How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
> desperation as he quit society and normal life between the ages of 18 and 25
If your child face-plants out the gate at age 18, then it indicates gross failure of parenting and the school system.
[1] over 90% of Hikikomori are men http://ijfs.padovauniversitypress.it/system/files/papers/IJF...
[2] Findings in this study suggest that 76.4% of the cases are male and 22.9% are females. https://www.proquest.com/openview/d2fb2f85ee1b7f913be30ed142...
[3] it is estimated that there are 700,000 hikikomori (1.8% of the population between 15-39) with the male:female ratio of 7:3（66.1％：33.9％). https://ameblo.jp/lastpray/entry-10819921709.html
So much of life is centered around work for salarymen. Being out of that loop means you have limited disposable income, limited social opportunities, limited dating prospects. When you're all out of options, staying in and playing games seems pretty rational.
The default assumption seems to be that boys will always fail to live up to girls in any form of studying. Because boys are rough, like games and fight, and girls are diligent and always listen.
It’s seriously hammered into children from the moment they go to kindergarden. It’s no surprise it’s some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pour a dysfunctional school system on top, and if you fail your middle school/high school/university entrance exams, your life is ruined.
If you get bullied in school, the teachers just look at you and say ‘eh, boys will be boys’.
I can see why some just nope out.
I must admit I used to be on team nurture before I had my daughter. But seeing the way that she personified the lego figures and takes care of them (cooks them "food", drives them to school, etc) changed my mind. You can give dolls to boys too, but they're more likely to hit each other with them than nurture them. That drove home that most of this is really built into the firmware.
1) obviously, the initial, first, nurturing position will be a woman (womb + immediately after. It can't even be a transgender). And we can change a lot with medicine, but we can't change this. We're not 1-2 years, or even 10-20 years away from changing it. It'll be centuries.
2) When we try to use law to fix this, the big example are the Nordic countries. They were among the first to loosen up professions and have very flexible laws. But the proportion of women in nurturing positions actually went up instead of down. Now this may be local cultural attitudes asserting themselves of course, but if this doesn't work ... what will?
He is also the one that gravitated towards cars and trucks. So, it isn't like he is against all stereotypes.
I have been a summer camp counselor (and for 2 years a counselor year round at a non-profit, making physic and chemical experiments with kids, that's what brought me to CS) and I'd say role models are a big chunk of a kid outward character (at least before 12). Social group is another chunk, and obviously hormones is the last one dictated by first gender, but also food, and physical activity. Which to me is underrated. You aren't born as an adrenalin junkie, you become one. I've always been very meek and passive. Then I started windsurfing in hard/dangerous weather, and that totally changed my character. The 'surfer boy' cliché is real, but it's something you become, not something you are.
Interesting that he "cured" himself by having an internal debate between his hikikomori self and his ideal self. Sounds a little like cognitive behavioral therapy where you identify and challenge your negative beliefs to determine whether they're correct.
"A government survey has revealed that women make up almost half of the estimated 1.46 million people aged 15 to 64 who have withdrawn from Japanese society. It was previously believed that most of the recluses, known as hikikomori, were men." https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2391/ [April 2023]
you are inflating the numbers of women by increasing the age range of the population. you are including old ladies and comparing their issues to the issues of young men, full of life who are lost or disappointed by the state of the world.
I don't understand why they give up, it's really a sickness. something old ladies wouldn't understand because they are alone after they had families who abandoned because she had a terrible attitude
Or of society at large.
These individuals are making a decision based on the data they've been given: that the people outside their room want to hurt them, and there's little to be gained by leaving if they can avoid doing so.
When it's an individual recluse, it's on them. But when it's over a million people, they're not to blame.
In order to be successful in life, you have to be able to tolerate failure, because statistically speaking everyone fails... a lot.
Modern culture for young people isn't building sufficient resiliency.
Where true small successes require the potential of real failure.
In the 90s, I remember constantly failing in small ways: organized sports, quizzes and tests, gym class.
It wasn't pleasant, but because the opportunities were smaller, I feel I learned how to live with failure.
And critically, live with it: not ignore/reject it. "I objectively failed at this thing. That sucked. But I'm not going to let it keep me from trying the next thing" sort of stuff.
As a consequence of eliminating those chances, major opportunities are often the only opportunities, and encountering a first failure there is extremely traumatic.
I'm not saying historical methods didn't need adjustment.
But I am saying that if we're observing bad outcomes downstream, we should look upstream and see if the systems we've put in place are supporting the outcomes we want to see.
We got lost along the way.
My theory is that it just got easier to not leave your room. That wasn't possible in the sabretooth tiger days, you'd starve. Now it's easy.
sabertooth tigers can't get you ostracized from society because you tripped on the wrong person at the wrong time. It's scary in different ways.
I would rather attribute this to the rigors of society which doesn't allow for different development paths. Adulthood is a hard transition and some people need more time or different structures than others, but society doesn't allow for that. In the past these people would be vagrants until they "settled down" and could somewhat easily re-integrate back to society (employment as a stablehand could go to ferrier, horse trainer, or other land management). Now, with the need for specialization and training paired with age expectations, there's much less room.
It's only reasonable to decide your window is missed and therefore there's nothing for you.
I've known a lot of people who live with a bunch of roommates, each of them works just a little, part time fast food or grocery store job type things. Outside of the very minimal participation in society at their jobs, they mostly sit at home, drink, smoke weed, and play videogames.
Yeah, technically they aren't NEETs. Technically they don't live alone and eschew all social contact.
But it seems to me it's basically the same lifestyle. Just hampered by the need to support oneself somehow. If they received a basic income that covered a solo apartment, weed, and a game a month ( or MMO subscription ) they absolutely would not be employed or living with people.
Given the phenomenon is almost exclusively male it probably has a lot to do with the borderline hatred for masculinity in the west as well. These men lack purpose that traditional masculinity provided. Before I get downvoted to death, I am not claiming the youtube star pseudo-masculinity is a good portrayal either (rather it is a reactionary movement to the prior). But the mixture of society not caring about men's issues at all (they don't exist, allegedly), the destruction of factory/manual work, men not going to college, dating apps creating a massive imbalance in sexual selection, etc all have an effect here. The situation seems hopeless for a lot of men. Who can blame someone for not trying when society seems to have it out for them.
Society created this problem. The pendulum swinging hard from misogyny to misandry has had a dramatic negative effect on boys and men in general. We need to take the attitudes we used to raise girls up and apply them equally to boys. It starts in school. Hell, even as a successful man by society standards I still often feel society is out to get me. We have a lot of work to do and the answer is not to blame men for being lazy NEETs (which is what the pop media does).
Decently paying factory/manual work.
The hollowing out of manual work in many developed countries, replaced with bimodal service jobs (either high-income or low-income), is definitely a contributing factor.
"I can go out and find a decently paying job on the strength of my body, rather than what I've learned/trained" is no longer true in most developed economies.
Economically arguably, that's a good thing.
But it does leave a clear gap for people who don't want to / can't enter into the knowledge workforce.
Couple this with labor devaluing (salary and respect) at the hyper-efficient consumer businesses that do remain and provide the only entry-level jobs in many areas, and it's no surprise you have many people checking out.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2391/ says its almost 50/50!
The Center for Economic and Policy Research actually notes significantly more female than male NEETs, though the female NEETs were also more likely to be disabled or caretaking for dependants. [0]
I doubt this is misandry in any meaningful sense.
[0] https://cepr.net/report/are-young-men-falling-behind-young-w...
The male NEETs in CEPR data were less likely to have a traditionally "good reason" for being a NEET.
NEET men were only slightly more likely to be disabled themselves than NEET women, and given the higher total count of NEET women, I'd guess this breaks out to about an equal number of each gender being NEET for reasons of their own disability.
I agree there does seem to be a disparity in resources for NEETs, though.
[1] http://ijfs.padovauniversitypress.it/system/files/papers/IJF...
That’s misandry.
And it’s been happening for longer than I’ve been alive… as a middle aged man with a bald spot.
To say nothing of family court, criminal court, etc.
Unfortunately most of the papers I can find are locked behind paywall (ex. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.174-1617.1...)
Like the privilege of dying in wars, working in coal mines, and working the trades that kill your back by the time you're 45 (50 if you're lucky).
Amazing. Do you honestly believe you're starting a good faith discussion when opening with this?
Some men enjoyed more privilege in the past, which was absolutely more than balanced out by the vast majority of men getting the shit end of the stick. Now it's just slightly less pronounced, because the whore world is high on exploiting hydrocarbons.
> article about Japan
Greentext quoting to prove you can't read is like punching yourself in the face.
I live in the US, and everyone in my social network (age 40 to 60) was booted out of their parents house around age 18. And my piers in their 50s appear to be doing the same with their kids. Adulthood is the original "fake it till you make it" situation. Parenting is as well. Assuming there's no health issues at play, parents are doing their children a disservice by not allowing them to become adults.
Not in Employment Education or Training
It basically means "Not doing anything to better themselves"
Yes, it doesn't imply "completely withdrawn from society" the same way, but that doesn't realt change the fact that many NEETs are in fact completely withdrawn.
Why would anyone go down the path of becoming a vagrant and eventually reintegrating if the alternative is to stay at home in relative comfort, be fed 3 meals a day, and be provided with electronics for video gaming?
He lives just down the road from me, but we haven't met in person since high school. We only chat over Discord. Any attempt to meet up somewhere, even if he initially seems semi-receptive, is shot down with an excuse. He lives in his childhood bedroom in his parents' house, where he plays video games 12+ hours a day and sleeps the rest of the time. As far as I can tell, he leaves the house when his parents drag him along on trips, but otherwise has no connection to the outside world. His parents are lower-middle class, so this is a huge strain on them and I get the impression that there's some tension going on as he approaches 30.
We started off having a lot in common - I struggled to find a job out of high school, but I put effort into finding one and after several years I have a decent career path. He was shocked when I mentioned that I'd started a job, and he assumed that my parents had forced me to get one. I thought it was really interesting that his mind went there first.
When I lightly approach the topic of employment, it's 50/50 whether he offers an excuse for not having a job (usually depression and/or anxiety) or just says he thinks having a job would suck. It's like he simultaneously believes he's not capable of holding down a job, and also that he just prefers playing video games all day over working. And when I think about the types of jobs that would hire a guy in his late 20s who's never had a job before (grocery store bagger? fast food?), it's a bit understandable.
I think hikikomorism, or at least our Western version of it, comes from an inability to approach some of the leaps of early adulthood. Getting your first job, moving out, going to college, etc. all involve going out of your comfort zone and diving into something unfamiliar and scary, and it seems like these people are absolutely terrified of leaving their comfort zones.
The guy I know definitely wants out, but it just seems insurmountable to him.
Mostly just a failure to launch situation. He ran into some road blocks, moved in with a (our mutual) friend, and stumbled a few times in life. Smart guy, genuine, but after he got fired for a 2nd time he just kinda gave up.
Couldn't get him out of the house except to get smokes or taco bell. He neglected his appearance and got uncomfortable around people.
He was going to go into the Air Force but ran into issues there and eventually killed himself. Still haunts me, cuz at times he expressed an interest hanging out more and I always thought about reaching out, but didn't...
I'm a little worried that this will become more common in aging countries as they place higher demands on the working-age population. There's that saying about Japan's social issues being a look at the issues the rest of us will have in a couple decades.
As a side note, if anyone's looking for an indie psychological horror game related to the discussion of hikkikomori, Omori was pretty enjoyable.
Although I don't usually think of the U.S. as particularly generous to the elderly, social security and Medicare spend ~$2 trillion of the $6.3 trillion federal budget. I've heard complaints that it's squeezing the young too hard to pay for (increasingly longer & sicker) retirement for the old.
I don't understand the alternatives well enough to have a strong personal opinion, though.
A fuller definition would be that Social Security is predicated on a growing working age population.
Which historically, has been a valid assumption.
Increasing revenue (number games aside) would come from productivity gains or additional working population.
Decreasing benefits would come from cutting the payout or increasing qualifying age.
Honestly, taking Medicare out of the picture as a different problem that requires different solutions, Social Security should have been indexed to life expectancy from the beginning. It was never practical to build up a surplus that would be of sufficient magnitude to address demographic imbalances over decades.
Grandfather people in the program into the current rate, apply a sliding scale to people close to retirement (only fair, so their expectations don't drastically change), and make the hard decision.
I'd argue another concern could be useless/harmful interventions. Like taxpayers paying 82k a year per person for Leqembi treatments, which seems useless at best. There are also a lot of interventions that drag on terrible-quality lives in an attempt to forestall death as long as possible; I have personal experience with elderly family members who expressed a preference for death over their treatment plans (but were no longer able to choose). If I retain the ability to choose, I would go to great lengths to avoid some of modern medicine's pallative care.
I don't know. It's all hard. Obviously I want elderly people to be healthy and cared for as much as possible, but not at infinite cost (to the taxpayer or to their own quality of life).
It's complicated enough that including it in any other reform overcomplicates the effort and kills it.
That said, I do think the "death panel" branding from Republicans was extremely intellectually dishonest and in poor taste. Everyone knew exactly what was really being discussed, and to claim mock outrage in front of cameras for political points was dodging the hard question and hurting the country.
US benefits for retirees are quite generous by European standards, which is often surprising to both Americans and Europeans. Americans are consistently messaged to save for their own retirement throughout their lives, which lends to this impression.
But the main difference is, since so many people share the same experience (young adult unemployment), it's not looked down socially.
Actually, this kind of phenomenon and the environment it creates (e.g. many people hanging around in evenings, doing a botellón), contributes a lot to how Spanish people and culture is perceived - carefree, "lazy", siesta-loving, night owl.
My point is just that almost the same phenomenon can either be viewed extremely bad, or good.
Although, credit to Germans, at least they're talking about the problem like adults. Mostly. Or moreso than other countries.
That's true, but there are other systems. Japan prints more money. They are the poster child for modern monetary theory.
It's the boomer bulge creating today's issues.
There's no guarantee that it will stabilize and stay constant.
Some people are able to survive, while others get crushed and give up.
Looks like Japanese people worked significantly more hours than Americans in the 80s and 90s, the gap narrowed in the 00s, and the U.S. just (barely) passed Japan starting in 2015. I could be outdated in my understanding of Japanese work culture.
Japanese people seem to stay in the workforce a few years longer, but given the older population, I'm not sure how to weight this.
Somehow that part of the world seems to have avoided this phenomenon. Maybe because it was a big political/external change (the collapse of the soviet union), so people found it easier to cope with it.
> certain corporate environments
it happens, both in terms of company, and situation (e.g. crunch weeks), but that ain't the entire country all the time the way it is in Japan.
I recall a study about how the average workday in Japan was peaking at 13 hours, and the corporate execs were worrying that it was starting to trend down. Similar approaches like 996 are a thing in China, too.
How much of the general cost increase we see in housing, education, and other fields is due to the funding needs of pensions/401k funds and other retirement vehicles?
Govts needs to print cash to fund the basics - edu, health, housing, pensions.
Banks and Wall St should be banned from profiting from these sectors.
To force the issue everyone in the country needs to stop paying their credit card bills for about 2-3 months.
Looking at abortion statistics in the US it also gives collective trauma response vibes. For what it's worth, I'm still pro choice. But it's hard to look at the sheer magnitude of abortions and not think that maybe something is wrong with society.
Reading this article, the discussed solutions seem rather vague. I'd be interested in reading what concrete steps other HN readers think should be taken in Japan and more broadly. I'd probably recruit a bunch of reformed ex-recluses, get their feedback and suggestions and test them out in different regions, then continue iterating from there.
I don't think that the people responsible for creating existing power structures tend to have the proper context or perspective to fix the flaws, and often the ones who do have a better perspective are powerless to make changes.
As a thought excessive, I wonder how many people would end up living through a similar outcome if they were reborn in the recluse's shoes. How much autonomy do you think these people had before growing up and being psychologically crippled by societal structures and systems?
There's stereotypes within the US that women tend to be more likely to be supported while men are more likely to get abandoned. But that might just be a really low resolution model of reality which fails to capture the full nuances of the situation.
What do you think are some of the potential reasons for the sex disparity?
- Dating: Men are, generally speaking, expected to make the first move, which creates pressure to perform.
- Work: Men are expected to provide for a family, which creates pressure to perform.
- Social backup: Because of all that pressure to ge ahead social structures inside male dominated circles are more competitive (which reduces support and adds pressure). But I might be wrong about that.
- Genetics and hormones: Men are, AFAIK, seen as the sex of the extremes. There are more high performing and low performing men than women.
Biology. In evolutionary terms we're still the same creatures as our neolithic ancestors. The clear division of roles by sex, that you see in most other animal species, are also baked into our brains. To the degree we cannot fill the roles that our brains tell us we should be filling, we feel useless, unfulfilled, and unhappy.
Women feel unhappy as they live out their childbearing years without a male partner, children or without fulfilling the role of mother and nurturer.
Men feel unhappy as they live out the prime of their lives without children and a female partner and fulfilling the roles of protector and provider.
Obviously there are exceptions, and compensating mechanisms. But it's not that complicated.
in general women have less stigmas against not working (even 50 years after women entered the work force en masse and the modern western workforce is basically 50/50) and perform better in school than men. So I imagine it's a mix of less women falling through the cracks to begin with and them more support options if they do.
Other factors on the male side include being more likely to abuse alcohol/drugs and less likely to get treated for mental health issues. it's part of why homeless population are overwhelmingly male (not to mention there are some female-exclusive shelters for homeless women).
Males may have higher career ceilings, but much lower floors as well, with not as many people trying to reach out.
Are there any interventions across the world that have been successful at improving these situations?
The article doesn't go into the success rate for their discussed solutions.
I kind of think it would, provided other ultimatums such as getting a job or going to school have failed.
Assuming they aren't disabled, it forces them to decide if they would rather get a job or be homeless.
of course covering the fist months rent would be nice.
With the current state of the world, these aren't mutually exclusive. That's the sad reality as of now. Even if they stay at home, having a minimum wage dead end job doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in becoming a productive citizen outside of satisfying some statistics.
Of course you're not going to transition from living at home without a job to being a successful homeowner immediately. However, your chances are basically zero if you stay at home and do nothing.
>Of course you're not going to transition from living at home without a job to being a successful homeowner immediately.
That's another sad reality. It was true some 60 years ago. And that's the mindset the lion's share of congress has. Make minimum wage a living wage again and maybe people won't see it as hopeless to get a job.
* Start boys at school 1 year later than girls
* Universal maternity leave
There are more but I forget
See https://cepr.net/report/are-young-men-falling-behind-young-w...
Japan is its whole beast and I'm sure there's subtleties that will go over my head. But if I was to address the general aspects, it's a multi-facet issues:
- Short term solutions (< 1 year): US centric problem, but loan forgiveness would help with a lot of youth debt. It's years in the making and currently happening so I sort of count it in "short term". We could also use more supprort centers (be it homeless shelters or job placement centers), but advertising the existing ones can go a long way as well.
- Mid term (<5 years): Obvious financial ones, but raise minimum wage and and lower rent (while controlling how much renters can increase it every year). start making sure people can actually live off a job and some won't see it as hopeless. Also, make sure entry level jobs are actually "entry level": Nothing more discouraging than "all applicants welcome!" followed by "preferred: 3-5 years experience".
- Long term (10-20 years): Firstly, we could use more spaces for youth to meet without romantic context (e.g. bars). An under talked about aspect of society in the last 30 years includes the falling apart of community lounges, so it's no wonder people feel lonely. post college, you either find a party scene, find a mate, or suffer in silence. For jobs, we should bring back more of an apprenticeship culture. Not every job needs a degree, and some jobs use a degree more as a filter than an actual preparation for useful job skills. So why not put that training back into the companies?
It wouldn't surprise me if japan was similar.
This has been a recent realization, before that I truly believed what were required of a person by society, which for sure did contribute to my failings.