Hikikimori is a Japanese phenomenon that is increasingly worrying the world. One million Japanese boys are already missing because of Hikikimori. They have locked themselves up lonely and are depressed. Due to the great social pressure from Japanese society, they no longer know what to do and sometimes decide to commit suicide together with other Hikikimori. Why are these young people doing this and is the rest of the world also at risk?
Hikikimori, what is this?
Hikikimori is a new phenomenon reminiscent of modern hermits. Hikikimori means ,solitary confinement, in Japanese and used to refer to elderly Japanese who moved to the countryside for a peaceful life. It is now known as a Japanese phenomenon in which young people, especially boys, lock themselves in their own room, often in the parental home.
These young people avoid all contact with the outside world, including their own family. They sleep during the day and at night they entertain themselves with music , comic books and especially computer games and the internet. Parents are at a loss and can do no more than leave food at the boy’s doorstep. There are already more than one million known cases of Hikikimori in Japan. They sometimes have contact with other Hikikimoris via the internet. In most cases, this remains with virtual contact via games or chat programs. When people meet each other physically, the reason for this is often dramatic: the social pressure of Japanese society is often escaped through joint suicide actions.
Causes Hikikimori
The cause of the Hikikimori phenomenon lies in the harsh Japanese society. Families often consist of only one child and a lot is expected of them. Parents do a lot to ensure that their child completes a good education and subsequently finds a good job. Parents therefore work hard to pay for expensive exam schools and elite schools.
The children live in these exam schools and are taught to write exam questions so that they can pass exams from another (elite) school. At 6 o’clock in the morning, these schools start preparing exam assignments that will later be tested at the other school. Students have to answer the questions again and again until they get a good result. This can continue well into the night. Because parents work so hard to pay for these schools, the child’s total commitment is expected in return. In addition, you can imagine that the parents and children see little of each other in this way, which can cause the children to feel unloved.
When a diploma is obtained in this way, a working life awaits, which on average consists of an 80-hour working week.
Will the Hikikimori phenomenon spread to the rest of the world?
Hikikimori is a phenomenon that has so far only been observed in Japan. This is because the pressure there is so extremely high. In the Netherlands, school days and working weeks are a lot shorter, so it is expected that the Hikikimori phenomenon will not spread to the Netherlands. This also applies to the rest of the world.
Still, some people will draw comparisons with the young people here in the Netherlands, more and more of whom sit behind their computers for hours on end to play online games. However, one should think more of a computer addiction than of Hikikimori. The difference lies in the cause of the phenomenon and the extreme limits of the phenomenon: that boys in Japan lock themselves up for months or years without seeing anyone is really unimaginable here in the Netherlands.