RP126 Hikikomori

 RP126 Hikikomori

There may be more than a million of them, but you'd never know it. They' re hidden away, locked inside houses or rooms. They' re hikikomori, the invisible people of Japan.

Hikikomori (in Japanese, “withdrawing,” or “being confined”) are people, mostly men, who go to great lengths to pull out of society. In the West, this would be called extreme social phobia, or agoraphobia (fear of being outside). But the hikikomori situation is more widespread in Japan. It is also mostly ignored out of shame.

One boy walked into his family's kitchen when he was 14, shut the door, and refused to come out. The family eventually built another kitchen to use. Takeshi, 19, spent four years in his bedroom, listening to music and playing video games. Y. S. actually stayed in his room for over 13 years! He was tired of being bullied at school and couldn't take being out in the world anymore.

Bullying, breakups, or tests are often triggers that cause these young men to snap and become hikikomori. Dr. Henry Grubb, who has studied hikikomori, says the Japanese way of avoiding confrontation makes it worse. In the West, hikikomori would be treated as being mentally ill, whereas in Japan, they' re seen as a family problem. It's also common for Japanese mothers to serve their sons. Instead of making their boys do something difficult, like go outside, Japanese mothers may simply attend to their boys' needs. Then when schools don't pursue children who don't attend, it becomes very easy for a society to pretend the hikikomori don't exist.

But hikikomori cannot be served for the rest of their lives by aging parents. Groups like New Start are trying to get these boys out and teach them how to fend for themselves before it's too late.