ShortHand: Hikikomori - Japan’s Modern Day Hermits

**Hannah Maguire** (0:13)
So in June 2016, two clinical psychologists named Alan Tio and Abel Gaule published a proposal for a new disorder to the DSM-5. They talked about a 14-year-old Japanese boy who had suddenly and completely withdrawn from society. But just a year previously, he had been a totally average kid. He came from a stable home, he had nice parents, siblings that he got on with, and yet now he simply would not leave his room.
He had become a hikikomori, which literally translates to withdrawn in Japanese. The term refers to the ever-growing number of Japanese citizens who flat out refused to interact with society. A term first coined by Japanese psychologist Tamaki Seiyota in 1998
The Japanese government estimates that now, 700,000 of its citizens at least are living in this complete social isolation. Why? This is the shorthand.

**Suruthi Bala** (1:24)
Firstly, what makes someone a Hikikomori? Well, there are a lot of different definitions out there. Some as simple as a modern day hermit or indefinite adolescence. But we're going to get a little bit more specific. According to Professor Graham Yorston, there are several factors that add up to being defined as a Hikikomori.
The first is social isolation, obviously. Whether rejecting education or work, a Hikikomori is someone who doesn't engage with wider society in any way.
Secondly, there is a lack of socialization, even within the home itself. Hikikomori make a concerted effort to try and avoid any kind of social interaction, including with their own family. Thirdly, spending the majority of time within their own home. Naturally, if you're trying to avoid the entire world, the best place to do that is in your house. Fourthly, there has to be significant functional impairment. There is no such thing as a functional Hikikomori. By its very definition, a Hikikomori is someone who refuses to function as a part of society. And so, therefore, anyone who is self-sufficient can't really be one. Lastly, this all has to go on for more than six months.
Someone just having a bit of a wobble and living at their mum's for a few months does not a Hikikomori make. It really is a long-term lifestyle and one that the person has no intention of ending.

**Hannah Maguire** (2:51)
There are also some misconceptions about Hikikomori that we should debunk right off the bat. It's widely assumed here in the West. The Hikikomori are just unambitious or lazy young men who refuse to leave their bedrooms. We imagine something similar to the kind of chronically online gamer culture that you see in the US or the UK.
In reality, though, many Hikikomori do leave their bedrooms. They just do so in a way that allows them to, crucially, avoid any kind of social interaction. We saw an interview with one recovering Hikikomori, who said that he slowly became nocturnal over several months. He began waking up after his parents had gone to bed, going downstairs, watching TV, and going about his daily routine before receding back to his bedroom 10 hours later, when his parents got up for work.
And we listened to an interview with another recovering Hikikomori, who said that he, and others like him, did even go outside during their isolation. But he drew a distinct line between the limited social interaction needed to go out and buy groceries or go for a walk, to engaging in society by getting a job or going to school.

**Suruthi Bala** (4:01)
Another misconception is that Hikikomori are a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. Actually, there are modern-day hermits all over the world. However, while it isn't uniquely Japanese, Japan and specifically its culture does seem to create more Hikikomori than the average nation does. And it is hard to ignore that a key part of the culture that perpetuates Hikikomori, the Hikikomori development, is the Japanese work mentality. A study in 2017 found that in a quarter of Japanese companies, employees work more than 80 hours of overtime every single month for no extra pay at all.
And also, although Japanese workers have 20 days of annual leave, most only used half of it, with 63% saying that they felt guilty for taking paid time off.

**Hannah Maguire** (4:49)
When I was in Venice over New Year's, we did a cooking class one day, and the other people on the cooking class were four other Japanese people.
And I was talking to them, and they were like, oh, you know, two of them lived in Austria, and two of them were visiting them from Japan. And they were just like, yeah, we forced her to come, because she has so much leave. She never takes it, and we forced her to come on holiday with us to Venice. And I was like, oh, yeah, like, I've read a bit about this, because when we were writing the episode for this, I was doing some extra research into this kind of Japanese work mentality. And I was like, oh, and you guys have that thing called Premium Fridays. And they were like, how do you know about Premium Fridays? And I was like, it's my job to know strange things about unimportant things from other countries. But it's really interesting, basically, what the Japanese culture tried to do after a young woman, I can't remember, I think it was a few years ago, basically killed herself after working herself into the ground. And the company received a huge backlash for it, and the government said that it was going to make every attempt to sort of curtail this overworking culture. And so one thing they introduced was this thing called Premium Fridays, which is basically the last Friday of every month, every Japanese employee is told to go home at 3pm.