Japan's Lost Generation

A very good Research Article on Hikikomori

For those who have asked about further research materials on hikikomori.

First off, I would refer you to the bibliography of my last paper titled "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori". I have always found looking at the Bib of a good paper great groundwork for further inquiry. If you would like to use the sources cited from my last published paper you can download a PDF here .

Also, here is an outstanding research articles on hikikomori.

This is an excellent piece by Andy Furlong from the University of Glasgow that manages to tie together hikikomori, freeters and the current labor market issues in Japan.

Sociological Review, Volume 56 Issue 2, Pages 309 - 325, Published Online: 18 Apr 2008

Title "The Japanese hikikomori phenomenon: acute social withdrawal among young people"

Abstract:

Although rare in the west, in Japan and in some other advanced countries on the Asian-Pacific rim, there is a popular perception that there has been a significant increase in the numbers of young people who withdraw socially for protracted periods of time (referred to by the Japanese term 'hikikomori'). This paper describes the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan, considers evidence relating to its prevalence and examines views about the causes. I argue that the tendency to think of hikikomori as a homogeneous group characterised by psychological malaise is misleading and that withdrawal and disengagement can also be linked to changing opportunity structures. The collapse of the primary labour market for young people and the growing prevalence of a precarious secondary sector has led to a situation in which traditional and deep-rooted norms are undermined and young people forced to find new ways of navigating transitions within a highly pressured and rigid system. Under these circumstances, acute withdrawal often represents an anomic response to a situation where tradition no longer provides adequate clues to appropriate behaviour rather than as a malaise reducible to individual psychologies.

There are no direct PDF downloads I am aware of but it is available online via Wiley Inter-science for purchase. For those readers affiliated with a university or research institution you should be able to access a copy of the Journal Sociological Review for free via your library system.

Furlong is a good researcher and reaches a great many conclusions I did is, I admit much more sophisticated in his analysis. Also he had the advantage of research funding and many years of experience over me. I highly recommend his book:

Furlong, A. & Cartmel, F. 2006, Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, 2nd edn, Open University Press, Buckingham, UK.

FYI, I will be posting citations on the blog in the American Sociological Association (ASA) citation style using my Sente 5 Database (would the good folks at Third Street Software please, please publish an official ASA Bibliography Format? All I can find is a user created one in the forums).

~M. Dziesinski

Asian Studies Master's Thesis on Hikikomori

Okay,

After several years of pain and suffering I finally finished my Master's Thesis on my hikikomori research done from 2003-2004. And for all those hours of work I got a nifty cap December 2008:

...And a second Master's Degree. Though I don't think you can put two "MA"s after your name in correspondence except for humorous effect:

Michael Dziesinski MA MA

Back on topic.

Yeah, I know, publishing four years later is a bit pitiful- but you try doing two graduate programs at the same time see how much that slows you down.

Here's the Abstract:

Hikikomori, coined by Tokyo Psychologist Saito Tamaki, describes a trend of Japanese youth, primarily male, who shut out contact with society by hiding within their parents’ homes for months or years at a time. In the process, these hermits become truants and school refusals, failing out of school and work through their long periods of seclusion. Further, reentry into society as middle-class adults is difficult for those with a history of acute social withdrawal. This study examines Takeyama, a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan. Over the three years of Takeyama’s rehabilitation program, hikikomori youth are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. The process of hikikomori rehabilitation at Takeyama also takes on the dimensions of gender and class socialization: the normalization of hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a viable adult gendered working class identity.

My Master's thesis on the subject is available via Proquest:

"THE REHABILITATION OF JAPANESE YOUTH WITH ACUTE SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL AT TAKEYAMA GAKKÔ, A HIKIKOMORI SUPPORT CENTER."

It takes a few months to go up in their system (was posted in November) but I believe you will soon be able buy my thesis in PDF form online.

My information on this is a bit scanty at present as I'm waiting for a contact by Proquest on accessibility of my thesis. I will provide updates here as they become available. These things appear to take several months due to backlog.

~M. Dziesinski

Major Update on my Hikikomori Research

All Academic, a service for papers presented at conferences, has a nice page that provides an abstract and downloadable PDF of the paper I presented at the 2008 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting(ASA) in Boston last summer.

Titled "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori", this paper is taken from data collected for my Asian Studies Master's thesis research from 2003-2004 at a hikikomori rehab center. Please consider this paper an update superior to my previous research provided on this blog.

Here is the abstract of my ASA Boston paper:

The label of hikikomori, coined by Tokyo Psychologist Saito Tamaki, describes an increasing trend of Japanese youth, primarily male, that shut out contact with society by hiding within their parents’ homes for months or even years at a time. In the process, these youth become truants, failing out of school and work through their long absences from the outside world. Reentry into society in middle class adult roles proves a difficult barrier for recovered hikikomori due to institutional features of Japanese society. This paper examines Takeyama, a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori located in Tokyo Japan. Over the three-year span of Takeyama’s rehabilitation program, hikikomori youth from middle-class backgrounds are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured around an idealized norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and repetition. My central research question for this paper examines how the process of hikikomori rehabilitation observed at Takeyama involves gender and class socialization. Namely, the normalization of male hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into a viable adult masculine identity entwined with a working class future.

CItation:

Dziesinski, M. , 2008-07-31 "From Failed Sons to Working Men: Rehabilitating Hikikomori" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Sheraton Boston and the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, MA Online <APPLICATION/PDF>. 2008-12-16 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p242231_index.html

~M. Dziesinski

The story thus far, or what the heck happened to this blog

The story thus far:

It began with a fatal hard drive crash a couple years back and the loss of all my archived material.   

I did manage to finally get logged back in after much email correspondence. But then the Qualifying Reviews for my PhD Sociology program at the University of Hawaii Manoa demanded all my time.

That finished and my brain completely fried, I thought I could get back to blogging. But soon after that the harrowing Damocles Sword of my Master's thesis deadline for my secondary degree in Asian Studies loomed. (Never co-enroll in two graduate degree programs if you want to retain your sanity) I found it difficult to find time for much besides panicked study.

Then over the summer of 2008 a paper submission for the 2008 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Boston was accepted for presentation, so I spent the summer preparing for that. (More on that paper soon).

During the Fall 2008 I was also busy with a great many things. Between applying for scholarship funding for my dissertation research starting the end of 2009 in Tokyo, Japan, I also managed to finish my Master's Thesis in Asian Studies and

But it never stops does it?

Currently I am preparing for my for my Comprehensive Exam which I plan to take the end of this Spring 2009 Term. I'll be busy with that this spring but now that my work on hikikomori is published I can post about it now.

Also as I start my research in Japan in the Fall I'll be using this blog as an anchor to friends and family ti let them know what I'm up to. Expect this blog to transform into current events on youth phenomena in Japan type at that point.

~M. Dziesinski

Hikikomori Reasearch Update and Other Things

Greetings Fellow Travelers,

This poor poor blog has fallen into disuse over the past few years and for that I greatly apologize. Over that time I have received a fair number of emails expressing interest in my hikikomori topic and for updates of the blog.

I thank those people for your continuing interest. I have always known that my topic was very much a niche area, that my intermittent posts, and my verbose blog style meant I would have a very tiny readership...if at all.

I figured those with interest would stumble upon my blog and that's fine by me. However, I always meant for Japan's Lost Generation to be a sounding board for my research. As much of my research material was unpublished I thought it prudent to keep that close to the vest until such time I had some copyright protection.

This concern was borne out by people who have contacted me directly in the last few years and then have subsequently released several publications that have come out in the interim of my blog's downtime. They have obviously built on my work posted on my Lost Gen blog but make no reference to me. That kind of dampened my enthusiasm to continue posting my unpublished research on my blog.

That's fine I guess.

In part, its my fault or not being quicker in getting my hikikomori work out there I have been lapped by others on the track, had I gotten my hikikomori work into an academic journal in 2005, I would have been one of the first in the English language academia to address the hikikomori issue in social science circles. In part, it is due to others being more established in the field and finding it easy to dismiss the work of a graduate student. But when you find the core of your ideas in another person's work it can be a bit frustrating.

Again, live and learn.

Welcome to my 2009 blog, enjoy your stay.

~M. Dziesinski

Hikikomori are part of a spectrum of globalized youth Part Two

The more functional end of the spectrum

The other end of this spectrum of coping youth are freeters, NEETS and twixters who are more functional, if only marginally so.

The effects of economic globalization has shifted the daily realities for Japanese youth away from the traditional social values and ideologies of their parent's generation. Traditional normalcy is not sustainable, nor are upholding the expectations that a youth can reasonably take on their father's and mother's roles in society. In addition, national institutions like education, set up for creating productive citizens for a pre-globalized economy, have been slow to change. Institutional inertia means that youth who do not excel or have the family resources to supplement their education to be competitive post-graduation, are ill prepared for an adult working life. They end up in working class lives as flexible workers, as freeter- or worse.

I think the dilemma for these youth lies with socialized middle class expectations ingrained by society.

This conflicts with the reality of the career market for those not the top strata of a nation's social class along with specialized skill sets offered by university and the social capital affluent parents can offer. I see the problem for these youths as the confluence of a class squeeze on the societal level and an Durkheimian anomic response on an individual level. The Globalized structural changes taking place in Euope, Asia and the US since the 1980s has left an entire population of youths in the 20-30 age bracket who are unable to adapt.

Hikikomori are part of a spectrum of globalized youth Part One

The darker end of the spectrum

Over the last two years I've come to the conclusion that hikikomori are not a unique group but rather towards the less functional end of a spectrum of young people unable to cope and adapt to societal changes due to globalization. Beyond hikikomori, on the extreme end of this spectrum of youth feeling alienated and lacking purpose are those who opt out of life completely, youth who commit suicide.

From the LA Times 12/14/01, Japan's Suicide Epidemic:

Japan's economic deterioration is damaging a lot more than balance sheets and bank statements. Extreme stress and mental instability are at record highs. About 425,000 people were treated for stress-related mental disorders last year. In 1998, when the economy started tanking, suicides jumped 25% to more than 30,000 and haven't declined. Suicides directly attributed to employment, personal debt and the economy now number 8,500 annually, up fourfold from a decade ago. Because of population changes, the mortality rate per 100,000 people has eased slightly.

Mental health professionals say the actual number of stress-related illnesses may be much higher because psychological difficulties are often ignored or swept under the tatami mat in Japan, where depression is still viewed as a character flaw and treatment is inadequate.

"There's a very dark cloud hanging over Japanese society as more and more people lose their psychological signposts," said Dr. Yoshitomo Takahashi, a researcher with the Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry. "Mental illness still carries a lot of shame, so most people are referred only at the terminal stage. This makes our job very difficult."

Countries around the world have for decades lived with high unemployment and the social, economic and political costs it engenders. But in Japan, workers saw a job as an entitlement, and for years that was the case until Japan's economy faltered.

Companies began pruning payrolls, and the pain now is jolting the core of Japanese society: breadwinners in their 40s and 50s. This generation sacrificed almost everything for the company and now feels betrayed, isolated and worthless at being let go.

"Japan is suddenly waking up from a 56-year dream," said Hirotake Araya, general manager of Tokyo Shoko Research, a private data-collection company. "The end of lifetime employment is very difficult to accept, particularly for middle-aged people.

More on the topic of contemporary suicide in Japan, here and here.

My response to Delphiki's article on Hikikomori

In trying to fix the problem with Google's image servers hammering my bandwith I came across a trackback on a blog named Delphiki.

The trackback in question linked to my two part article on hikikomori not being violent.

Here is the original blog entry on the Delphiki site about hikikomori.

I chewed over what he had to say for awhile and wrote response to his article in the comments. It is so long winded that I decided it should probably also post it here as a blog entry:

First, I want to say thank you for posting an article on the hikikomori. It’s always good in my opinion to get the word out and encourage discussion and thought on this topic. Your analysis of the causes and behavior patterns of hikikomori, due in part to Japanese cultural influences, are pretty accurate based upon my own ten months of field research in Japan on this topic.

However, I have to disagree with the violence part as well as the million strong hikikomori army you read about in the various articles online. For the violence, you provided links to my site, Japan’s Lost Generation, to my articles ‘Hikikomori are not Violent’ where I argue the opposite. In my interviews of support staff at a hikikomori rehab center in Tokyo, they firmly state that hikikomori violence appears to be rare. In the cases that it does occur, the hikikomori is often ALSO afflicted with mental illness. What I found in the field is that most hikikomori are socially crippled rather than mentally ill; contrary to what the BBC was reporting in 2000 with the ‘Japan’s Missing Million’ article. I would say that 80% of the hikikomori at the rehab center where I worked were re-socialized and functional within six months to one year of admittance.

On the one million hikikomori— I found that that estimate actually came originally from Doctor Saito Tamaki, the man who coined the word ‘hikikomori’ and subsequently published a dozen books on the subject since the mid 1990s. From there, that one million figure was quoted, re-quoted, and spread through the various media treatments on hikikomori reportage as it makes great headlines.

I think it's suspect.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, in a survey done in 2000 on hikikomori, estimates the number is closer to 50,000 individuals; that is still quite a lot, but not 20% of the entire nation’s 13-18 year old Japanese male population that the one million figure would account for (see my paper on my blog for more depth on this).

Your economic look at the effect of one million people missing from the workforce is prescient and I came to the same conclusion in my literary review I wrote on hikikomori back in 2002. For IF the one million Japanese people were NOT to join the workforce in the next ten years, and considering the graying of the Japanese population…well you’re right on that time bomb.

But maybe for different reasons.

I’ve found that the hikikomori are actually the most extreme subset of a larger group called freeta (which also includes a group called ‘parasite singles’); young people who live at home well into their thirties and refuse to work in demanding career path jobs at corporations, but instead prefer low-pay positions as clerks in convenience stores and the like. So your worry about the Japanese economy may be right, but because of the growing numbers of freeta (of which the hikikomori is a very small percentage).

Sorry to be so long-winded but this is a topic very near and dear to my heart.

Again, great post!

Michael Dziesinski
http://towakudai.blogs.com/

Q & A Series PT IV: Buddhist Insight to Internet Suicide Pacts and the Hikikomori

Recently, I was asked a series of questions by a person researching the phenomenon of suicide in Japanese society. I'd like to share that discussion over the next several blog entries for the benefit of others. I'll call the individual 'E' in this blog.

Michael Dziesinski

--------------------

E's Question:
I am interested particularly in any Buddhist insight, as this is the my area of research. I am drawing my own conclusion on Buddhist influence on suicide, of course, but am interested in any connection you may see in your own work.

My Answer:

As for linkages with hikikomori, both groups on one level are obviously dissatisfied with their lot in life. In some cases, both are a cry for outside intervention.

My current thinking is that hikikomori are mentally healthy people who feel so pressured by society that they socially withdraw. ‘Socially’ is the key concept here: they are in duress and so they seek to remove themselves from the source of the pain. However, once they do so, they ‘wither on the vine’ developmentally due to the absence of social interaction. Drawn outside of their environment and with proper patience and care, they recover to become functional adults.

The point I’m making here is while some hikikomori may have at some point contemplated suicide, or even done so once trapped within their isolation, most seem to have a strong will to live and are normal mentally, they are just unsure how to ‘fix themselves’ and so are trapped in a catch-22 of isolation.

I do touch on the connection with Durkheim’s work on suicide and anomie in this post:
http://towakudai.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/04/q_a_about_hikik_2.html

I think his theory may be one of the better tracks you can take on the rash of suicides in Japan’s media spotlight right now. Durkheim posits that in times of social upheaval with an underlying weak social order, such as drastic economic change, the number of suicides increases because to people lack the firm self-identity that society provides for us.

Buddhist influence, but more specifically, the warrior cult of the Bushidoh code’s seppuku / hara-kiri in the face of shame or dishonor in Japan may be responsible for romanticizing suicide in the modern day, and perhaps lowering the social barriers as a taboo act. The Buddhist concept of rinne, transmigration of the soul, may also play a part in such a decision of self-destruction, but I can’t say with any authority. I would guess that the historical context of suicide in Japanese culture plays some role in the contemporary internet suicide pacts.

I would also guess that these people in the internet suicide pacts are forming in-groups over a measurable period of time which in turn exchange ideas and plans on committing the act of suicide together. As an in-group, that the dynamic of the internet suicide pact is going to be typically Japanese in structure, re-enforcing and re-affirming in nature that ‘this is the right thing to do’.

To see where my reasoning is going here, I suggest you look into Japanese charismatic cults such as Aum Shinrikyo, Pana Wave or even the Japanese Red Army. Again this is conjecture, but you may find one or two charismatic figures at the center of each suicide pact that act as the catalyst for the rest of the group who follow them through to the ultimately grim conclusion.

Thank you again, and I look forward to hearing from you.
—E

Glad to be of service.

Michael Dziesinski

Q & A Series PT III: Religious Influences on Internet Suicide Pacts and the Hikikomori

Recently, I was asked a series of questions by a person researching the phenomenon of suicide in Japanese society. I'd like to share that discussion over the next several blog entries for the benefit of others. I'll call the individual 'E' in this blog.

Michael Dziesinski

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E's Question:

Do you see any religious influences, or a lack thereof in this phenomenon (hikikomori and suicide)?

My Answer:

The ‘komori’ part of the word ‘hikikomori’ is taken from the verb ‘komoru’ which means ‘to retire’, ‘to go into retreat’, and is a reference to the old practice by Buddhist monks of going into retreat to find their inner selves.

Psychologist Saito Tamaki coined this word for acute social withdraw about seven years ago, so any linkage there with actual Buddhist practice is dubious at best.

To be honest, in my years of living in Japan and even meeting and interacting with Buddhist and Shinto clergy, I never got the sense of overt religious influence in Japanese life on a spiritual level for most people.

Oh, there was a few that I did meet with whom I was absolutely stunned by their religiosity, Mount Koya comes to mind (Koya images), but on the whole, the personal impression I get is that religion in the western sense of the term does not apply to Japanese daily life. ‘Religious influence’ in Japanese life seems to operate at a purely functional level— Shinto ceremonies for births and weddings (more), Buddhist for funerals and memorials, and festivals throughout the year that are remembrances of the ‘old days’ as much as commercial events.

On the other hand, it would not be fair to conclude that the lack of ‘strong faith’ is cause for these social problems. In some ways, the social cohesion of the group, amae, on/giri and various other aspects of Japanese culture would appear to make unnecessary the need for the unifying sense of community and self-defining role that religion serves in the west.

Being ostracized in Japanese society (it even has a specific term in Japanese, Mura Hachibu) and rejected by the group in events such as bullying or the media stigma for a behavior, is when the crisis for identity manifests when you are 'outside' the 80% of mainstream Japanese culture.

Until that time, most Japanese people are comfortably nested in a definition of self-identity based upon the interrelationships with those in-groups and out-groups around them.