HIKIKOMORI
It’s the modern-day phenomenon of acute social withdrawal, especially amongst young people in urban Japan.
An estimated over half a million young people have become social recluses, as well as half a million middle-aged people, primarily men.
They isolate for long periods of time—over six months to years to even decades.
It has even been compared to PTSD and goes much further than agoraphobia, which is simply a fear of public spaces.

Academic

Japan’s school system is very strict.
One’s education is highly important to one’s future career, and failing at school is viewed as shameful both individually and for the whole family.
Hikikomori usually start the path to becoming a social recluse after experiencing one or more traumatic episodes of academic failure.

Before graduating, students will attend a highly choreographed ritual called shoshoku katsudo, or job hunting activity, to form relationships with companies that are looking to hire graduates.
Job positions in Japan are extremely competitive and therefore highly sought after.
Professors have regular contact with companies who ask for recommendations of students each year, meaning those who don’t keep up with schoolwork are often overlooked.

It is thought that the doors only open once.
If applicants are successful, they achieve a comfortable corporate position for life; if not, then they often settle for low-paying jobs with little job security.
This has led to the so-called lost generation—middle-aged men who never found a real career after finishing school.
These men and women live at home with their parents, shunning social interaction entirely.

Social

Hikikomori is such a problem in Japan that there are multiple forms of rehabilitation and therapy to help reintegrate people back into society.
This goes as far as issuing DVDs of live-action women staring into the camera to help hikikomori learn to cope with eye contact and long spans of human interaction.

Visiting a psychiatrist, however, can be seen as shameful in itself—and a reason to be socially shunned—so most hikikomori simply continue their persistent avoidance of social situations and relationships.
Young adults in particular can often be overwhelmed by society, one that often tends toward conformity and collectivism, or feel unable to fulfill their expected social roles.
Hikikomori may cite their choice of social withdrawal on a lack of independent thinking and sense of self that Japanese society is unable to accommodate.

In Japan there is the concept of honne–tatemae.
Tatemae is the public facade—fulfilling what is expected of them in society in order to fit in.
Honne is one’s true self and true thoughts and feelings.
This can often cause internal conflict; as the Japanese saying goes: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered in.”

Technological

Modern technology is another major factor in the prevalence of hikikomori.
Allowing the veil of social interaction to be entirely through social media or video games—sometimes even anonymously—allows individuals to feel they are engaging socially when in fact they are isolated.

Internet and video game addiction have reduced the amount of time that people spend outside in social environments that require direct face-to-face interaction.
The internet, for hikikomori, is somewhat of a double-edged sword:
It can facilitate a lack of interest in establishing physical relationships with other people and is often used as an escape from depression in everyday life.
But it may also be beneficial in terms of improving the quality of social life, as it provides the opportunity to meet people virtually with common interests and similar problems.

The urge to avoid social interaction is so strong with some individuals that they fail to seek medical attention if needed, and doctors will even resort to meeting patients virtually.

Parental

Hikikomori are most often from middle-class backgrounds, as their parents can afford to keep an adult at home indefinitely.
Lower-income families rarely have hikikomori children because they are forced to work outside the home.

This culture of overprotective parenting is known as “amae” or soft parenting, where parents do not act upon their child’s slip into isolation and provide the financial means to facilitate it.
Receiving social welfare can also be seen as shameful in Japanese society, so hikikomori are often entirely reliant on their parents.

The longer a child is allowed to live as a hikikomori, the more difficult it is to reintegrate them into society.
This leads to the so-called 80–50 problem, where children live as hikikomori into their 50s, depending on parents who are in their 80s.

Global Context

Hikikomori is not solely a Japanese problem.
It affects one percent of the Japanese population, but many young people around the world feel isolated and excluded from society—partly because of social or academic pressures, partly because of the addictive nature of the internet.

Previously, however, the issue of hikikomori had been swept under the carpet—an embarrassing aspect of Japanese society beyond help and understanding.
Hopefully, with the issue of hikikomori becoming more known in the wider world, those who are currently isolated are in a better position to be understood and to be given help.