Slashdot Mirror
Why Are Japanese Men Refusing To Leave Their Rooms?
fantomas writes "The BBC reports on the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori: young people, mainly men, who are holed up in rooms in their parents' houses, refusing to go out and engage with society. '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.' Why is this happening? And is it a global phenomenon or something purely due to Japanese culture? (We're all familiar with the standing slashdot joke of the geek in their mom's basement, for example.)"
Maybe they are the human versions of the "beautiful ones" from John Calhoun's mice experiments with overpopulation?
It's the best fictional account of the issue I've seen.
Duh.
The Internet can provide you with almost everything you need to survive. When people become disillusioned with life they get consumed by the Internet and find it more home than reality ever was.
How do I know this? I am one of those people.
it's a cultural thing involving japanese and their parents.
I couldn't have holed up in my room if I wanted to, I would have been kicked out sooner or later, probably sooner - and after that if I wanted to hole up I would at least need a job to support that.
practically they depend on the parents to arrange them food, but I wonder what % of these are actually able to pull in income? how active they are socially on the net?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Hikikomori huh? Average age of 32?! Oh God... And I thought it was bad with my 20 year old sitting on his butt surfing the web and playing video games. His greatest professional accomplishments are getting his GED and getting an interview at Starbucks (he didn't get the job). That's it.
Porn, probably.
And why not? They're living in Schoolgirl Tentacle Porn Central.
Why is everyone expecting that everyone wants to socialise???
Seriously. There are so many assholes out there in the meat space, sometimes even more than on Reddit or YouTube comments. So many stupid, brain dead people. So many judging people judging others for superficial stuff.
I'm asexual, rarely meet people who interest me and share my hobbies and my interests.
Movies are all shit nowadays. So why should I socialise more than the minimum (food shopping, deliveries/postal service) ???
So in 20 years, the average age went up by 11 years. That probably simply means that living in your mom's basement is not immediately dangerous to your health.
I got mugged by a New York housecat once.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
So what you're saying is that once they go Caucasian, they never go Asian?
Porn, probably.
And why not? They're living in Schoolgirl Tentacle Porn Central.
Anime fans probably. Being an anime fan carries a high social stigma in Japan. And of course being into anime means liking lolicon, shotacon and all those sexually perverse child porn manga and anime. Japan being the last civilised country where possession of child porn is legal. Go figure. These people are creepy as hell, so no wonder a subclass of those anime fans are even more creepy.
When you account that Japan has a very conservative and group think type kind of society, being individualistic, strange is 1000 times worse than in western societies. So its no wonder this hikikimori phenomenon is so prevalent down there.
I don't know about Japan, but it used to be usual in Thailand for young men to be ordained as Buddhist monks, and live a life apart from the mainstream for at least a few months, or a year or two. With the rise of consumerism in Thailand this practice is starting to die away.
In other cultures young men go off for a time to live a cloistered or semi-cloistered life. Even a two or three year stint in the military might qualify. It's not completely cut off from society, but you do live a more spartan existence, in a somewhat separate world with its own rules and protocols, and with lots of time to reflect on what you really want to do with your life.
It could be that hikikomori in Japan is evidence of a need in young men to go off and "find themselves", or whatever. As our increasingly secular, consumerist culture removes other cloistered avenues previously found in religion, military, or school, there may be no option left but to hole up in one's room.
I have nothing to support any of the above, it's just a hunch.
Proverbs 21:19
"It's similar to why adult domestic house cats are pretty much adult kittens who would die in the wild."
Nonsense. I've seen far too many of them go feral and survive long enough to have offspring afterwards (in the case they weren't neutered before going feral). And it's not just because someone is feeding them.
Some of them have trouble as they weren't taught effective hunting by their mothers, but lots of them can and do fend for themselves just fine. Yes, they get picked off by coyotes (or coy-dogs) and such, but so do a lot of wild small predators.
Basement-dwellers? Survive outside mommy's care? I call bullshit.
FWIW, you had me until you said "survive long enough to have offspring afterwards".
...as well. From descriptions of a college roommate well before the upswing in this phenomenon, real estate is extraordinarily expensive in Japan, to the degree that mortgage loans are often multi-generational. Combine this with Japan's long-stagnant economy, and it isn't too surprising the actual living in the homes is becoming increasingly multi-generational as well. Particularly if the internet provides an enticing alternative to moving out.
I've heard time and time again, that Canadian (and American) men are highly desired by women in Japan. I've also heard time and time again, that the reason is because too many Japanese men are downright useless and misogynistic assholes. Are you a genuinely nice North American dude with a real job? If so, it really is remarkably easy to meet wonderful women in Japan.
You've heard. The reality is quite different however. There are about 50,000 Americans living in Japan. There are about 40,000 US military personnel in Japan at any given time. Being a military wife might be attractive to some, but for most families in Japan it would be an embarrassment. Because of the high number of US military compared to general Americans living in Japan, if you see a white guy wandering around who isn't wearing a suit, it isn't a bad guess to think he is in the military, and therefore undesirable. The stereotype bleeds over a bit into any american, even if they have nothing to do with the military.
American men are different than Japanese men, but it would be a huge mistake to think or imply that one is more desirable in Japan than the other. And reporting that American men can find a lady in Japan with little or no effort is completely wrong.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
This is really about porn and video games... these two things can by themselves provide the brain with enough entertainment, reward, and pleasure to make the real world unnecessary.
First, there is a trauma: he fails to live up to parents expectations regarding education or career, has a heartbreak, loses his job, or whatever. Then he consoles himself with porn and video games. They feel good and he doesn't have to worry about his problems for a little while. If this goes on for long enough and he doesn't receive the right kind of social support, he may become addicted to both and lose the drive to do anything else.
What really happens is he becomes trapped by the dopamine pathways (reward system) in his brain. He is incapacitated by fear and social anxiety when dealing with others because his brain's reward system has been overpowered by the artificial stimulation of porn and video games. The dopamine normally produced by his brain during social interactions doesn't have nature's intended positive reinforcement effects for him because his dopamine tolerance is so high thanks to his addictions.
He becomes further and further withdrawn and does the only thing he knows how to do to feel "normal:" feed his addiction.
This has become a serious issue for young men in other parts of the world as well. It is ultimately made possible by technology, in particular the Internet.
I've traveled some in various parts of Asia and Europe. I'm American, so keep that in mind. I've learned the following a long time ago.
1) A lot of things get invented first or just happen first in Asia, particularly Japan. So it's a great window into what to expect tomorrow in the West before it actually gets there.
2) South Korea and Japan seem to have bee hotspots for years of bizarre, anti-social behavior. When they're not committing suicide.
3) I have the impression as an observer (so I have no facts and could be wrong about this) that citizens in Asia in general get less mental help to deal with problems. Possibly there's a cultural reason for this.
4) The internet and various game systems have made it possible for young people to interact from a distance without ever having to leave their rooms.
5) This is going to be a problem in the USA too soon enough. It's just not happening in great enough numbers yet.
This is developmentally very common in teenage boys. Although the privileges of adulthood beckon, so do the risks and expectations and responsibilities. With their hormones at war, and facing complex social pressures even within their peer group, boys can feel overwhelmed. It's easier just to hide away until the storm passes.
I wonder whether the "walkabout" rituals in aboriginal cultures aren't specifically intended to address this phenomenon. According to Joseph Campbell, the ritual often involves a scene in which the men of the community theatrically come to capture the boy and drag him away. He instinctively hides or runs to his mother for protection, but theatrically she is unable to protect him. So off he goes to make the terrifying and irreversible transition to adulthood.
What happens in modern urban cultures where we don't have any such ritual, indeed where the transition to adulthood is deferred until graduation from university or is completely indefinite? The status quo psychological attachment to childhood is sustained for much longer. Perhaps with long familiarity it becomes more difficult to break. But I think that the complex social norms and risk/reward pressures of modern life - acutely evident in Japan - are the biggest factor. No child in his right mind would want to sign on to them.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Might also be due to the One Percent moving all the jobs and hope to China, India and South Korea. Lots of U.S. "twenties" are also doing this as well. Those who control the monitarty policies and jobs know very well what they are doing. I am lucky to be in the upper four percent but an increase in H1-B visas could take that all away. We will just pretend that all these things aren't linked together. oh, and it's the porn, speaking of which, I need to go now.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
Actually it's much closer to the collapse of the Japanese family, more than anything. It's not the coddling, it's the disdain for people, society, and not wanting to go into the massive "grind your face into the dirt" mentality that exists in Japan.
But we're seeing the entire thing play out here with the current generation of kids too. It's just not getting pulled up in the media.
Om, nomnomnom...
Japan being the last civilised country where possession of child porn is legal.
Maybe they're just not foolish enough to have fallen for the group think we have, which is what you accuse them of. Here, an X rated comic strip is considered child porn. A teenager sexting their SO can get them twenty years in prison and permanent listing on the perv roll.
Every society makes choices on what is the acceptable ways to express individuality. Japan, historically, has been fairly excessive that way in comparison to the rest of the world, but that's the way Japanese (historically) roll; to excess. Go was invented in China. Japan raised it to an art including endowing universities to teach it. The Samurai raised warfare to an art. They even raised serving tea to an art.
After all this time since they opened up to the west, many of us can't even begin to understand them. That's pretty amazing in itself.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Vitamin D deficiency related to depression can be a downward spiral if people then spend more and more time indoors, like in Japan. See my many posts on halth issues and autism including about Mark Hyman and mitochondrial dysfunction and John Cannell. Also look into unschooling for interest-lead learning.
Search also on "The Pleasure Trap" and "Supernormal Stimuli" and "The Acceleration of Addiction" for the pitfalls of 21st century living.
And, from a positive psychology point of view, try to help him build on his strengths, whatever those are.
Politically, lobby for a "basic income" for all. The fact is, most of us will soon be "unemployable" relative to AI, robotics, and other automation (see Marshall Brain), breaking the income-through jobs link that previously undergird the right to consume.
Sounds like a tough situation though. Good luck. Your son is lucky to have a caring involved father like you!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Based on what I saw during my 10+ years living there, I'd say it's the realities of modern life clashing with the traditional culture. Japan is a collectivist society; before the Internet came along, if you were deviant/antisocial/etc. (for lack of better terms) you had to suppress that side of you and fit in. However, the Internet opened up a virtual environment where individualism could flourish more; people found an outlet, and even support, for their antisocial tendencies, and little by little it became a lot more comfortable to "live online" than actually having to put up with the social pressures of real life. (Westerners have a tough time understanding the amount of social pressure; even I am still sometimes surprised by the hoops my Japanese wife's family members jump through in order to "keep up appearances".)
Add to this the traditional tendency for extended families to live together into adulthood and you have the perfect recipe for hikikomori: a virtual social life where you are free from judgment and pressure to fit in, and no need to work to fulfill your basic needs of food and shelter. Not the life that I want, but I understand it, anyway.
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
No, the problem is parents do not ALLOW their children to fend for themselves. "For oneself" implies a definition of self that has not been set up for inevitable failure.
Student show an iota of initiative and wants to program computers? Father lectures the child that is a way to be a failure. Now the child feels like a loser no matter what he does -- program computers and he is shamed before his family, do what his father wants instead and he is shamed before himself.
Withdrawal is a rational short-term reaction, when one is set up failure by one's family and society. Unfortunately, withdrawal for more than a modest period of time becomes its own self-reinforcing barrier to success.
It may look like coddling from a superficial point of view. From within the closed walls of the family, it is incessant brutal emotional abuse. The hints are there in TFA. The children are physically abusive? That kind of behavior is taught by the parents. There is a partial confession at the end of the article:
"I think my son is losing the power or desire to do what he wants to do," she says. "Maybe he used to have something he wanted to do but I think I ruined it."
Time to get me a Tommy Gun, change my name to Gatsby, and fill a warehouse up with a stack of USB drives with porn.
Soon, Daisy will love me for who I am!
Of course, they like the Cauc!
or very personable and good looking (which, since that's mostly genetics & upbringing is a kind of luck). Starbucks and bookstores are (relatively) cozy jobs. They also pay very marginally above minimum wage. Let's say she wound up at Walmart working 25 to 30 hours a week with the constant threat of firing if she didn't both stock the shelves _and_ run a cash register. Or how about an Amazon warehouse (Google it, awful, awful places to work). I don't think she'd be so cozy....
This is the worst economy in 50 years. Outsourcing and H1-Bs have depressed wages heavily. Whether you recognize it or not your daughter has far fewer opportunities than you did. Google "wealth inequity" for a start on that topic and add 'wage surpression' and 'Union Busting' (with a side of Walmart or McDonald's) too.
The hard part here is that you obviously care for your daughter, and so you want to have strong pride in her. You don't want to imagine that she can't overcome the challenges she faces. So you'll tell yourself it's enough to just boot her out and leave it at that, taking a sink or swim approach that ignore the polluted, radioactive water she's swimming in...
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The karoshi stereotype exists in Japan for a reason. The whole culture seems to be built around working yourself to death. A friend of mine visited there and described life as non-stop work. Guys basically work all day, then face social pressure to go out with the boss at night. Basically, they are "on" all the time. So of course there is a large segment of the population that sees that life and goes "screw that!" and decide not to play the game.
This, right here.
I understand and feel the revulsion that a healthy adult has towards child porn, but from an objective/legal point-of-view, the West got stupid about how they enforce such laws. Here's why: The basis of laws surrounding it is that the production of child porn harms a child - something that makes perfect sense, and should have laws in place to prevent/limit as much as logically possible. OTOH, who exactly is harmed in a comic strip? One would think that it would present a means of release for those pervs who do get into such crap, and to let them do so without harming anyone in the process. A teenaged kid sexting his/her SO should get a stern talking-to by the parents, and definitely should be enlightened on why that is a monumentally stupid idea - but no, the kid should not get tossed in the slammer and stigmatized for life.
Possession/distribution of actual photography or video depicting actual kids being sexually abused *is* illegal in Japan - because sexual abuse is just as much a crime there as it is in any other civilized country. Hell, if I remember right, distributing photographic/video porn depicting genitalia of *adults* is a crime in Japan (albeit a misdemeanor w/ a heavy fine...) OTOH, the comic/drawn ones can show whatever detail the artist feels like including.
You (tqk) are definitely correct in that Japan is an enigma unto itself, culturally. Millennia of isolation will morph any culture into something that will likely never be understood from any POV outside of it. That said, Japan got hella creative in what their multi-faceted culture is and represents - to themselves. Anyone else could blow off an entire a lifetime trying to understand it.
As for TFA? I can see why it would make sense for some Japanese men to simply withdraw from society... Japan isn't exactly an easy-going culture to live in, competition for anything (females, jobs, status, whatever) is incredibly intense, and there are few other routes available to the typical Japanese man that doesn't involve a shitload of money (e.g. move self and family to another country whose culture you may get on better in.) These men still have a non-negotiable duty to care for their parents, and real estate/rent is frickin' astronomical anyway. They spent nearly every waking hour of their childhood with little outside of intense study and discipline, so it's not like they learned to be social mavens in the first place - they likely only found peace when they were alone.
Hell - even if they do find a job and a wife, they may not leave home anyway. The answer why is pretty simple; If their parents own and don't rent, they stand a better chance of inheriting their parents' home than they do of ever being able to afford one of their own - which is pretty traditional in its own right. In most cases, it's not like they have as much potential competition from siblings, what with smaller family sizes over the decades.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
That's some fine knee-jerk thinking there. Preconceived-notion: parents should be hash with their kids. Random fact: some kids somewhere are having a poor outcome. Conclusion: the only possible explanation is that their parents haven't been harsh enough with them. Never mind that Japanese society is a harsh environment with strict social rules about everything that the kids would have been exposed to from a young age. Never mind that the psychologists don't actually know what the problem is. Truthiness forever!
Fascinating analogy to research I was not previously familiar with. Would read comments by this AC in the future.
I suspect you're wrong. The average intelligence hasn't really changed much at all.
What has changed is what you're prepared to accept.
When you were 16, the fact that she was pretty and appeared to like you was more than sufficient to keep your interest in her (at least for a while)
Now you're finding that looks aren't nearly enough to keep your interest beyond the first time she opens her mouth.
Give it another ten years and you'll come to realize that looks really don't matter that much at all. You can admire the hot sexy ones from a distance while listening to the intelligent interesting ones. In time you might discover that she's pretty hot and sexy as well as interesting and intelligent - especially if she starts showing more than a social interest in you - and even if you don't you'll have found a new friend.
On the whole I find women more interesting, easier to talk to, and more intelligent than men.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Rajesh Koothrappali: Come on, Sheldon. The world is filled with people doing things outside; let's go outside. Outside is good.
Sheldon Cooper: If outside is so good, why has mankind spent thousands of years trying to perfect inside?
Rajesh Koothrappali: I don't know. It's a marketing scheme.
I'll just leave this here:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/man_of_kneel_PHEDS6aPAczquQE4AgwTiP
"Sick of being treated like the enemy, guys are dropping out of society"
As an American shut-in, when I first discovered the term "hikikomori", I was extremely disturbed but also felt an intense sense of vindication. It isn't just me: many other people feel it too. That sense of realizing how unfair and how grindingly hopeless and purposeless participation in the current socio-economic scam really is.
I don't want to spend my whole life working some shitty job to barely pay rent all while knowing perfectly well that there is absolutely no reason I must do so but that the powerful members of society (a class of individual which is powerful through no other reason than that there has always been such a class) have arranged for this situation. There is more than enough "wealth", there is more than enough resources (food, water, energy) and space (stand on Zanzibar indeed) and labor (technology is a wonderful thing, and 3D printing and robots are perfectly capable of serving my minimal needs and wants if only they would / could be designed so instead of for fabricating ever more useless crap to be sold by the rich and powerful...) to provide everything I've ever wanted and yet I still have to spend almost all of my time either working a dead-end meaningless job for cash for rent and food (did you know that Americans throw away enough food to end world hunger?) or asleep to recover and do it again tomorrow.
The only way to win such a "game" is to not play it.
Escape into fantasy, into an inner universe that isn't so wretchedly repulsive, soul-crushingly grinding, spitefully vicious -- is the only way to stay alive. What if we treated all illnesses the way we treat mental distress? What if we punished the wicked wealthy for hoarding and perpetuating the horror in which we now find ourselves? What if we did magically solve the waste of energy which is leading us into crisis?
The problem isn't resources, it's the evil of those who have the resources. This isn't an immutable property of human nature -- and yet nothing is being done to solve this problem.
So I refuse to participate in a situation that is not only apathetic toward my well-being, but actively, maliciously, greedily abusive of me.
The state of the world is so because of mere history, nothing is being done about it by those who have the power to do so because it is not in their short-term interest.
Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, godlike technology.
Sex once a year? We have a name for that in the US too, it's called "marriage".
I am somewhat in the same boat and I feel a lot like you do. I work, but only doing online gigs and only just enough to pay rent on my tiny, one room studio apartment and to buy food. Basically I do as little as possible to maximize my own free time. I feel absolutely no desire to become rich or famous, I just want to be left alone to enjoy life in my own way. Usually that entails a lot of reading, a lot of movies and a lot of video games. I do go out for an hour long walk every day, but only very early in the morning at a time when the fewest possible people are out and about.
The odd thing is, I wasn't always this way. I used to have a good paying, "gold collar" job, a fairly large house, a decent car, friends and I dated a lot, but that was over ten years ago. At some point, without even realising it, I just gave up. It wasn't worth all of the hassle and I found myself slowly adapting to a new way of life. I am not at all shy, as defined by "hikikomori" and I am still quite forward (some would say blunt) when I speak to people; perhaps a holdover from my "former life".
Some try to criticize my way of life, as if I'm not "normal" or as if I should have something to be ashamed about, but I really don't care about those people. Admittedly, I used to carry a certain amount of shame, but that disappeared long ago. Now, I focus on my own peace of mind and that suits me just fine.