Hikikomori (Japan)

Hikikomori 🇯🇵
Location: Japan
Definition: Social withdrawal of people driven away by societal shame
Keywords: Japan – East Asia – Unemployment – Self-isolation – Psychiatry – Shame
Clusters: Market
Author: Taiga Kambara
Affiliation: Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

By Taiga Kambara, Alumna, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, UK

Hikikomori is a Japanese word that translates to ‘shut oneself in’. It is the repurposing of a term referring to people refusing to have contact with the outside world. According to the official categorisation of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan, a hikikomori is someone who has refused contact with people for more than six months (Kawakami 2010). Similar to hikikomori, there are NEET people, an acronym identifying those who are Not in Employment, Education, nor Training. Although NEET strictly speaking only refers to people who are unemployed and unwilling to work, these two terms are frequently used interchangeably, as they are often used for people with similar characteristics. Even the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare grouped these two bodies when conducting a survey regarding the reality of hikikomori (Iriya 2010).

Although the term is specific to Japan, the phenomenon is spread around the globe. The 3rd edition of the handbook published by the American Psychological Association, or DSM-III, referred to patients with similar traits as displaying ‘social withdrawal’(ibid). The first case of the term being used outside Japan is in Italy in the late 2000s (Katsura and Sugiyama 2019).

Despite being a practice that can be observed around the globe, there are several key factors that distinguish the Japanese case. First, the country saw a massive spike in young unemployed people following the burst of the economic bubble in the late 1990s (Futagami 2013). This, in tandem with a culture of shame, led to an increase of hikikomori. While highly capable, many young people were circumstantially unfortunate and found their unemployment shameful. To avoid being pointed fingers and gossiped behind their backs, they avoided human contact entirely. Parents of these young people were typically baby boomers raised during the height of economic growth. Often referred to as ‘economic animals’, these people were taught to work hard and consume even harder for the sake of the economy (ibid). The contrast between the parents’ mindset and the economic reality that these young people were experiencing led to rising pressures within the household, where parents would be the first to shun their children for being unemployed.

In recent years, hikikomori has taken a new problematic dimension. Known as the 8050 problem, the aging population of Japan is becoming increasingly incapable of supporting hikikomori children (Kawakami 2010). The problem is referred to as the 8050 because the first group of hikikomori people who was hit during the ‘ice age of employment’, in the late 1990s, are now turning 50 years old and their parents nearing 80. Although these aging hikikomori may be currently able to survive off of the parents’ income or social security, if they pass away, the 50-year-olds who have never worked will remain without means to support themselves. The long lifespan of Japanese citizens postponed the danger until nowadays, but in return prevented this dire problem from being brought to light until it was exacerbated to the point of no return.

The greater implication of the existence of hikikomori ties back to the question of what type of informal category the practice falls into. Essentially, in modern-day Japan, the practice was caused by the incompetence of the formal institutions to provide stable unemployment relief and employment opportunities following the burst of the economic bubble. To those who were unemployed, or never employed to begin with, the close personal space and parental support functioned as a financial, social, and mental safety net.

That is not to say, however, that the formal institution is the only one to blame for their emergence. For instance, amakudari, the preferential treatment of retired civil servants when hiring for managerial positions, has produced an overwhelmingly favourable set of benefits to more senior citizens and employees, but doomed the economic and social prospects of the younger citizens in Japan. In times of hardship, Japanese culture tends to undermine the importance of its youngest members prioritizing older citizens (Futagami 2013).

The covert nature of this practice makes it difficult to study and measure, but in the past decade, the topic has become less of a taboo, leading to more research being conducted. However, since no one, including the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, has been able to accurately document the hikikomori, it is difficult to have an overall picture of the phenomenon (Iriya 2010).

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