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A New Form of Social Withdrawal in Japan: A Review of ‘Hikikomori’ (2009)
- hikineet 9y agoHikikomori is not only a Japanese phenomenon. I was Hikiki for a year after dropping out of college. I lived with my parents playing WoW all night and sleeping all day. I had very few social interactions. What dragged me into that lifestyle was the complete destruction of my ego. I was simply unprepared to live as an adult. It's not much of a surprise I couldn't cope. In high-school I was coddled for being smart and never developed a work ethic. College hit me like a sack of bricks. I'm sure there are myriad reasons why people choose to withdraw from society; my case is merely a personal anecdote. Nonetheless I think my case is not a rare exception. Ultimately what pulled me out of that malaise was successful employment in a software company. It was only after I recovered a sense of self worth that I could finally step out of my cave.
- nyolfen 9y agomy experiences resonate with yours. i'm still a hermit but my withdrawal isn't nearly as total as it was from 18-22, when as you said i experienced total ego destruction and inability to cope with being an adult. i'm almost done with my bachelor's degree now (two weeks!), finally, at 28. i'm actually in the middle of writing a very long final essay about hikikomori for one of my classes this semester. go figure!
- codezero 9y agoBut didn't you actually have a lot of social interactions if you played WoW? I played a lot of online games, and they were my primary source of social interaction. To someone who doesn't understand how one can be social on the internet, it could have appeared that I was socially withdrawn, but I wasn't. Like any condition though, the negative consequences have their own merit: playing video games most of the day doesn't usually lead to long term skills one can apply. If anything, I'm less social now that I have marketable skills :P
- DougN7 9y agoI always question that. I've played online too, and ever got to "know" some people (as much as you can know an anonymous nickname). But in face to face situations, the online interactions really weren't very useful. Did you find face-to-face easier because of online experiences?
- codezero 9y agoYeah, I got better at face to face interactions after having a semi-large consistent group of online friends. After a few years we met up once in a while as a group (maybe once a year), and that helped a lot too.
- taneq 9y agoLearning to lead dungeon groups (and later raids) was critical training for me later being able to take control of projects, manage subcontractors etc. So yeah, some skills learned in an MMO absolutely do carry over into real life.
- codezero 9y agoLet's say they _can_ be carried over, but the vast majority of people playing MMOs are not developing serious leadership skills that they can put on their resume at least :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- amelius 9y ago> Ultimately what pulled me out of that malaise was successful employment in a software company. Are you sure you are actually out of that malaise? I mean, writing software can also very much feel like playing a game, and an even less social one perhaps.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- csa 9y agoAssuming they were not teleworking, getting out of their bedroom would be cosnidered a big win. Staring at a computer screen at work basically indicates that they are not hiki any more (although they probably still have some issues that will need some work before they would be considered mainstream).
- Red_Tarsius 9y agoWhat you wrote really resonated with me. 'Destruction of the ego' is the most fitting description of that lifestyle. The Internet is the key. You need that drip-feed of sounds, colors, shapes 24/7 to drown your inner voice. You can't stand being with yourself. It's isomorphic to other addictions, like slot machines or alcohol.
- ue_ 9y agoI don't know of any 'solution' to this (if one agrees it is something to be solved), though to deal with your inner voice, it's best to listen to it, and I think that meditation can be a good way to do that. Sometimes I'm arguing on HN or imageboards etc. and I think that to wind down from it all, to realise the impermanence of it, it's good to meditate, noticing the thoughts that appear in your mind. No distractions, music etc.
- lazypenguin 9y agoIn my opinion, required military service for 1-2 years post high school (or deferred until after University) can help mitigate it. I don't have any facts to back up my claim but an environment that has guaranteed work, physical fitness requirements and is heavily team based hits a lot of points. While not a perfect solution, I don't see it discussed often.
- johnchristopher 9y agoAn environment where you are being taken care of for every aspects of your life: when to wake up, what to do, what to eat, how to dress, how to talk, when to relax and when to get to sleep again ? Problems would get back as soon as one gets out I am afraid.
- blawson 9y agoWork ethic can make a huge difference though. To one degree or another we all slowly figure out what to do with our lives. Doing it with a drive that's been drilled into you can be a blessing, and a lot of the lessons apply well throughout life; cleanliness, routine sleep schedules, being respectful. I think there are a lot of potential issues with service, but if you're feeling lost in life, at least you can pick up some habits that should help long term.
- partisan 9y agoI don't think you could have more perfectly described what I experienced. The only thing that kept me from completely succumbing to it was my family's economic situation. I was something of a functional hikiki, drowning on the inside but putting on a normal mask for the outside world.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoAre things better now?
- partisan 9y agoTruthfully, I am still that same person on the inside. I am making some effort to fight off the motivation to give in to it in times of stress. I think it won't ever go away and I will just have to manage it to the best of my ability.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoIf you want to talk about it, I'm happy to get in touch directly. Let me know if you're interested.
- bamboozled 9y ago"Ultimately what pulled me out of that malaise was successful employment in a software company. It was only after I recovered a sense of self worth that I could finally step out of my cave." I read a lot of employment success stories similar to yours! Which is great, good to hear you're feeling better. It does go to show that for some people, jobs (by giving community and a sense of purpose) are still very important and will probably continue to be, which means interesting times ahead.
- squi 9y agoIt's not that jobs are more fulfilling than anything else. It's that people lack opportunities. Especially if you're young, don't have a college degree and don't live in a big city. Unskilled jobs doesn't necessarily grant you independence nor a way to work your way up. Yet, higher education is still seen as a privilege rather than a necessity. What you end up with is exactly this sort of "inefficiencies".
- da02 9y agoWhat was your degree in?
- taneq 9y agoI did something similar for a few months (right down to becoming a nocturnal WoW troglodyte). It started when I quit my job to go traveling, and continued after I returned. For me, it was due to a bit of an existential crisis - my 'life script' had always been 'work hard in school, get good grades, get into uni, do well at uni, get a job'. I'd finished the script and was lost. What now, and why should I care? What dragged me out of this state was the one-two punch of getting a job and meeting a girl. Neither ended up being particularly good for me but they got me started again.
- adrianN 9y agoHow did you get a job and meet a girl when you played WoW all night and slept all day?
- aianus 9y agoWhat comes next? I'm also completely lost at the end of the life script and I'm not interested in getting a wife, kids, or mortgage like my peers seem to be.
- taneq 9y agoAt that point I kind of dodged the question by getting a high-maintenance girlfriend who dragged me through continual crises. Which kept me occupied, at least. I'm not selling this 'get a wife' thing very well, am I? :P Now, though, I've boiled it down to 'pick a new goal, work towards that goal, achieve (or abandon) goal, repeat'. I was stuck on the idea that there was no 'right' choice, I've now realised that means there's no 'wrong' choice either, so I just do what I find to be most rewarding, which is building useful things.
- tboyd47 9y agoThank you for sharing. This comment thread is 10x as enlightening as the linked article. I am only curious, what specifically about adult life had such a powerful destructive effect?
- ptr_void 9y agoA guess, but I think it's due to full confrontation of the realization that: What's meaningful is almost never economical.
- Animats 9y agoOn HN last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13895134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13895134
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- theprop 9y ago"Outside Japan, there are just two case reports of hikikomori syndrome, one in Oman and one in Spain." I agree that this should be quite common around the world. In the U.S., there are a lot of 20-year-old men who live with their parents or have a part-time undemanding job and spend most of their time playing video games, etc. and don't intend to get married.
- csa 9y agoMost/all of what you describe is not hikikomori. The "pure" form of hikis will rarely even leave their rooms. The idea of a part time job is very much not something a pure hiki would do. There is a lot of social maladjustment in Japan -- I've never seen this to the same extent in the US or EU. It might be possible in some middle eastern countries due to extreme religious reasons (e.g., Oman), but the underlying reasons strike me as different. Anyway, please don't conflate this with "playing a lot of video games" -- this is an extreme form of isolation that most people have never seen.
- PaulHoule 9y agoI dunno. I do know people with panic disorder (and the associated agoraphobia) and social phobia who live on a "Non24" calendar (they might call you at 2am in the morning but not be awake at 3pm.) Depression, anxiety, drug use all compliate the equation, but it's hard to believe that this phenomenon is all that different from hikkiomori. Many cultures take pride in an imagined exceptionalism and Japan is one of the leaders in that. It serves their ideology to believe that they have a disease that others don't. I also have the impression that many people have subclinical agoraphobic or social phobic disorders. For instance, my dad was high functioning in many ways but he absolutely refused to go to any kind of retail space, including the store my mom worked at. Social phobia has a strong association with bullying; some people survive bullying pretty well, but it has a devastating effect on many. Behind the misogyny of the tech culture you might find deep anger about how many smart people were shut out socially in high school. Some people find a pillar of stability that helps them get through it, but the experience of being in a hostile crowd can damage you profoundly.
- lemonsqueeze 9y agoGood, we need less people competing for the high priced clients I'm after.
- EuroHikikomori 9y agoI have been living as a Hikikomori for the last eight years. Every two years I leave my home for a few hours, but I spend the rest of the time in front of my computers. I don't have any friends in real life or online and the only people I interact with are my parents. Every meal is prepared for me so the only thing I have to do is my laundry once a month. I often think about how fast time flies when living this lifestyle. A year feels like a month to me. The sad part is that I have missed out on most things a normal person experiences. The twenties for most people is about experiences, creating lifelong memories, parties and fun. It feels like my twenties was over in the blink of an eye and left a book with empty pages. My youth has run into the sand.
- nnfy 9y agoThe sooner you make a change, the fewer of your life's pages will be blank. Think more of the future and less of the past. I know how it feels to think that you missed out on years of your young life, but you soon forget when you fill your present with positive experiences.
- zeroer 9y agoWhat do you leave your house for for a few hours every two years?
- EuroHikikomori 9y agoThe hospital for a check-up.
- Red_Tarsius 9y agoI really appreciate you sharing your experience. What made you decide to be hikikomori? It's never too late. Tell your parents that you want to change life. Turn their support into something positive. Go out of your house to buy pizza, ice cream, whatever. Get your body moving, the mind will follow. Try to stay in your room without digital devices... for one week. It will clear your thoughts and force you to deal with reality. You will feel bad, at first. But it's going to get better. It's the beginning of your new life. Isn't it exciting? A whole new journey lies ahead of you! Take a long walk in the countryside, far from other people. Nature is truly amazing and hiking scratches that same itch of sensory overload (Internet and gaming). Everyone makes mistakes. But you should not be defined by them. You're living a defeatist narrative. Get out of that narrative. Forget your biases and expectations. Don't let other people define you. If you want to keep in touch, post your contact info.
- nnfy 9y agoIt sounds like modern technology and culture are just more enabling of the kind of withdrawal that is typical of depression. In past decades it would be much more difficult for a human to willingly wall him or herself inside of a single room for extended periods; now we have the internet.
- torgoguys 9y ago...so is partly a matter that these parents are enablers? At one time in my life, I'm sure I'd love to have done nothing but stay alone in my room for months of time sleeping and doing internet stuff, with my meals and such prepared for me and placed by my bedroom door, but there is no way my parents would have allowed that.
- Red_Tarsius 9y ago> Another study of 88 hikikomori found that 60% lived with both parents, 18% with just their mother, 3% with their father, and 16% in a 3-generation household... authors have suggested overprotectedness is more common in families of hikikomori. Enabling parents are one part of the equation. But hikikomori might just be a cultural variant of Internet fixation. Independent adults are less likely to be called out on their addictions, because no caretaker is watching over them. How did the study find 88 hikikomori? They were reported by their parents or friends.
- cleaver 9y agoA manga and amime on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K. It gives a good introduction to the topic as well as other Japanese cultural phenomena.
- jackvalentine 9y ago"New" I don't want to sound dismissive or anything but I remember discussing this topic in highschool Japanese.. in 2004.
- sotojuan 9y agoYep, this has been a thing since the early 2000s, if not 90s.
- rkapsoro 9y agoAwareness of it is becoming part of the culture in Japan too, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K. and the anime derived from it come to mind.
- lapsock 9y agoI identify with this a lot, even though I go to college and have a job. But it's a very, very thin line between the life I have currently and complete isolation.
- konceptz 9y agoI played an mmorpg for 630 days of playtime over two years of my life. I had saved up a good amount and was on a rather generous severance package during the financial crash. I recall my moment of change when a girl (irl) asked for a date and I missed a dungeon run. The missing run meant that I would have to wait in line for the item for another few months and it completely broke me of my urge to play. While I know this isn't hikkikomorism in true form, I learned just how powerful human biology is.
- golergka 9y agoOne of the most hard things to comprehend in life is how different can you feel and how different can your own ideals become. I was like that; as described before in the same thread, a western, light version of hikki - staying at home, eating tv dinners, spending time in front of the computer. Almost no social interaction, cut in a loop, 26 hour days, and happy with it. And I'm looking where I am now: doing sports, enjoying and throwing parties, keeping in contact with a lot of friends, a lot of whom said me that I have an outgoing personality and charisma... And all of that with almost no time left for TV series or videogames. And I am happy and feel in harmony in this state, too. These two people don't understand one another and can't comprehend how the other lifestyle can be enjoyable. And I don't really understand how the hell a happy, self-content man can transition from one such state to another - but it happens. In my experience, people do actually change a lot in their lifetime, even if they don't expect it themselves, and one of the most surprising things about this article is how stable the lives of those hikki are over a long amount of time.