In Japan's case, you take that to extremes in a lot of cases.
It also has relatively little to do with losing oneself in technology and the endless array of distractions it provides, Shurakai. They aren't precisely EverCrack addicts--the main thing is that they don't want to leave their rooms. However,
ArbitraryDescriptor: These are not "Japanese goth kids who, coddled by their parents, slip into lethargy." They face enormous pressure, and when they give into a normal impulse to hide, their parents don't stop them (actually yes, because people are ashamed to talk about their children's brokenness). But once they sucessfully slip out of the system, it's not just that they slip into lethargy. They aren't just lazy. It's strong and legitimate depression. They realize they can't live in the world, and they think that the world doesn't want them. They know they aren't worthy because they needed to become shut-ins, and they stay shut in because they're certain that they're unworthy and can never find sucess or respect. The quality of being hikkokomori carries such a huge burden of shame that they can't grow the fuck up without help that they aren't going to get.
Yes, we'd laugh at these people if they were in American society. That's because we're cruel, but mainly because American society doesn't exert these forces and set up these loops. Our pressures are very different. The pressures in Japan do exist, and it's absolutely atrocious and near-sighted to say that oh, hikkokomori, they're just lazy. It's 2006! Depression is a legitimate mental condition!
JAPAN, CHINA: One-group society. If you can't fit in, and withdraw, you find you can't get back in again. Now what?
UNITED STATES, MOST OF WESTERN EUROPE: Individualism. You have to get by on your own, and if someone's better at something than you, you lose.
ICELAND, OTHER ISOLATED REGIONS: Boredom. Even should you get to the very top in your area, look at what your area IS: a bleak landscape, isolated from everything. Iceland has a very high life expectancy, but also a very high suicide rate. This is why.
MOST OF AFRICA, OTHER RURAL NATIONS: Work. Tend to the crops, go get the water, help fix the shelter. Your personality is secondary. Those who can't keep up are ostracized and, in extreme cases, exiled.
INDIA: Castes. Technically, they're doing away with them, but in practice, not even close. You're in the right caste, you still have to live up to it. You're in a bad caste, boy is life going to suck for you.
NORTH KOREA: Um, well, yeah. This would be the 'worse' part of the equation.
I'd read a hypothesis that the high levels of suicide and addiction in very Northern countries and areas might be an effect of the lower levels of sunlight. It seems like modern technology would have made industrialized isolated areas much less boring than they might once have been.
This is a very good point. With the way the Japanese educational system works (along with its subsequent impact on future employment), it is VERY difficult to get back on track once you stumble at all. Once they miss a significant amount of time, the obstacles to their reentry are significant.
Also, we could just as easily be talking about "parasaito shinguru" or parasite singles. We could be talking about any number of socially specific phenomena in various cultures. The Hikikomori phenomenon is specific to Japan but it has analogs in other cultures as well. That said, the US has its own specific social constructs that have come into other cultures through cultural mingling. The businessman (or in French, le businessman), salariiman, etc., among others. We could just as easily be talking about those issues and saying "Man, that culture is FUCKED UP! I mean, it's not present in (insert X country here) so there must be something horribly wrong with that place!"
It's worth mentioning that, as far as societal rejects/dropout/what have you, this is actually probably one of the most benign possible, and I'm not sure it's even a huge societal ill.
That isn't to say I don't think it's tragic, or a problem for the people involved, or anything like that. But if the reaction to being unable to fit into society is withdrawal, that's a lot better than the alternative in other societies, where the response to youth rejection of societal norms is often violence or crime. Seen in that light, maybe this isn't all that bad on the grand scale of thing, if you accept the idea that no matter what society you have, a certain percentage of people will be unable or unwilling to fit in.
As far as how prevalent it is, even taking the number of a million cases in Japan, that's still only an effect of 1/127 people. Compared with the fact that 1/32 people in the US is in jail or on parole, it doesn't even seem to be as prevalent a group of societal outsiders, and we haven't even touched the relative benefits of a group of people rejecting societal standard by withdrawing, versus lashing out through crime.
of course his happens too with dating, alot of people will just get caught up in how easy it is to just veg out all day with your significant other and never go out and interact with other friends..