7 ms·

First government survey of hikikomori

137 points by Ultramanoid 8y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
Do we have any statistics from other countries? The numbers given in the article suggest about 1% of the Japanese population are hikikomori, that seems, at first glance, quite common.
- brador 8y ago
  In the West many of those with the hikikomori traits are medicated under anxiety and depression. Japan does not have the same mental health processes we have here.
  - snazz 8y ago
    I wonder which way is better for the people living with a predisposition to reclusive behavior. Is medication to allow these people to integrate with the rest of society better or worse for their well-being than having them live alone?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      I like to imagine people who take medication for social anxieties do so because they managed to get themselves to a doctor and ask for such, then willingly continue to take the medication of their own volition. Howber, now that I’ve wtitten that it occurs to me there may be expectations in a culture that are difficult to see from within.
    - watwut 8y ago
      They don't live alone and are unable to live alone. Someone must bring them food, cook for them and otherwise pay bills. Also, they do not report high hapiness.
- swebs 8y ago
  I'd imagine it would be correlated almost 1:1 with unemployment statistics, which are very well documented.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Interesting, I would have assumed no correlation with unemployment statistics.
    - Filligree 8y ago
      Almost by definition, you can't be hikikomori if you're employed. So there's at least that.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        True, although I would have thought they fell outside the definition of unemployed as well as they aren’t seeking work.
      - astura 8y ago
        The most common unemployment statistics only include people actively seeking employment. Since you'd 1) be actually willing to work and 2) have to interact with strangers to go on job interviews, it that wouldn't be considered a hikkomori. Unemployed almost never includes retired people and 36.2% of those surveyed cited retirement as a trigger for social withdraw.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - Ultramanoid 8y ago
    There are European countries with 5%, 10%, 15% unemployment numbers. It'd be insane if they had that percentage of completely recluse population. And they obviously don't.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
It’s funny that the govt wants to conduct studies and analyses, to study what exactly?! Is it a secret that Japan has piss poor mental health services? Nope! There’s your answer. Japan would rather classify people as weirdo recluses than take a deep look at the underlying mental health issues plaguing its society.
- fxfan 8y ago
  Which country are you from and what qualifies you to criticize Japan I wonder?
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    I’m from US and live in Japan. I know first hand about the lack of availability of mental health services and even the basic acknowledgment of depression as an issue that requires treatment. I would wager a large majority of these recluses are suffering from treatable depression.
    - nicolas_t 8y ago
      With the added problem of the very strong stigma in japan against mental health issues which means that most would be very unlikely to consult.
    - anovikov 8y ago
      Easy to explain, Japanese deny themselves the right to be weak, they are all supposed to be samurai. Same as in Russia, you are supposed to be a Communist hero whatever happens, mental health issues, especially among men, are as if don't exist there - guys just 'fix' themselves with vodka when they have to, or with suicide if vodka doesn't help anymore. In Russia people can't become hikikomori en masse just because the country is poor so their parents won't be able to feed them - and also because they have same hero mentality so would just beat the crap out of their kids if they tried to lock themselves up in their rooms. Also, on the good side, in Russia there are much fewer social obligations before people. As in Japan, if you didn't get a college degree to become a salaried employee in a huge company, you are fucked and no one respects you. In Russia, you can do a lot of things and with vast majority population being dirt poor and apathetic, social standards of what constitutes 'successful enough' are very low - some kid who dropped out of college to make $1500 on Upwork writting crappy PHP code at the age of 30 is a success story and his parents are proud of him - in Japan he would be a hikikomori because it would be a total shame to be in that state.
Causality1 8y ago
Strange that Japan considers older recluse becoming more common than younger recluses a new development. That is the opposite of the stereotype on the West, where the "old hermit" is a longstanding archetype.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
I always have the "mouse utopia" experiment in the back of my mind when I read this kind of story...
- mixedmath 8y ago
  I think about this too. For those who don't know the reference, I recommend reading [1]. What happened is that Dr. John Calhoun made a series of increasingly large "utopias" for mice and rats. Mice were fed, kept warm, and placed in a controlled area where there were no predators. After a bit, the mice begin to thrive and expand. But after a while things start to go astray in ways that are unexpected and a bit strange. And ultimately the population collapses and completely dies out --- even in utopia. [1]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopi...
- apocalypstyx 8y ago
  Since we're talking about Japan, the 2003 anime Texhnolyze had Behavioral Sinks at its conceptual core. https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/07/03-1/the-geniuses-behind-texhnolyze https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/07/03-1/the-g... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK47Azd6OO8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK47Azd6OO8
keiferski 8y ago
Funny how everyone’s response is always to suggest therapy or medication and never to question whether the society people are escaping from is one worth participating in.
- caprese 8y ago
  my observation on suicide prevention too people genuinely believe they are being empathic, but copy and pasting "prevention resources" isn't getting close to what people are going through
- PurpleRamen 8y ago
  If those people would support themself they wouldn't be seen as a big problem. But as long as they are just a burden, society will be cautious. It' doesn't matter whether someone participate activly with society, as long as they benefiting from it, they are a part of it.
- drharby 8y ago
  Right? Diversity in aspiration and life experience tends to be tolerated iff its within a publicly accepted manner. The man living happily wired into the net meeting his financial obligations and not breaking any law is fine in my eyes. Sometimes the net is preferable to the available versions of meatspace
- escherplex 8y ago
  It's interesting what the sense of a direct translation of hikikomori implies. Original form is (if you have the font) 引き子守 The first two characters imply someone who is dragged along and the second two refer to a nursemaid suggesting nursemaid-ing someone who doesn't want to be here. Not in defense of any such defeatist behavior but there is the question of how (and possibly why) would you impose measures to counteract that mindset if individuals and their support context are comfortable with it?
  - brokencup 8y ago
    The second half of the word (the "komori" part) is not written 子守 but rather 籠り, which means "to isolate oneself". The 引き part is less "dragged along" in this context and more "pull away from," so the literal meaning is "to pull away from (society) and isolate oneself."
mjevans 8y ago
It's extremely difficult to find those around me with similar interests who actually have anything approaching 'spare time'. Additionally, it's very difficult to be interesting without a diverse set of different friends and experiences to be the bridge between. As a 'natural leaf node' I find that I've been the first to get culled when others contract or otherwise shift their time allocations for higher priority slots in their lives. The transaction cost of visiting friends is also affected by the size of metro areas, traffic/lack of good transit meshes, and the insane cost of housing. It often isn't worth leaving a small, opportunity isolated, corner of suburbia to meet someone else if it's going to take an hour or more one way for each trip; particularly if that's during 'rush hour' traffic hell. Today's war for attention is insanity fueled by ad revenue and I feel like everyone's a looser in this war.

137 points by Ultramanoid 8y ago

Do we have any statistics from other countries? The numbers given in the article suggest about 1% of the Japanese population are hikikomori, that seems, at first glance, quite common.

brador 8y ago
In the West many of those with the hikikomori traits are medicated under anxiety and depression. Japan does not have the same mental health processes we have here.
- snazz 8y ago
  I wonder which way is better for the people living with a predisposition to reclusive behavior. Is medication to allow these people to integrate with the rest of society better or worse for their well-being than having them live alone?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    I like to imagine people who take medication for social anxieties do so because they managed to get themselves to a doctor and ask for such, then willingly continue to take the medication of their own volition. Howber, now that I’ve wtitten that it occurs to me there may be expectations in a culture that are difficult to see from within.
  - watwut 8y ago
    They don't live alone and are unable to live alone. Someone must bring them food, cook for them and otherwise pay bills. Also, they do not report high hapiness.
swebs 8y ago
I'd imagine it would be correlated almost 1:1 with unemployment statistics, which are very well documented.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Interesting, I would have assumed no correlation with unemployment statistics.
  - Filligree 8y ago
    Almost by definition, you can't be hikikomori if you're employed. So there's at least that.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      True, although I would have thought they fell outside the definition of unemployed as well as they aren’t seeking work.
    - astura 8y ago
      The most common unemployment statistics only include people actively seeking employment. Since you'd 1) be actually willing to work and 2) have to interact with strangers to go on job interviews, it that wouldn't be considered a hikkomori. Unemployed almost never includes retired people and 36.2% of those surveyed cited retirement as a trigger for social withdraw.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- Ultramanoid 8y ago
  There are European countries with 5%, 10%, 15% unemployment numbers. It'd be insane if they had that percentage of completely recluse population. And they obviously don't.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

It’s funny that the govt wants to conduct studies and analyses, to study what exactly?! Is it a secret that Japan has piss poor mental health services? Nope! There’s your answer. Japan would rather classify people as weirdo recluses than take a deep look at the underlying mental health issues plaguing its society.

fxfan 8y ago
Which country are you from and what qualifies you to criticize Japan I wonder?
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  I’m from US and live in Japan. I know first hand about the lack of availability of mental health services and even the basic acknowledgment of depression as an issue that requires treatment. I would wager a large majority of these recluses are suffering from treatable depression.
  - nicolas_t 8y ago
    With the added problem of the very strong stigma in japan against mental health issues which means that most would be very unlikely to consult.
  - anovikov 8y ago
    Easy to explain, Japanese deny themselves the right to be weak, they are all supposed to be samurai. Same as in Russia, you are supposed to be a Communist hero whatever happens, mental health issues, especially among men, are as if don't exist there - guys just 'fix' themselves with vodka when they have to, or with suicide if vodka doesn't help anymore. In Russia people can't become hikikomori en masse just because the country is poor so their parents won't be able to feed them - and also because they have same hero mentality so would just beat the crap out of their kids if they tried to lock themselves up in their rooms. Also, on the good side, in Russia there are much fewer social obligations before people. As in Japan, if you didn't get a college degree to become a salaried employee in a huge company, you are fucked and no one respects you. In Russia, you can do a lot of things and with vast majority population being dirt poor and apathetic, social standards of what constitutes 'successful enough' are very low - some kid who dropped out of college to make $1500 on Upwork writting crappy PHP code at the age of 30 is a success story and his parents are proud of him - in Japan he would be a hikikomori because it would be a total shame to be in that state.

Causality1 8y ago

Strange that Japan considers older recluse becoming more common than younger recluses a new development. That is the opposite of the stereotype on the West, where the "old hermit" is a longstanding archetype.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

I always have the "mouse utopia" experiment in the back of my mind when I read this kind of story...

mixedmath 8y ago
I think about this too. For those who don't know the reference, I recommend reading [1]. What happened is that Dr. John Calhoun made a series of increasingly large "utopias" for mice and rats. Mice were fed, kept warm, and placed in a controlled area where there were no predators. After a bit, the mice begin to thrive and expand. But after a while things start to go astray in ways that are unexpected and a bit strange. And ultimately the population collapses and completely dies out --- even in utopia. [1]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopi...
apocalypstyx 8y ago
Since we're talking about Japan, the 2003 anime Texhnolyze had Behavioral Sinks at its conceptual core. https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/07/03-1/the-geniuses-behind-texhnolyze https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2017/07/03-1/the-g... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK47Azd6OO8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK47Azd6OO8

keiferski 8y ago

Funny how everyone’s response is always to suggest therapy or medication and never to question whether the society people are escaping from is one worth participating in.

caprese 8y ago
my observation on suicide prevention too people genuinely believe they are being empathic, but copy and pasting "prevention resources" isn't getting close to what people are going through
PurpleRamen 8y ago
If those people would support themself they wouldn't be seen as a big problem. But as long as they are just a burden, society will be cautious. It' doesn't matter whether someone participate activly with society, as long as they benefiting from it, they are a part of it.
drharby 8y ago
Right? Diversity in aspiration and life experience tends to be tolerated iff its within a publicly accepted manner. The man living happily wired into the net meeting his financial obligations and not breaking any law is fine in my eyes. Sometimes the net is preferable to the available versions of meatspace
escherplex 8y ago
It's interesting what the sense of a direct translation of hikikomori implies. Original form is (if you have the font) 引き子守 The first two characters imply someone who is dragged along and the second two refer to a nursemaid suggesting nursemaid-ing someone who doesn't want to be here. Not in defense of any such defeatist behavior but there is the question of how (and possibly why) would you impose measures to counteract that mindset if individuals and their support context are comfortable with it?
- brokencup 8y ago
  The second half of the word (the "komori" part) is not written 子守 but rather 籠り, which means "to isolate oneself". The 引き part is less "dragged along" in this context and more "pull away from," so the literal meaning is "to pull away from (society) and isolate oneself."

mjevans 8y ago

It's extremely difficult to find those around me with similar interests who actually have anything approaching 'spare time'. Additionally, it's very difficult to be interesting without a diverse set of different friends and experiences to be the bridge between. As a 'natural leaf node' I find that I've been the first to get culled when others contract or otherwise shift their time allocations for higher priority slots in their lives. The transaction cost of visiting friends is also affected by the size of metro areas, traffic/lack of good transit meshes, and the insane cost of housing. It often isn't worth leaving a small, opportunity isolated, corner of suburbia to meet someone else if it's going to take an hour or more one way for each trip; particularly if that's during 'rush hour' traffic hell. Today's war for attention is insanity fueled by ad revenue and I feel like everyone's a looser in this war.