Why Are Japanese Men Refusing To Leave Their Rooms? 770
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.)"
Mammonis all over again. (Score:1, Insightful)
Parents coddle adult kids. The kids have never been encouraged to fend for themselves, and this is the natural result.
It's similar to why adult domestic house cats are pretty much adult kittens who would die in the wild. They've simply never been encouraged in any way to fend for themselves.
We are still just animals after all.
Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn, probably.
And why not? They're living in Schoolgirl Tentacle Porn Central.
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear ya. I had a 26 year old step-daughter who did get a the job at Starbucks...and got fired for bad attendance within the month. Back to Facebook and Angry Birds, full-time.
Funny, a week after I booted her useless ass out she had a new job at a book store, and within the month had graduated from couch surfing to her own cozy efficiency.
Parents shouldn't whine about their sweet, precious babies laying around their house. They need to put a boot in their ass.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where is the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Being an introvert is one thing. Being unwilling to do what's necessary to survive independently is another thing altogether.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Indicative of a need in young men? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This really about porn and video games... (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't be addicted to porn and video games if you don't have food and a roof over your head.
Re:Universe 25 (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had mod points you'd get them. This is the kind of interesting stuff that keep me visiting /.
Japan - where tomorrow happens today (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, I guess it's impossible for the people aforementioned to live as shut-ins because there is no financial support from their parents for this kind of lifestyle. But they simply evolved now and kept their social interactions (and interests) to the bare minimum.
I imagine that if they had rich parents who allowed them to do anything, they would live as hikikomoris, but if those japanese shut-ins were forced to go out and work, they would still simply work and socialize to feed their own isolation, in their own little way.
I actually tried understanding why they do what they do, and I was met with an interesting answer, "Why not?".
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:3, Insightful)
I had to walk away from a conversation with a twenty-seven year old a couple weeks ago, because he wouldn't shut up about how hard it was to find a job and how expensive an apartment was and this was why he was still living with his parents and primarily on their dime . . . at almost thirty. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be uncommon at all - especially in people from teens to twenties these days.
When I was a kid, in the 90s, the expectation was that you were out of the house by the age of 18. You're an adult and you're on your own. Hell, most kids couldn't wait -- and many (like myself) were out by the age of 16 or 17. If you had to get a shitty low-paying job that left you with no pocket money at the end of the month and you had to share a shitty apartment or rented house with five other guys and work long hours and have to make due with taking the bus downtown to meet your dates and go on cheap coffee dates or trips to the park for dates, you didn't mind. It was all worth it for the benefits of BEING ON YOUR OWN and MASTER OF YOUR OWN DESTINY.
From discussions I've had in recent years, it sounds like kids basically throw their hands up. Life is just too hard. They're not willing to move out of mom and dad's place (or stop letting them fund their living expenses, either) until they have gone to college, paid off college, gotten a well-paying job, saved up enough money for a down on a house, and moved into said house.
Re:It is protest. (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. I was looking through my HS yearbook from ~1998, the girls seem different from today. Girls now talk as if they were mentally retarded- "OMG," "like totally," etc. It wasn't as bad back in the 90s. Seems like the average female IQ is dropping. Just look at the average girls Facebook feed- nothing but brain dead attention whores.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Vitamin D, Omega 3s, veggies etc might help (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Mammonis all over again. (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing the 2010s to the 1990s isn't fair. The economy was booming, and we still had a middle class. We just went through the biggest recession since the great depression, and the benefits of recovery have accrued entirely to the rich. There's a reason why they call it a "jobless recovery".
Kids may or may not be softer than they were when we were their age. But it's definitely harder out there.
evolution in action (Score:2, Insightful)
Our species only needs a small number of men to survive to the next generation. As a result the females compete with each other over the few men that show the most desirable qualities. The rest of the males compete to make it into the promised land of the "desirable".
Throughout history the place of the undesirable men has been to die either competing with each other or to use their blood to grease the wheels that make society function.
And just now in modern times the undesirable men are finally figuring it out. They can't win, mostly due to losing the genetic and familial lottery, so they are quitting the game. They refuse to waste their lives "finding a place" in a society that ultimately views them as interchangeable and disposable. They are doing things that make them happy and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
Re:This really about porn and video games... (Score:3, Insightful)
Poppycock.
This is the kind of pseudo-scientific dribble that sends Chinese youth to "correctional" camps for "addiction".
Perhaps the reason a lot of Japanese men are living at home is because the economy has been flat since the 90s.
Conjecture is pointless without a basis in fact.
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This really about porn and video games... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What if, instead of it being an "addiction" involving "dopamine pathways" its something far simpler: a logic choice that society sucks ass, offers nothing to them, and isn't worth participating in. This dovetails quite nicely with another japanese problem quaintly called shoshoku danshi (herbivores): A group of men who managed to make it out of their parent's houses but choose to live in inexpensive apartments, not succeed financially, and don't bother to date. They just simply "graze."
All the same symptoms, none of the mental disorder boogeyman.
Re:LOL (Score:1, Insightful)
A teenager sexting their SO can get them twenty years in prison..
Uh huh, sure...
Re:Universe 25 (Score:5, Insightful)
Much simpler explanation: it's parents codling their sons. Says as much right in the summary: they live in their parent's house. You can't stay holed up in a single room unless you're being supported or have taken serious preparations. The parents are supporting the hermits and have been over sheltering of them to get them to that point. It's hardly a mystery. "Why are they refusing to leave their rooms?" Because they're weak and are being allowed to. Stop feeding them. They will find the strength within themselves to put on clothing and walk outside of their room.
Re:Mammonis all over again. (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, if you go to suicide discussion groups you will find that many of them are planning to kill themselves for essentially financial reasons. I would ask them, "If you didn't have to work, if you had enough money for food and shelter without working, would you still be planning suicide?" A surprisingly large numbered answered no.
If I had to work a regular shit job and interact with people socially I would almost certainly kill myself. In order to cope with constant negative reinforcement I need at least some positive reinforcement occassionally as well or living just seems like pointless suffering.
It's also important to remember that it is not always easy to find a job when you are antisocial or have social anxiety. It can be nearly impossible even when your standards are very low indeed. After you get rejected for the first 50 shit jobs (like bagging groceries, dishwashing at fast food restaurants etc) you apply for that doesn't exactly encourage you to want to go out into the world either. Again, the only reinforcement out there is negative.
Big Bang Theory on Outside vs Inside said it best! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are so few women in IT? Possibly because the field in filled with young men who view women as either 'hot' or utterly invisible.
Re: Universe 25 (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope it isn't uncommon for parents to try to drag their kids out. the kids well sometimes fight tooth and nail to stay in there. believe me, there is an INTENSE social pressure to live up to society's demands and the parents experience it as well as the kids. in fact I think it's these kids attempting to avoid this social pressure. Japanese culture is merciless to those who make mistakes or otherwise don't live up to the standards of society.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what's happening is that people find more interesting conversations on the internet than they can find among the people around them, and it makes the people around them far less interesting by comparison. I honestly don't know anybody besides my wife in meatspace that I would have a conversation with out of anything but politeness. Almost everybody simply regurgitates what they see on cable TV, or talks about their offspring.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Citation needed. No doubt that's one reason, but what about the effects of conditioning people (or leaving the legal door open for them to condition themselves, if you prefer) to respond sexually to minors? There are some very good reasons not to encourage or allow child pornography which doesn't directly involve children.
1) Seriously - Google. It's not that hard for such a simple concept (besides, I don't feel like tripping work proxy alerts, even if I do have root access to the thing).
2) Conditioning? Outside of a few overly-impressionable people, your hypothesis doesn't hold up. Consider: Paedophilia was once commonly accepted as late as the 17-18th centuries (see also at least half of the females in Casanova's autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie, if you want some indication of just how common) , and pr0n wasn't exactly commonplace back then. Nowadays, the phenomenon relatively rare by comparison, or at least has declined greatly when expressed as a percentage of the population, in spite of the explosion of child porn, delivery of same via the Internet, etc.
To semi-invoke Godwin's Law, are you saying (as equivalent) that reading Mein Kampf will make someone conditioned towards becoming a Nazi, merely because of having read the book? Doesn't really make sense.
Re:Mammonis all over again. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Universe 25 (Score:5, Insightful)
My grandfather had a family tree book for just his side of his family that was several thousand pages think. I remember flipping through it and finding all kinds of people I went to school with that were only six to seven generations removed from myself. A number of them ended up marrying and never knew the difference. At one point I moved from Nova Scotia, Canada to Laurinburg, North Carolina and there was one family living there that was related to me through my grandfathers side. It's a pretty small world.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Possibly because the field in filled with young men who view women as either 'hot' or utterly invisible.
Women also view men as either 'hot/cute' or utterly invisible. Welcome to the human race. And as someone who has lived in a number of different cultures let me assure you that this phenomenon is quite cross-cultural as well. Although I have noticed that American women are at least somewhat more obsessed with looks than in some of the other cultures where I've lived. I'd say the biggest difference is that women are more prone to lie about this. Men tend to be more open and honest about it.
Re:Straight from the books (Score:3, Insightful)
No teenager in the USA has ever been thrown is prison for 20 years for sexting. His argument might be valid, but he shouldn't be supporting it with outright lies.
Not for lack of trying, and you shouldn't be trying to downplay the threat! Anyone needing to spend themselves into poverty just to defend themselves from this malicious insanity would love to get their hands around your throat.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right there you're claiming that 50% of the human population is insane. Presumably, you don't count yourself among them.
It goes both ways. I'm sure the term "insane" here means "uncorrelated to all the psychological patterns known to me." It may be perfectly normal for that other 50%, though.
Clearly not, since you don't respect women.
What is respect, though? Isn't leaving them alone, after acknowledging that he cannot work with them, not a sign of respect? I may respect you, and you may respect me, but we may never travel together - maybe just because we are going in opposite directions; because our goals and our ideals are incompatible. But if I take a whip and start beating you, in attempt to teach you the proper behavior as I understand it, then it wouldn't be respectful at all. Leaving other people alone is the highest form of respect, since it acknowledges that they are right on their own, and they require no "help" to get better.
Re:practicalities make it impossible.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I presume you are talking about races within human species. The difference between individuals is stronger across genders than across races. A white man, an Indian man, a Black man and an Asian man have far better chances of forming a stable team than a white man and a white woman. As such, if there are psychological differences between races, they are entirely caused by nurture. The differences between a male and a female are genetic, formed over a long period of time to optimize the chances of survival of the species. (Nature avoids unnecessary complexity; the differences wouldn't be there unless they serve a purpose.)
It's certainly valid to lump an entire demographic together. However I wouldn't place that group into a "negative" category. There are very few demographics, if any at all, that can be painted with such a wide brush. (Maybe some tribe of cannibals?) I don't think the OP intended to do that either. He used the word "insane," but it has meanings outside of clinical use. More commonly it is synonymous to "incomprehensible." All I read there is that the OP acknowledged his lack of ability to understand the opposite gender, and walked away. That's hardly wrong. Some men choose to correct the problem by use of force - and some women accept that. That would be far more wrong, on both sides of it.
Re:Sounds like my kid (Score:4, Insightful)
You have a lovely list of buzzwords. It's too bad you think they mean the exact opposite of what they men.
For example, Keynesian economics would require Japan to do the opposite of what they have done since the 1990s.
Then there's the little problem of Japan has not experienced significant inflation over the last 20 years. Nor have they massively increased the money supply over the last 20 years.
But hey, some folks who are as wrong as you are will think your post sounds good.
Re:It is protest. (Score:2, Insightful)
Typical feminazi avoidance reply of calling misogynistic anything that is evident and argumented enough so that is hard to disprove otherwise.