Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

By William Kremer and Claudia Hammond BBC World Service

As many as a million young people in Japan are thought to remain holed up in

their homes - sometimes for decades at a time. Why?

For Hide, the problems started when he gave up school.

"I started to blame myself and my parents also blamed me for not going to

school. The pressure started to build up," he says.

"Then, gradually, I became afraid to go out and fearful of meeting people. And

then I couldn't get out of my house."

Gradually, Hide relinquished all communication with friends and eventually, his

parents. To avoid seeing them he slept through the day and sat up all night,

watching TV.

"I had all kinds of negative emotions inside me," he says. "The desire to go

outside, anger towards society and my parents, sadness about having this

condition, fear about what would happen in the future, and jealousy towards the

people who were leading normal lives."

Hide had become "withdrawn" or hikikomori.

In Japan, hikikomori, a term that's also used to describe the young people who

withdraw, is a word that everyone knows.

Tamaki Saito was a newly qualified psychiatrist when, in the early 1990s, he

was struck by the number of parents who sought his help with children who had

quit school and hidden themselves away for months and sometimes years at a

time. These young people were often from middle-class families, they were

almost always male, and the average age for their withdrawal was 15.

It might sound like straightforward teenage laziness. Why not stay in your room

while your parents wait on you? But Saito says sufferers are paralysed by

profound social fears.

"They are tormented in the mind," he says. "They want to go out in the world,

they want to make friends or lovers, but they can't."

Symptoms vary between patients. For some, violent outbursts alternate with

infantile behaviour such as pawing at the mother's body. Other patients might

be obsessive, paranoid and depressed.

Otaku v hikikomori

A man looking at some adult manga comics

An overlapping group of people with the hikikomori, otaku are "geeks" or

"nerds"

They are known for their obsessions, especially manga cartoons and anime

"Otaku" is the formal word for "you" in Japanese - it's thought that the term

came about from the tendency of socially awkward manga fans to use over-formal

language

In press coverage, both otaku and hikikomori have been linked with serious sex

crimes

When Saito began his research, social withdrawal was not unknown, but it was

treated by doctors as a symptom of other underlying problems rather than a

pattern of behaviour requiring special treatment.

Since he drew attention to the phenomenon, it is thought the numbers of

hikikomori have increased. A conservative estimate of the number of people now

affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came

back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition

hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one

million.

The average age of hikikomori also seems to have risen over the last two

decades. Before it was 21 - now it is 32.

So why do they withdraw?

The trigger for a boy retreating to his bedroom might be comparatively slight -

poor grades or a broken heart, for example - but the withdrawal itself can

become a source of trauma. And powerful social forces can conspire to keep him

there.

One such force is sekentei, a person's reputation in the community and the

pressure he or she feels to impress others. The longer hikikomori remain apart

from society, the more aware they become of their social failure. They lose

whatever self-esteem and confidence they had and the prospect of leaving home

becomes ever more terrifying.

Parents are also conscious of their social standing and frequently wait for

months before seeking professional help.

A comic strip from Welcome to NHK! Welcome to NHK! was a novel, comic book and

cartoon that focused on the life of a hikikomori

A second social factor is the amae - dependence - that characterises Japanese

family relationships. Young women traditionally live with their parents until

marriage - men may never move out of the family home. Even though about half of

hikikomori are violent towards their parents, for most families it would be

unthinkable to throw them out.

But in exchange for decades of support for their children, parents expect them

to show respect and fulfil their role in society of getting a job.

Matsu became hikikomori after he fell out with his parents about his career and

university course.

What about the girls?

An unhappy Asian girl

Hikikomori are seen as predominantly male - Tamaki Saito says males occupy 70%-

80% of the group

However, an internet survey by NHK found just 53% to be male

Andy Furlong at the University of Glasgow speculates that female withdrawal

into the home seems so natural to Japanese society that women hikikomori may

remain unreported

"I was very well mentally, but my parents pushed me the way I didn't want to

go," he says. "My father is an artist and he runs his own business - he wanted

me to do the same." But Matsu wanted to become a computer programmer in a large

firm - one of corporate Japan's army of "salarymen".

"But my father said: 'In the future there won't be a society like that.' He

said: 'Don't become a salaryman.'"

Like many hikikomori, Matsu was the eldest son and felt the full weight of

parental expectation. He grew furious when he saw his younger brother doing

what he wanted. "I became violent and had to live separately from my family,"

he says.

One way to interpret Matsu's story is see him as being at the faultline of a

cultural shift in Japan.

"Traditionally, Japanese psychology was thought to be group-oriented - Japanese

people do not want to stand out in a group," says Yuriko Suzuki, a psychologist

at the National Institute for Mental Health in Tokyo. "But I think especially

for the younger generation, they want more individualised or personalised care

and attention. I think we are in a mixed state."

But even hikikomori who desperately want to fulfil their parents' plans for

them may find themselves frustrated.

Andy Furlong, an academic at the University of Glasgow specialising in the

transition from education to work, connects the growth of the hikikomori

phenomenon with the popping of the 1980s "bubble economy" and the onset of

Japan's recession of the 1990s.

It was at this point that the conveyor belt of good school grades leading to

good university places leading to jobs-for-life broke down. A generation of

Japanese were faced with the insecurity of short-term, part-time work.

And it came with stigma, not sympathy.

Job-hopping Japanese were called "freeters" - a combination of the word

"freelance" and the German word for "to work", arbeiter. In political

discussion, freeters were frequently bundled together with "neets" - an adopted

British acronym meaning "not in education, employment or training". Neets,

freeters, hikikomori - these were ways of describing the good-for-nothing

younger generation, parasites on the flagging Japanese economy. The older

generation, who graduated and slotted into steady careers in the 1960s and

1970s, could not relate to them.

Japanese men celebrating with fists in the air University graduates at a

job-hunting fair in February... but freeters, neets and hikikomori find

themselves on the periphery of Japan's labour market

"The opportunities have changed fundamentally," says Furlong. "I don't think

the families always know how to handle that."

A common reaction is for parents to treat their recalcitrant son with anger, to

lecture them and make them feel guilty for bringing shame on the family. The

risk here is that - as with Hide - communication with parents may break down

altogether. But some parents have been driven to extreme measures.

For a time one company operating in Nagoya could be hired by parents to burst

into their children's rooms, give them a big dressing down, and forcibly drag

them away to a dormitory to learn the error of their ways.

Kazuhiko Saito, the director of the psychiatry department at Kohnodai Hospital

in Chiba, says that sudden interventions - even by healthcare professionals -

can prove disastrous.

"In many cases, the patient becomes violent towards the staff or the parents in

front of the counsellors, or after the counsellors have left," he says.

Kazuhiko Saito is in favour of healthcare professionals visiting hikikomori,

but he says they must be fully briefed on the patient, who must know in advance

that they are coming.

Hikikomori - just a Japanese thing?

A man and his son arguing

Hikikomori has entered the Oxford English Dictionary as "In Japan: abnormal

avoidance of social contact"

But Saito Tamaki believes it is also a problem in Korea and Italy

After a 2002 BBC documentary, Saito received a flurry of emails from British

parents who said their children were in a similar condition

Andy Furlong points out that young people in Western societies frequently "take

time out" in gap years or have "false starts" on careers or courses without

attracting stigma

He adds that the preconditions for a hikikomori-like problem are falling into

place in Europe, with 50% youth unemployment in some countries, forcing young

people to continue living at home

In any case, the do-nothing approach has been shown not to work. Tamaki Saito

likens the hikikomori state to alcoholism, in that it is impossible to give up

without a support network.

His approach is to begin with "reorganising" the relationship between the

patient and his parents, arming desperate mothers and fathers with strategies

to restart communication with their children. When the patient is well enough

to come to the clinic in person he can be treated with drugs and therapy. Group

therapy is a relatively new concept to Japanese psychology, but self-help

groups have become a key way of drawing hikikomori into wider society.

For both Hide and Matsu, the journey to recovery was helped by visiting a

charity-run youth club in Tokyo known as an ibasho - a safe place for visitors

to start reintroducing themselves to society.

Both men have made progress in their relationships with their parents. Matsu

has been for a job interview as a computer programmer, and Hide has a part-time

job. He thinks that by starting to talk again with his parents, the whole

family has been able to move on.

"They thought about their way of life in the past and in the future," he says.

"I think that before - even though they were out working - their mental

attitude was just like a hikikomori, but now they're more open and honest with

themselves. So as their child I'm very happy to see them change."

Many parents of hikikomori visit the ibasho even though their children may

never be well enough to come with them.

Yoshiko's son withdrew from society very gradually when he was 22.

At first he would go out to buy shopping, but she observes ruefully that

internet shopping means this is no longer necessary and he no longer leaves the

house. He is now 50 years old.

"I think my son is losing the power or desire to do what he wants to do," she

says. "Maybe he used to have something he wanted to do but I think I ruined

it."