Hikikomori: Adolescence without End

215 Pages·2013·3.08 MB·English

by  Saito Tamaki

Adolescence without End
Saito Tamaki | Translated by Jeffrey Angles
hikikomori

hikikomori
Adolescence without End
Saitō Tamaki
Translated by Jeffrey Angles
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Shakaiteki Hikikomori copyright 1998 by Saitō Tamaki. First published in
Japan in 1998 by PHP Institute, Inc. English translation rights arranged
with PHP Institute, Inc. through Japan Foreign- Rights Centre.
English translation copyright 2013 by the Regents of the University of
Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saitō Tamaki, 1961–
[Shakaiteki hikikomori. English]
Hikikomori : adolescence without end / Saitō Tamaki ; translated by
Jeffrey Angles.
First published in Japan in 1998 by PHP Institute, Inc. [as Shakaiteki
hikikomori : owaranai shishunki].
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-5458-1 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8166-5459-8 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Social isolation—Japan. 2. Social isolation. 3. Social distance—
Japan. 4. Social distance. 5. Stress in youth—Japan. 6. Stress in
youth. I. Angles, Jeffrey, 1971– II. Title.
HM1131.S2413 2013
302.5'450952—dc23
2012043837
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
contents
translator’s introduction
How to Diagnose an Invisible Epidemic | Jeffrey Angles vii
Hikikomori
Preface to the English Edition 3
Introduction 9
part i. what is happening?
1. What Is Social Withdrawal? 17
2. The Symptoms and Development of Social Withdrawal 30
3. Psychological Ailments Accompanying Withdrawal 54
4. Is Social Withdrawal a Disease? 69
5. Hikikomori Systems 77
part ii. how to deal with social withdrawal
6. Overcoming the Desire to Reason, Preach, and Argue 93
7. Important Information for the Family 103
8. The General Progress of Treatment 110
9. In Daily Life 127
10. The Sadness behind Violence in the Household 139
11. Treatment and Returning to Society 153
12. The Social Pathology of Withdrawal 171
Conclusion: Steps for the Future 177
translator’s notes 181
bibliography 185
index 189
translator’s introduction
How to Diagnose an Invisible Epidemic
Jeffrey Angles
When first published in 1998, this book struck a major nerve in Japan
and quickly became a best seller. Although the author, Saitō Tamaki,
is currently well known as a major cultural critic and one of the fore-
most Japanese experts on the psychological problems of youth, at the
time he published this book he was still relatively unknown. Saitō
had graduated from the medical school at Tsukuba University in 1990
with a grounding in Lacanian psychiatry and was working as a thera-
pist in Sōfūkai Sasaki Hospital in Funabashi, just to the east of Tokyo,
when he was struck by a recurring problem among his patients. As
he describes in this book, he found himself amazed at the numbers
of parents and relatives who came in to consult with him about chil-
dren who hid themselves away, retreated from school and work, and
refused to go outside. These adolescents and young adults had ceased
interacting in society and instead stayed nervously cooped up at home
with few connections to the outside world. These were not just people
suffering from depression, although depression might be linked to their
afflictions. Rather, they were suffering a specific, interlocking series of
symptoms that could not be easily fit under a single, easily identifiable
medical cause. The more Saitō looked into the problem, the more he
realized there were untold numbers of young adults throughout society
who were living in these sorts of conditions, and over the next several
years he dedicated himself to studying, analyzing, and understanding
the lives of these people.
As he explains in this book, he and other psychiatrists presented
| vii
viii | translator’s introduction
papers and gave lectures about withdrawal and similar, related condi-
tions, but the psychiatric institution in Japan, for the most part, failed
to treat withdrawal as a distinct issue and instead treated individual
cases on an ad hoc basis. In this book Saitō argues, based on his
own clinical experience, that the current diagnostic tools available in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth
Edition or DSM- IV (the diagnostic manual published by the American
Psychiatric Association and used throughout much of the world) do
not account especially well for the cases that he and his colleagues
found. The term social withdrawal, or shakaiteki hikikomori, as it is
translated into Japanese, does in fact come from the DSM- IV; how-
ever, it appears there as a symptom and not as a diagnostic category.
Saitō emphasizes that there are many withdrawn young people in
Japan who do not seem to be suffering from any other primary mental
disturbance. For this reason, he urged the Japanese public and psy-
chiatric world to start thinking about social withdrawal as a distinct
phenomenon. In this book he attempts to define the condition, using
precise language and case studies. By providing a name and defini-
tion for the phenomenon of withdrawal, Saitō worked to bring it to
public attention and provoked a firestorm of debate among psycholo-
gists, psychiatrists, and counselors.
Indeed, the publication of this book caused a surge of media at-
tention and launched Saitō to a position as the foremost expert in
Japan on youth culture and the problem of withdrawal, in particular.
His clear, easily understandable description, as well as his urgent in-
sistence that withdrawal is a growing problem that threatens to reach
epidemic proportions, made him a media sensation. Popular jour-
nals began requesting articles from him, and he became a frequent
speaker on television. Since then, he has availed himself of this media
attention to spread knowledge about the condition and to make the
word hikikomori (withdrawal) known throughout the nation. It was
largely due to Saitō’s success in the media that this word burst into
popular circulation and appeared on the lips of journalists, writers,
and critics throughout the nation. In short, this book and Saitō’s sub-
sequent work and media appearances brought a condition that had
been hidden in back rooms and apartments throughout Japan— a
silent epidemic of suffering— to the attention of the public.
translator’s introduction | ix
In this book Saitō does not hazard a guess at the total number of
adolescents and young people in Japan who might be living in a state
of social withdrawal, but elsewhere, in numerous articles and collec-
tions, he has speculated that the number of people living in a state
of withdrawal is probably around or even over 1 million.1 This is an
astounding number given that in 2000, the population of the entire
Japanese nation was approximately 127 million; in other words, just
shy of 1 percent of the entire nation might be living behind closed
doors. This number has proved controversial, and some have accused
Saitō of engaging in scare tactics, attempting to earn attention for his
own work on withdrawal with this dramatic and often- quoted num-
ber. In fact, Saitō himself is the first to admit the difficulty in accu-
rately gauging the number of shut- ins, or hikikomori as they quickly
came to be called in the Japanese media, and he has stated that his
numbers were initially based only on guesses and his own clinical ex-
perience.2 Still, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
conducted a survey of public health departments and psychologi-
cal well- being social centers throughout the country, attempting to
identify the number of people living in a state of withdrawal that was
not caused by a particular psychological ailment, such as schizophre-
nia. They located 6,151 people who, in the space of a year, had come
or called for consultation with problems that seemed to fit that de-
scription. Of them, 57.8 percent were above twenty- one years old,
and 23.3 percent were in a deep state of withdrawal that had lasted
for more than five years.3 This is not an overwhelming number, but
needless to say, shut- ins do not readily come to doctors to pre sent
themselves for treatment, and the parents taking care of children in
withdrawal are often too ashamed to talk about them with the outside
world. This suggests that the numbers discovered by the Japanese
government are only the tiniest tip of the iceberg— a hint at a much
larger problem kept mostly out of view.
Saitō has also quoted a study by the organization Rainbow (Niji),
run by Ogi Naoki, a frequent speaker on the Japanese educational
system and adolescent problems, such as bullying, rebelliousness, and
truancy. In 2001 Rainbow published the results of a survey of 2,934
ordinary citizens, primarily people who had come to attend Ogi’s lec-
tures. According to this survey, 94.9 percent of respondents knew the