Japan's Lost Generation

Hikikomori Article in the New York Times

There was an article in the New York Times in 2006 about hikikomori. Even though the Gray Lady is now behind a pay-wall, you should still be able to view the article.

Shutting Themselves In

By MAGGIE JONES

Published: January 15, 2006

~M.D.

CBC Article on Hikikomori

Back in 2010, I was interviewed about my previous research on hikikomori. The reporter and I sat for about an hour in the Shibuya Starbucks chatting about shut-ins in Japan. I tried to give him a broad picture of the issue and how it was portrayed in the media. I even said several times what I was stating was not my opinion but what others had said or how it was generally perceived. What he finally put to print is somewhat out of context and not the gist of what I was trying to tell him, but what's in print is done.

Hanging out with Japan's 'lost generation' - CBC NEWS

Its a good article and appears to be well researched. It was my understanding at the time of the interview that the piece was to be longer and in the main publication. Its a shame he had to shorten the length, but I think he did the best he could with the space he was given.

Personally, I dislike the usage of "pressure cooker" applied to the Japanese school system. I was telling the reporter this is how other people portray Japanese education, its not my viewpoint.

If forced to use sound bite imagery, I would prefer to think of the educational track in a Japan as a highway with too few off-ramps into adult life. Once you take an exit from the college track, there is no way to get back on the road. With globalization, options for adult re-education and re-skilling has become a common strategy in other nations in the labor market. The ability to go back to school and get a college degree/re-skill as an adult and be accepted into the labor force within a new career is a viable option in many globalized labor markets. Some stigma may still hold for those trying for employment in the most elite of corporations, however.

In Japan, globalization has caused many companies to downsize and resort to a contract-for-hire work force they can jettison at any time to stay profitable. However, unlike globalized corporations in other countries, many big Japanese companies still prefer to hire fresh 20-something college graduates as their regular employees with full benefits. The remainder of their work force are 'outside hires', contract workers: freeters.

Contract workers may have gone back to school as an adult or have worked for several years learning the same skills in the industry as regular hires. However, that on-the-job work-experience by contract hires is not considered valid on a job application by Japanese corporations. So re-skilling and adult education in Japan means, even if you can get hired into a middle class labor position, most likely you will be a contract worker with no real chance to become a full time employee at the "big" corporations the rest of your working life. You are relegated to a precarious working class existence in society with little job stability.

This is why there is a growing population of aged 30+ freeters (contract workers) in the Japanese work force. Freeters and NEET are basically the same group of Japanese workers either in contract employment (and show up in data as freeter) or unemployed after a stint working (and are classified in labor data as NEET) . Collectively, this marginalized population of Freeters and NEET are rapidly becoming Japan's new working class with no viable path to a mainstream middle class career. Many of these 30-something freeters want to start families or be bread-winners, but lack the job stability to settle down into family roles with any confidence.

~M.D.

PhD Comprehensive exams done May 2009, onward to Prospectus

Some other belated news to post.

I officially passed my PhD Comprehensive exams on Friday, May 8th!

It was a truly brutal five months of study to prepare for the week-long writing marathon and two hour oral defense, but now its done.

Now that its August and several months behind me, I can say I understand why it was a required step in the path to a PhD in the Sociology Department at the University of Hawaii. The required organization, planning, and follow through was a learning process, but after five months of 3 to 5 hours of daily reading of research articles on my comprehensive topic lists, I feel like its become hard-wired into my thought processes. So it didn't really function as a gatekeeping academic hazing required to gain entrance into the hallowed halls of learning, but worked more like reprogramming in order to learn the skill set necessary to be a productive academic that will be required to teach undergrad classes, publish papers in journals, and conduct unique research over the course of my career.

Several professors have said to me that they probably will never be as productive as they were that very intense week of writing up and defending the comprehensive exam, and to a certain degree, I concur with that assessment. After all, unless you are complete glutton for self-inflicted physical and mental punishment, I couldn't see myself willingly writing up another 80+ pages of cited, theoretically heavy material in the span of seventy hours over a seven day marathon. I think getting that mentally fried is enough for this lifetime thank you very much.

~M. Dziesinski

Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, Aversion, and Hikikomori at Anime Edit Part 2

Now that you have the background from part 1 of this discussion, let's continue with my analysis of hikikomori after a couple years of reflection on my field work in Tokyo.

In my usual overly verbose style I had this to say in the comments section of  March of 2009 Moritheil posted a blog article titled "Aversion and Hikikomori"  over on Anime Edit Blog:

"Having done ten months of research at a Tokyo rehab center for hikikomori I can tell you that there is nothing “cool” about youth who are actual hikky.

First the media scare on “Dangerous hikikomori youth” back in 1999 and 2000 and the recent the pop culture depictions have really distorted and glorified the whole hikikomori phenomenon.

The reasons or trigger that caused a youth to become hikikomori vary. They can be like ghosts, staying up all night and sleeping by day or they can seem completely normal except they won’t look at a person face-to-face. It can be heartbreaking to be around hikikomori who are recovering as you can sense their frustration and desire to be normal but they are locked into patterns of behavior that avoid contact.

The thing is, the label “hikikomori” was originally about the behavior of acute social withdrawal by Japanese youth, not the causes of it. The reason why a lot of Japanese may say hikikomori are unique to Japan is because of the different way such behavior is viewed in Japan by everyday people. In western societies there is a tendency to label a troubled person by a clinical condition such as depression, aspergers, agoraphobia, schizophrenia and so on. If a doctor diagnoses such a condition the parent will seek care at a hospital and or a drug regimen. In contrast, a youth in Japan suffering from any of those conditions or even bullying or stress from school who avoids social interaction will be viewed as a hikikomori.

Also hikikomori is not a black and white “condition”, perfectly fine people, even adults, may lose a job or have hard times and slip into being a NEET and then into a hikikomori.

As I do research on the topic, I’ve been contacted by people from all over the world expressing concern over hikikomori in their own country, including South Korea, Italy and most recently Poland. Because the word “hikikomori” is now so high profile I think people self-identify with being hikikomori rather than seek help and see if perhaps they might have medical or psychological condition."

moritheil asked me to elaborate and, well, I did....overmuch perhaps:

"Yes, what I found at my research site is that the rehab staff in the 1980s were treating youth with similar patterns of social withdrawal, but at that time, the kids were being called “school refusals”, tôhôkyohi. The more I’ve looked into trying to pin down a definitive pattern/cause for a static label hikikomori the more its like quicksand.

Hikikomori is different things to everyday Japanese- something to be slightly afraid of; its something else to Japanese clinics- who are medicalizing youth identified as hikikomori; and it is something again to youth who may view themselves as hikikomori- stuck and cornered in society, they may feel that a social moratorium as they see in the popular media depiction of what it is to be “hikikomori” might be an answer to their problems. It goes without saying that the label hikikomori internationally has its own flavors and permutations.

Of course as a social scientist, I’m sure a clinical psychologist might disagree with my interpretation of the situation with hikikomori, but in my own research experience, I found that the causes for a person to “become” hikikomori can vary. Hikikomori causation is a complex issue and is really hard to say in any absolute way that 50% of all hikikomori are depressive, 30% are avoidance behaviors, etc. In fact the staff at the rehab center would argue that the reasons for each hikikomori undergoing treatment there were unique. Further as a researcher, its impossible to quantify for various reasons (ever try to conduct a survey on people who hide from sight?).

As I said, some people have genuine chronic medical issues while others might just be stressed and initially seeking escape from daily pressures and family expectations- but they can all fall under the umbrella term of hikikomori- if they avoid social contact for six months or more. And there is a reason why the discourse on hikikomori focuses on the final behavior of social seclusion as it is easier to observe and identify than what spurred someone to become hikikomori in the first place.

You ask what might “drive one to become hikikomori”. Assuming the individual is rational as you say, I have seen several common ones (for people w/o preexisting health disorders). Let me go back to the 1980s to make my next point. When school refusals were identified within health circles, there were a steady number of cases to be sure, but when it hit the mass media (TV, newspapers, etc) there was a large spike in “school refusals”. The same thing happened after 1999, 2000 for hikikomori as the media raised public awareness via several sensational stories like the Osaka bus hijacking. Back then however, hikikomori were frightening and seen as mentally ill by the public (read/watch the BBC’s “Missing Million” to see what I mean). Thus reflecting the “public aversion to hikikomori aversion” you mention at the end of your article. (You may want to look into Japanese attitudes on mental and physical disability to see more about why this occurs in Japan)

Now, with hikikomori in pop culture and woven into stories as both protagonist and peripheral characters, being hikikomori might seem like a viable option for some people who can’t handle the daily strain of life. Becoming hikikomori can seem a viable choice for some people- the media has made them aware that this option, being hikikomori, is out there and exists, other people suffer from this condition…maybe I do too. Some people make the label “hikikomori” their own and choose to be hikky. Now, this is only one part of the hikikomori “population” and perhaps only a small portion, but I think it is important to consider as they may be the most vocal part of the hikikomori population, the rest avoiding social contact.

Here’s the catch: once many people decide to socially withdraw, become hikikomori, for whatever reason, be it serious emotional trauma or whimsy, certain patterns of behavior begin to settle into their lives. For one, they socially stagnate and may become night owls. Second, their lack of face-to-face interaction may mean they start to over-think the rare times they are confronted with another person. They may be fine in isolation for weeks or months but eventually something happens and they become trapped in hikikomori patterns and not sure how to break those behaviors.

Think about sensory deprivation chambers or the concerns space agencies have about the extreme isolation of a physically and mentally healthy astronaut in a small capsule that takes months to get to Mars. Humans are social creatures. The separation from groups of people and regular daily interaction will have its effects on any person’s psyche- no matter what the original reason a person may have undergone isolation. For individuals with pre-existing health conditions, like depression. Well, it would seem it just further complicates their situation in social isolation as a hikikomori."

~M. Dziesinski

Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, Aversion, and Hikikomori at Anime Edit Part 1

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Image Sources: animecharactersdatabase.com

Whilst tweaking my Typepad account's new settings I noticed some hits to my site from Anime Edit Blog. I'm familiar with the blog from several years ago when I was more active blogging.

Back in March of 2009 Moritheil posted a blog entry titled "Aversion and Hikikomori" about how the humorous and often twisted anime series Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei , often abbreviated to SZS in internet discussions, portrays the hikikomori condition as a a type of extreme aversion via one of its characters,

Komori Kiri , 小森 霧, whose actual name itself is wordplay, 籠もりきり, on hikikomori, 引き籠もり. Most, if not all of SZS characters, have names that are Japanese word play on some eccentricity or neuroses and said characters are living embodiments of those quirks throughout each episode.

SZS often deals with serious or gloomy topics, which might be expected with the main character is named Mr. Despair, but it does add a touch of humor and parody to ordinarily heavy subject matter. Such as Mr. Despair's famous refrain: Zetsubou Shita!!!, "I am in despair!":

!

In any event, coming across moritheil's post crystalized some thoughts about the interaction between the mass media and the hikikomori phenomenon that I have been seeing develop over the last nine years. In 1999 and 2000 the initial coverage on hikikomori entailed shocking crimes or behaviors attributed to hikikomori. The net effect of this media coverage was a moral panic in the Japanese populace about hikikomori.

Over the years, as hikikomori have become used as characters in popular entertainment the meaning and context of what it is to be a hikikomori has been distorted and morphed through the lens of mass media in order to suit the purposes of popular culture consumption. In some depictions in popular entertainment the hikikomori image has been softened to invoke sympathy and in others, such as Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, played up to humorous effect.

In effect, while the hikikomori condition still exists as a serious problem for a notable number of Japanese people in 2009, nine years after it came to awareness in the public eye, it has also been effectively co-opted by the mass media into a "safe" consumable commodity. Its interesting that the reaction towards hikikomori in Japanese society loosely follows the arc of youth subcultures such as Mods and Punks detailed in the works of Tony Jefferson and Stuart Hall et. al, Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain (1991).

~M. Dziesinski