04 January 2005

Hikikomori are NOT Violent PART III:

Public attention to the previously hidden hikikomori problem is not all it’s cracked up to be.

200501050008Bringing public attention to social withdraw in Japan has been a mixed blessing according to those I interviewed at Takeyama Gakkoh.

Several of the senior staffers, who have been doing their job for almost two decades, say that they began to get their first cases more than ten years ago—long before it was called 'hikikomori' in 1998 or there about. Back then, social withdraw was a problem within families.

In fact, some of the Takeyama staff believe that social withdraw is nothing new and may go back fifty years into Japan’s past (probably coinciding with the pressures of the Post WWII school system put in place in Japan during the occupation). It wasn't until Dr. Tamaki Saitoh coined the word ‘hikikomori’ and the ensuing media frenzy that things changed dramatically for the socially withdrawn youth and the families of these children; before then, the public had no idea, but after 'hikikomori' became a household word, parents of hikikomori children became ashamed of their children and sought to hide them from public scrutiny. Perhaps letting the problem fester in the home longer than they would have years previous.

If the spate of violence by so-called 'hikikomori' could be attributed to anything in the years immediately after the new high profile of the 'hikikomori' issue, it might be blamed on the fact that parents were too ashamed to come forward and seek help for their socially withdrawn child due to all of the new publicity attached to the phenomenon. And so, tensions within such families reached a boiling point and sometimes escalated into physical confrontations between parent and child.

According to one leader in the hikikomori support industry, a Mr. Sadatsugu Kudo, who deals with these youth on a daily basis and who runs Tame Juku for socially withdrawn children in Tokyo, believes that it is erroneous for people to associate the hikikomori phenomenon with cases of crime or mental illness, “ . . . true hikikomori by definition do not have the wherewithal to venture into the world to commit crime”. And despite these high visibility incidents attributed to shut-ins, some experts point out that violent outbursts by hikikomori “are rare. Hikikomori are more likely to suffer from lethargy or suicidal depression”.

My field observations agree with these conclusions. The only aggressive behavior I EVER observed at Takeyama Gakkoh was very late at light, like two or three in the morning, where a socially withdrawn student would pound their fist or foot on the wall or floor for a stretch of time. This I view as a cry for help or frustration at their predicament, not some urge to 'hurt someone'.

Sorry to rant so, but these two misconceptions about socially withdrawn youth in Japan really get under my skin.

Hikikomori are not violent and it is highly doubtful they are one million strong.

[Again, if you want a detailed argument on these issues, please download my research paper on the topic in PDF form. ]

Jan 4, 2005 11:12:35 PM | Hikikomori, Rant

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Hikikomori are NOT Violent PART II: Blame the Press! <p> And yet, BOTH of these misrepresentations of violent hikikomori and being one million strong continue to float around the net and in the mass media. I really wish that someone in the media would actually do some research rather than rehashing inaccurate statements on hikikomori made over five years ago. Do you know why both of these fallacies continue to be propagates as discourse?... And lets be honest, youth who are secluded in their homes are hardly going to be able speak out against whatever the press decides to report about them.... were forwarding psychiatrist Tamaki Saito's theoretical estimates that between 500,000 to over 1,000,000 Japanese male youths aged fourteen to twenty years were suffering from the hikikomori condition as evidenced by their dropping out of active participation in society and sequestering themselves into the social safety of isolation in their rooms.... Media sources seem to be improperly analyzing the data and the scope of the problem, for if the variously quoted Saito statistics of 500,000 to 1.2 million male hikikomori shut-ins from the 14-20 age group is reasonably correct (Larimer 2001, Rees 2002, Secher 2002, Tolbert 2001), then the pervasiveness of hikikomori phenomenon in the Japanese population is disquieting.... Adding up all the males in the 14-20-age bracket elicits a total population of roughly 4.2 million males in that combined gender and age demographic in Japan. What this means, is if over 1 million Japanese aged 14-20 indeed suffer from hikikomori, then 20 percent of all adolescent males in Japan, and approximately 1 percent of the population, are abstaining from participation in Japanese social institutions! If Saito's number of 500,000 is even a remotely accurate appraisal, then Japanese society as a whole is in dire peril in the coming decades for as Saito points out: “I think it is dangerous for Japanese society because such people never work or pay tax,” he said.... (Watts 2000) If the outside observer were to accept Saito's assessment on the scope of the hikikomori problem in Japan today, it would mean that a notable proportion of the next generation of the Japanese workforce has already dropped out of the system and Japan can expect serious labor shortages as well as verging on a welfare state in order to support a half million non-productive members of society over the next fifty years. </p>
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Hikikomori: Some diagrams for your edification <p> Today, rather than write too much (and maybe bore you), I'm going to post two diagrams I made explaining the causes and development of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori">hikikomori</a>. As usual, if you use them in your own works please be courteous enough to properly cite them as originating from me. </p>

Michael Dziesinski

I'm a University of Hawaii PhD in Sociology discussing youth issues in Japanese society in this blog.

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