Million Man Munch

[Mike Oxlong]

Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?
As many as a million young people in Japan are thought to remain holed up in their homes - sometimes for decades at a time. Why?

When Saito began his research, social withdrawal was not unknown, but it was treated by doctors as a symptom of other underlying problems rather than a pattern of behaviour requiring special treatment.

Since he drew attention to the phenomenon, it is thought the numbers of hikikomori have increased. A conservative estimate of the number of people now affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one million.

The average age of hikikomori also seems to have risen over the last two decades. Before it was 21 - now it is 32.

So why do they withdraw?

Snippet courtesy of Coligny flipping Snowden the bird: BBC News

[yanpa]

So why do they withdraw?

Because they can't afford condoms?

[Taro Toporific]

BBC News

Since when did the BBC and NHK the rights to make a manga of my life?

Hikikomori-Japanese-refusin.png

[yanpa]

For Hide, the problems started when he gave up school.

Rather an appropriate name for a hikokomori...

"I was very well mentally, but my parents pushed me the way I didn't want to go," he says. "My father is an artist and he runs his own business - he wanted me to do the same." But Matsu wanted to become a computer programmer in a large firm - one of corporate Japan's army of "salarymen".

"But my father said: 'In the future there won't be a society like that.' He said: 'Don't become a salaryman.'"

Normally it's the other way round...

[Coligny]

BBC News

Since when did the BBC and NHK the rights to make a manga of my life? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23182523

You can't claim for royalties since they omitted the cats...

[Taro Toporific]

BBC News

Since when did the BBC and NHK the rights to make a manga of my life? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23182523

You can't claim for royalties since they omitted the cats...

Then this video owes me big time...

[Russell]

Aging hikikomori children's lifelong dependency on parents

In June, a 53-year-old Saitama man was arrested for allegedly dumping his mother’s corpse in a mountain ditch. The point, police say, was to conceal her death from the authorities in order to continue receiving her pension. Apparently it was a matter of survival. The man had no other source of income.

This would be merely sordid if it wasn’t, in a sense, increasingly typical. The number of adult children who remain helplessly dependent on their parents is growing alarmingly, says Shukan Post (Aug 2).

Case in point: A 69-year-old doctor has a son of 38 who graduated from university and went to work at a bank but, for reasons that are not clear, quit after two years and hasn’t worked since. He never leaves the house. The phenomenon is not unusual and goes by the name “hikikomori.” It became a social concern in the 1990s, when it primarily affected young people who, it was hoped, would grow out of it. But few did, and many sufferers now are well into middle age. What are their aging parents to do?

A survey the government’s Cabinet Office released last April quantifies the disquieting rise of the problem. In 2003, the number of single people aged 35-44 living with their parents was 1.91 million. In 2007 it was 2.62 million; in 2012, 3.05 million. Journalist Masaki Ikegami, who has researched the issue extensively, tells Shukan Post that of people aged 20 to 64 living in Tokyo’s Tamachi district, at least one in 20 is in a state of hikikomori – and 30% of them are over 40. That suggests a nationwide total of 300,000 hikikomori people over 40.

The doctor has his own clinic. At least his money won’t be running out any time soon. In fact, his major worry at this point seems to be the exorbitant inheritance tax his son will face when the family property ultimately passes to him. One possible solution, the doctor muses, is to hand over the property immediately, as a gift. That of course would mean living on as a guest in his own home – a state of affairs that wouldn’t be to everyone’s liking.

Then there’s the story of “Mr B,” 65, whose 39-year-old son (we’ll call him Mr C) is back home, with a small daughter, after a failed marriage. C’s wife was a nurse and basically supported the family, C never having done anything beyond occasional part-time work at convenience stores and the like.

Hmm, reminds me of someone...

Mr B, retired after 40 years as a company employee, is at his wits’ end. His savings, unlike the doctor’s, will not suffice to support his son through an idle lifetime. There are other difficulties too. Mr C, for example, does not cut a sufficiently presentable figure to appear at his child’s school events. “I send my wife instead,” says Mr B. It’s rather sad for the little girl. Suffice it to say, concludes Mr B. ruefully, “I am not enjoying my retirement.”

Is it entirely the children’s fault? Or society’s? True, the economy collapsed just as they were coming of age, creating one, two or three (depending on who’s counting) “lost generations” of young people who never had a chance – or who, some say, were too spoiled or spineless to rise to the challenge. But counselor Fujiya Tomita claims it’s the parents who have most to answer for. “The parents were busy at work,” he says, “and the harder they worked the more prosperous they grew. Child-raising was left to daycare centers, to schools, to juku. The parent-child bond grew weaker.” Something snapped in the kids as a result, he seems to be saying – maybe the gumption that would have seen them through the tough times ahead.

In any case, sums up Shukan Post, “What needs to change is not just the children and not just the parents, but the family as a whole.” That’s tantalizing – but what the family should change into, the magazine declines to say.