Journal of Youth Studies

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Unlocking Hikikomori: an interdisciplinary

approach

Naomi Berman & Flavio Rizzo

To cite this article: Naomi Berman & Flavio Rizzo (2019) Unlocking Hikikomori: an interdisciplinary
approach, Journal of Youth Studies, 22:6, 791-806, DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2018.1544416

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1544416

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JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES
2019, VOL. 22, NO. 6, 791–806
https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1544416

Unlocking Hikikomori: an interdisciplinary approach

Naomi Bermana and Flavio Rizzob
a
Centre for Global Communication Strategies, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan;
b
Roger H. Perry Endowed Chair, Core Division - Division of Communication & Creative Media, Champlain
College, Burlington, VT, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in Received 20 May 2018
which social isolation is constructed in institutional and public Accepted 30 October 2018
imaginaries. It examines the discursive devices that produce
KEYWORDS
hikikomori subjectivities, with a particular focus on the existence of Hikikomori; sociology;
an enduring deviant construct. Despite largely existing in the cultural studies; young
private sphere, hikikomori are positioned as residing outside of the people; seclusion;
prevailing system of social relationships and as such are perceived interdisciplinary studies;
as a threat to social order. Persistent psycho-medical and marginality; Japanese
idiosyncratic cultural depictions of hikikomori continue to obscure studies; media
those who are doing the defining. Such portrayals also re-assert representations
enduring normative expectations concerning the social, civil and
economic participation of young people. Through an
interdisciplinary approach that blends sociological and cultural
critique, this paper challenges the dominant discourses framing
hikikomori, at the same time underlining the ways in which these
limiting discourses act upon the self by reinforcing an
individualised subjectivity, masking the network of institutions and
cultural discourses that mediate this process. We assert that there
needs to be a broadening of the concept away from the atomised
individual to one that situates hikikomori within a social and
cultural context, having significant implications for identity and
notions of personhood in contemporary, digital Japan and beyond.

Introduction
Approaching its fourth decade, hikikomori, a term loosely used to describe social recluses
emerging from the Japanese post economic boom, continues to attract significant aca-
demic, policy and pop cultural interest, both in the Japanese and global public imaginary.
Originating in the concept taikyaku shinkeishou (Kasahara 1978), a form of social withdra-
wal brought about by neurosis, this highly contested label reached a mainstream base
after being popularised by Japanese psychiatrist Tamaki Saito (1998). Since this time the
numerous explanations, tacitly framed as causes, offered for hikikomori range from:
schooling, namely school refusal arising out of negative experiences such as bullying,
and intense social pressure towards educational achievement (Borovoy 2008; Furlong
2008; Yoneyama 2000); significant labour market disruptions (Furlong 2008); shifting
post-WWII household arrangements (Horiguchi 2011); and family influences (Kato and

CONTACT Naomi Berman bermancgcs@gmail.com; nberman@aless.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
792 N. BERMAN AND F. RIZZO

Hashimoto, et al. 2016; Umeda and Kawakami 2012). These factors are all said to interact
with an individual’s psyche compelling him or her into a state of acute social withdrawal.
Troublingly, the tendency towards implicating mothers in the search for culpability also
persists, manifesting in claims regarding attachment deficits between mother and child,
presumably when the mother enters the workforce; or, somewhat contradictorily, a
child’s inability to form sufficient resilience and social skills due to over protective or
authoritarian mothering (Borovoy 2008; Hattori 2006; Kato et al. 2012; Krieg and Dickie
2013; Mikulincer and Shaver 2013; Sakamoto et al. 2005; Teo 2010). These accounts
serve to perpetually cast hikikomori as an irretrievable social problem. It is exactly here
that we find essential to bring about an interdisciplinary understanding of the phenom-
enon, especially now that its cultural implications and iconography expand beyond
Japan. On the one hand the phenomenon occurs as a social problem, this is evident in
its connection to Japanese young people who are increasingly depicted as socially avoi-
dant or maladaptive to shifting social and economic conditions (Kato, Hashimoto, et al.
2016; Suwa and Suzuki 2013). On the other it is in the cultural implications and overlapping
of disciplines that offers new ways in which to unpack and re-contextualise the hikikomori
experience.
The multitude, contradictory and sometimes confounding accounts of hikikomori rest
on an arbitrary distinction between a medical model invoking clinical archetypes, and a
social model, drawing on tired tropes of modernity and social change. Both models
provide the platform for a rhetoric of blame and responsibility, and the inevitable
victim figure that results. This paper examines the discursive devices that produce hikiko-
mori subjectivities, with a particular focus on the existence of an enduring deviant con-
struct. It interrogates the persistence of the deviant hikikomori in both institutional and
public imaginaries as well as how these discourses perpetuate a form of moral panic.
Through an interdisciplinary lens that blends sociological and cultural critique, this
paper seeks to challenge the dominant discourses framing hikikomori, at the same time
illuminating the ways in which these limiting discourses act upon the self by reinforcing
an individualised subjectivity, ignoring the network of institutions and cultural discourses
that mediate this shaping process.

Why is a critical sociological analysis needed?

Recently, an increasing sociological critique identifying reductionist and essentialist
models of subjectivity promulgated through these dominant explanations has emerged
(Furlong 2008). A particularised notion of personhood is illustrated in the plethora of
journal publications authorising hikikomori through specialisms such as: psychiatry (clini-
cal, social and adolescent), psychiatric epidemiology, nervous and mental disease, preven-
tative medicine, clinical neuroscience, trauma practice, special education and
rehabilitation, psychology (personality, social and cultural), psychotherapy, counselling,
social work, medicine and dental research, and, curiously, internal medicine. Amongst
this inventory is a scant amount of publications on Japanese studies or Japanese soci-
ology, a handful of general sociological publications, with just one youth studies journal
that critiques both the psychological and sociological explanations for either failing to
acknowledge the influence of social determinants, or placing too much emphasis on
the structural whilst ignoring the agentic dimensions of social withdrawal (Husu and
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 793

Välimäki 2017). While such critiques of the research on hikikomori are worthwhile, this
current analysis does not seek to reconcile the dualist conflict between social or psycho-
logical accounts, or tensions between structure and agency, in explanations for hikikomori.
Rather, it seeks to provide a deeper exploration of how the phenomenon is discursively
constructed in institutional and public imaginaries. At the same time it seeks to reveal
the tensions and contradictions that frame hikikomori, including recognition of how
current conceptualisations ignore key questions relating to who has the power to
define it.
Classical and contemporary sociology has long been concerned with notions of self and
the economic, structural and institutional arrangements that shape social practices. In par-
ticular, insights into aspects of sociality and the role of social boundaries, as well as the
configuration of particular types of deviant (or ‘spoilt’) subjectivities through labels and
norms, has provided a robust analytical framework in which to view the social world
(Becker 1963; Cohen 1972; Durkheim [1893] 1997; Goffman 1963; Merton 1968). For
example, history is redolent with examples of self-solitude. In some religious traditions
this is a highly revered practice. Yet when occurring outside the legitimating cloak of reli-
gion, tensions arise. Additionally, restrictive medico-psychological portrayals of hikikomori,
accompanied by media and pop cultural representations, ensure that this form of social
alienation is refracted largely through a lens of deviance, regardless of whether is it cele-
brated or tacitly positioned as a threat. This paper argues that greater scrutiny of these
divergent perspectives is needed and that a critical sociological and cultural studies analy-
sis is well positioned to achieve this.
We begin by discussing how a set of ‘truth claims’ surrounding hikikomori is framed by
institutionally prescribed categories. Specifically, we explore how unchallenged and pro-
blematic terms such as ‘failure’ and ‘refusal’ are routinely invoked as descriptors for
national survey instruments and in medical and psychological research. This complicitness
between government, clinical and psychiatric classifications highlights the hegemony of
psycho-medical understandings of hikikomori that, in attempting to medicalise notions
of social isolation, elides the presence of powerful systemic influences. We then turn to
the messages conveyed by social and historical explanations in which young people are
pathologised for their maladaptation to shifting social and economic change. We chart
a social narrative of the causes of hikikomori such as school bullying or deficits in
young people’s resilience, and we also look at historical labour market transformations
that have led to the coopting of an originally British classification ‘Not in Employment, Edu-
cation or Training’ (NEET) by hikikomori discourse. We point out that despite a tenuous link
between NEET and hikikomori, by reducing complex social factors to a matter of individual
responsibility, hikikomori remains a highly individualised phenomenon. This individualised
model is further entrenched through social values and stereotypes that configure hikiki-
mori as a ‘rejection’ of mainstream cultural ideals. We contrast these beliefs with historical
changes in architecture and domestic arrangements in post WWII Japan that have altered
many social and cultural practices, yet these important factors remain under-explored.
This prompts a turn to the paradoxes of hikikomori in cultural narratives. As part of a
shift in disciplinary lens, we detail how normative understandings are reinforced
through pop cultural imaginaries. At this point we introduce examples from novels,
manga-animes, movies, and television to show a shift in the image of hikikomori, pointing
to evidence of resistance and counter-culture, and what we think of as representations of
794 N. BERMAN AND F. RIZZO

an alternate narrative that creates a hikikomori mythology. In doing so, we borrow Butler’s
notion of an indistinguishability between self and other. From this deepened interdisci-
plinary appreciation, we briefly discuss the implications of norm violation, and complex
relations of gender through the construction of deviant mothers and a male bias (in
both reporting and accepted views surrounding hikikomori), contributing to an invisibility
of girls and women. We conclude by briefly examining how a form of moral panic emerges
out of these persistent normative psycho-medical and idiosyncratic cultural depictions,
and media-driven putative labels that configure hikikomori as anti-social, thus ultimately,
highlighting how the framing of hikikomori reflects as much on those doing the construc-
tion as those who are being defined.

Hikikomori ‘truth claims’

The ‘truth claims’ surrounding hikikomori are characterised by diverse disciplinary, and
hence epistemological and methodological, approaches. Yet an overarching and institu-
tionally mandated typology is routinely drawn on as a source of categories for understand-
ing. Large-scale surveys conducted by Japan’s Cabinet Office (2010, 2016), authorises
much of the commentary on hikikomori, yet a closer examination of the descriptors
used in questionnaire items reveals the ways in which this phenomenon is institutionally
framed. Terminology such as ‘failure’ and ‘refusal’ commonly feature in the language of
‘triggers’ for hikikomori (Cabinet Office of Japan 2016). For instance, failing to adapt to
an office environment or workplace, or an individual’s failure to find employment are
explanations traditionally accorded to older people who become hikikomori. Younger
people might fail to adapt to school or college, which can lead to a ‘refusal’ to attend
(Cabinet Office of Japan 2016). The remainder of this section invokes some of the
survey’s specific terminology (as part of reporting conventions) to illustrate the normative
ways in which hikikomori is constructed and communicated to both mainstream and
specialist audiences.

‘Syndrome: “persistence of social withdrawal for at least 6 months”, “no signs of

schizophrenia”’
The uncontested hegemony of psychosocial and psycho-medical explanations for hikiko-
mori has proven durable over time. Historically cast as acute or severe social withdrawal,
hikikomori has also been considered symptomatic of other disorders such as schizo-
phrenia or depression. The diagnostic measurement, treatment and management of hiki-
komori draws on mainly clinical or psychiatric approaches with psychotherapy, and in
some instances psychopharmacology, employed as a key treatment modality to re-inte-
grate the individual back into society (Teo 2010). Concomitantly, research continues to
focus heavily on developmental theories or explanations concerning psychological
responses to environmental triggers. In particular, there appear to be links with autism
with approximately a quarter of known cases mapped onto the autism spectrum (Suwa
and Suzuki 2013). Additionally, a preference for linking hikikomori with Internet addiction
and gaming is also gaining currency in medical and psychiatric fields (Stip et al. 2016), with
one group of physicians speculating on the potential benefits of using the popular smart-
phone game Pokémon Go to ‘rescue’ hikikomori from their isolation (Kato, Teo et al. 2017).
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 795

More recently there has been an increase in medicalising hikikomori with a range of con-
ditions or comorbidities such as diseases linked to thiamine and Vitamin D deficiency
(Miyakoshi et al. 2017; Tanabe et al. 2018). In a particularly bold and biologically determi-
nistic gesture, one study is attempting to establish the existence of blood biomarkers for
hikikomori (Hayakawa et al. 2018).
Despite its pre-eminence in medico-psychological fields, hikikomori has yet to be
included in the highly influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association 2013). In part, this appears to be a conscious
effort to militate against the stigmatising effects of hikikomori by maintaining its distinc-
tion from other conditions and disorders. Moreover, despite more recent recognition that
hikikomori exists in other countries such as Korea, US, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Finland, India
and Oman (Gondim et al. 2017; Husu and Välimäki 2017; Kato, Kanba, and Teo 2018), the
differences in diagnoses and treatment plus insufficient data hinder any cogent compari-
sons with Japan (Suwa and Suzuki 2013).
The reluctance of formalising hikikomori through DSM categorisations sits, paradoxi-
cally, alongside attempts to separate it into primary and secondary classifications, inadver-
tently reinforcing any clinical attributes that a DSM-5 exclusion is attempting to avoid.
Primary hikikomori refers to psychological concepts that feature an absence of any
‘serious diagnosable psychopathology’, and include the rather ambiguous ‘episodes of
defeat without a struggle’, preserving an ideal self image that stems from external
wishes rather than one’s own, parental investment in this self, and avoidant behaviours
(Suwa and Suzuki 2013, 192–195). Whereas secondary hikikomori is accompanied by
more severe forms of mental disorders such as anxiety, obsessive compulsive, personality
and other developmental disorders (Suwa and Suzuki 2013, 193). This bifocal perspective
limits classifications of hikikomori as either a standard pathology or a psychopathology,
simultaneously problematising notions of detachment from the social world whilst con-
structing it as an effect of an essentialised self.
Notwithstanding efforts to draw unavailing distinctions between psychological and
non-psychological conditions, psycho-medical discourses perpetuate an enduring deficit
model of young people, at the same time disguising the role of broader social structures
and labour market policies that shape their opportunities and social outcomes (Furlong
2008). Furlong (2008) asserts that the focus on theories of psychological malaise should
be replaced with a consideration of hikikomori as an anomic response to social constraints
and lack of opportunities for young people. This is pertinent to Japan, which has endured
significant and far-reaching social, economic and historical change, permanently reshap-
ing social life and delivering new challenges for individuals navigating these unstable con-
ditions. Indeed hikikomori can be found in any country experiencing rapid post-industrial
change in social structure (Saito 1998).

‘Refusing to go to school’
Within the social model, a recognised trigger for hikikomori according to the Cabinet
survey is school non-attendance. In recent years, Japan’s education system has been
the subject of greater scrutiny and critique around its failings in protecting young
people. This is salient with regard to endemic bullying in schools, which is considered
a strong push factor for young people’s school refusal. Coupled with a rigid and
796 N. BERMAN AND F. RIZZO

standardised education system that is inadequate in accommodating students with dis-

abilities or learning difficulties, and limited available alternatives, children are increas-
ingly retreating to their rooms. This is also accompanied by unrealistic parental and
social pressure for academic success. However, Suwa and Suzuki (2013) argue that
the education system and the problems pertaining to it existed several decades
before the time that hikikomori is alleged to have emerged and therefore cannot be
attributed to causing it. Notwithstanding this disclaimer, nor the institutional and
social barriers engendered by Japan’s education system, the discourse surrounding
hikikomori in relation to schooling focuses on deficits in young people’s character or
resilience as they are portrayed as being unable to overcome difficulties or form inter-
personal relationships in school. When they grow up, this failure is transferred to the
workplace.

‘Failure to find a job’

The post-bubble ‘lost generation’ of Japanese young people left without opportunity and
hope regarding work security informs a strong social and historic basis for hikikomori nar-
ratives (Zielenziger 2006). Japan’s changing economic conditions in the 90s precipitated a
rupture in the relationship between education and employment whereby the connection
between the two became more tenuous, providing an important moment, it has been
argued, for the emergence of hikikomori (Suwa and Suzuki 2013). The UK borrowed
census category Not in Employment, Education and Training (NEET) is commonly
invoked in attempts to explain how an increasingly fractured labour market in Japan
has contributed to the rising incidence of young people retreating from work and edu-
cational fields (Uchida and Norasakkunkit 2015). Emerging in the late 1990s as a UK
policy agenda regarding young people who were at risk of social exclusion (Social Exclu-
sion Unit 1999), NEET was adopted by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
(MHLW) in 2003 to describe the steadily increasing incidence of non-employed young
people (Toivonen 2013b). The entrance of NEET (niito) into the cultural vernacular offers
a direct discursive pathway to hikikomori (Uchida and Norasakkunkit 2015). However,
the leap from NEET to hikikomori has so far been insufficiently explained. While some
argue that hikikomori is a sub-group – the disengaged NEET (Li, Lui, and Wong 2017) –
little is done to distance these two categories, and the assumed connection between hiki-
komori and NEET has become entrenched in the popular imaginary through TV, manga
and anime depictions (discussed later).
Importantly, the hikikomori-NEET correlation ignores the existence of unique Japanese
workplace policies that can exclude individuals from re-entry should they drop out of that
system temporarily. Toivonen, Norasakkunkit and Uchida identify a system of coordinated
market economies in Japan that are characterised by ‘lower labor mobility and strong pro-
tection of status-based advantages’ (2011, 3). The resulting concept of lifetime employ-
ment and an entrenched seniority system, both of which favour long-standing older
employees, creates a considerable obstacle to workforce re-entry for the average
worker as well as blocking entry from young people. This not only has economic impli-
cations, but also social ones, as a system that valorises long-term employment can relegate
those who exist outside it to an inferior status (Toivonen, Norasakkunkit and Uchida 2011).
Despite this, the anxieties surrounding hikikomori’s non-participation in the workforce,
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 797

particularly in a context where Japan is facing an economic crisis of an aging population,

conceal this powerful systemic influence.

Other social explanations and maladaptations

When it comes to social explanations for hikikomori a focus on changes to social values
and practices persists. Within this social model an assortment of curious terms underscor-
ing the particularities of Japanese culture prevails. Allison (2006) refers to the rise of
‘orphanism’ in Japan, expressed as behavioural disinterest in others who are close by,
whereby individuals are increasingly cacooning themselves; in the private domains, or
through immersion in technology when in public places. This idea has correspondences
with the somewhat confounding concept of ‘dis-engaging inter-dependence’, that
posits adherence to group norms is observed for the sole purpose of avoiding rejection
rather than achieving harmony (Hashimoto and Yamagishi 2015). When it comes to
young people specifically, Norasakkunkit and Uchida (2011, 2014) contend that a key
‘risk factor’ for hikikomori resides in the outright rejection of dominant cultural ideals
around ‘harmony-seeking’ that characterises Japanese society.
These problematic notions simultaneously rely on and perpetuate unchallenged
assumptions relating to Japanese social norms and behaviours; namely that Japan is
characterised by conformity and hikikomori is an expression of (wilful) non-conformism.
Nevertheless this enduring focus on the individual underplays the role of historical econ-
omic improvements that have altered domestic landscapes – namely the advent of larger
houses with separate rooms – affecting communal practices in Japan and reshaping forms
of sociality. The traditional public bathing custom (sentou), for example, has diminished
with the arrival of private bathrooms in homes over the years. Such examples of post-
WWII changes in domestic architecture and resulting cultural practices around use of
public and private spaces are important for understanding hikikomori, yet they are
mostly elided in discussions that focus on an atomised individual, separate from social, his-
torical and political contingencies. Moreover, the spatial exigencies of hikikomori warrant
further investigation. Theories of urbanicity postulate that the urban environment can no
longer be considered an independent spatial, geographical, political and economic entity;
rather it shapes our interior world (Fitzgerald, Rose, and Singh 2016). Nonetheless the very
notions of space, place and locality that configure hikikomori remain significantly under-
explored.
While the social and historical explanations for hikikomori attempt to avoid psycho-
pathological constructions, the discourse remains problematic as it pathologises young
people for their maladaptation to shifting social and economic change. More interpretive
qualitative research that attempts to capture the lived experience of hikikomori is still
heavily reliant on normative concepts of psychosocial deficits, expressed as fears, in
coping with every day relationships and social interactions (Yong and Kaneko 2016). In
their study on young people’s response to coping difficulties, Yong and Kaneko found hiki-
komori arises from an inability or unwillingness to cope with social conflict, whereby rather
than using ‘adaptive proactive’ or self-adjustment strategies in the face of conflict, hikiko-
mori would take the more ‘emotion-focused’ route of withdrawal. This, they added, indi-
cates not only a resignation from the harsh vicissitudes of contemporary life, but is
tantamount to ‘the actualization of alienation’ (Yong and Kaneko 2016, 11).
798 N. BERMAN AND F. RIZZO

The implied reaction to, or retreat from, complex social processes and change is remi-
niscent of early twentieth century developmental psychological notions of adolescence as
a time of ‘storm and stress’ (Hall 1904), whereby the view of youth is one of a ‘turbulent’
period of crisis or instability between childhood and adulthood (Erikson 1950), engender-
ing not only a lack of agency, but a need for the protection of individuals from society,
while at the same time society needs protection from them. Scientific evidence is routinely
invoked to suggest a link between a ‘disconnected’ youth experience and greater levels of
emotional distress, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse and violent or sexually deviant behav-
iour leading to school failure and drop out, crime and delinquency (Furstenberg and
Hughes 1995; Lerner 2005; Raffo and Reeves 2000; Uggen and Janikula 1999). The resulting
categories of youth both ‘at risk’, and a ‘risk to’ configure the individual as not yet fully
formed and vulnerable to the implied contaminative effects of society, or, conversely,
their own biological, psychological and social dispositions. Public and government atten-
tion is then directed towards reducing or preventing the problems caused by the alleged
deficits of adolescents.
When applied to hikikomori, it is argued that a process of ‘internal acting out’ that
accompanies this period of crisis occurs and that this act of self-isolation represents a
‘state of contradiction between protecting oneself and injuring oneself’ (Suwa and
Suzuki 2013, 196). Ultimately, these simplified and overdetermined understandings
ensure that hikikomori remains a highly individualised phenomenon by reducing
complex social factors to a matter of individual responsibility. As will be discussed next,
these negative stereotypes are reinforced through pop cultural depictions of hikikomori.

Cultural narratives
Any attempts to distance hikikomori from other psychiatric disorders in the academic and
institutional realm is at odds with the ways in which it is socially constructed in the media
as a largely disordered way of being. Cultural portrayals position hikikomori along a con-
tinuum of psychopathological constructions, to NEETs, to individuals who are just
awkward and lacking in confidence and social skills. These media and pop cultural depic-
tions underline a tension between privileging personal narratives, often through the
voices of hikikomori, while at the same time reasserting notions of compulsive conformity
(Todd 2011). The dominant cultural articulations of hikikomori have a tendency to invoke
an enduring Orientalist Japanese cultural trope of the seemingly interminable social press-
ures for conformity, and the assumed psychosocial maladaptive condition that this gives
rise to: that hikikomori fail at social integration. Yet such notions of social integration rely
on falsely dichotomous constructs of society as either interdependent versus independent
(Hashimoto and Yamagishi 2015). For example, Toivonen, Norasakkunkit, and Uchida
(2011, 2) adopt the term ‘retreatists’ to describe the reaction of young Japanese people
experiencing dissonance in ‘means-goals achievement’: finding themselves caught
between the two independence-orientated and interdependence-orientated cultural
imperatives, they are unable to adapt to either. According to this perspective when con-
fronting such conflict around the achievement of goals and lacking the means by which to
do so, in a Japanese cultural context young people are viewed as being more likely to
retreat, while in western culture young people are held to respond through ‘innovative
activities’ and protests (Toivonen, Norasakkunkit and Uchida 2011, 6). Such problematic
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 799

dualities are recurrent in hikikomori cultural narratives. Literature on hikikomori often

invokes notions of honne (inside) and tatemae (outside) as a key essentialised aspect of
the dichotomous Japanese self (Lebra 1976). These and other idiosyncratic notions of
Japaneseness, based on over-used individualist versus collectivist dualisms, form the
mainstay of cultural notions of hikikomori that continue to remain unchallenged.
While it has been argued that the concept of social withdrawal is oversimplified in the
media (Li and Wong 2015), a closer inspection of the nuances captured in the multitude of
media portrayals tells quite a different story. From a cultural perspective, the hikikomori
phenomenon is travelling beyond Japan through its mytho-poetic incarnations, may it
be online reverberances, manga-anime or more traditional narratives such as those
found in literature, TV and cinema (Rizzo 2016). The hikikomori phenomenon is now
finding a form of narrative legitimacy and is creating its own iconography. The novel
Welcome to NHK (acronym for nihon hikikomori kyōkai or The Japanese Hikikomori Associ-
ation) plays with the name of Japan national broadcasting giant NHK (Nihon Hoso
Kyokai) in a story of a conspiracy to create the hikikomori. Its success led to a manga
series and a 24 episode anime series. Since then, hikikomori characters multiplied in
anime and manga: Rozen Maiden, Serial Experiments Lain, Tatami Galaxy, Anohana: The
Flower We Saw That Day, to name a few. In these representations, the undercurrent
themes of high school-related conflicts lead to a withdrawal that becomes an opportunity
for exploration of other realities, from the contemplation of virtual and cyborg existences
to the appearance of ghosts as metaphors for an unresolved past. Presently there exists a
hikikomori Pokémon, dozens of blogs such as the oxymoronic hikikomori Traveler, and
several movies including: Tokyo!, Left Handed, Tokyo Plastic and the recent American hiki-
komori and Castaway on the Moon. Tokyo! in particular gives a counter narrative to the
classic cliché of the messy/dirty living environment around hikikomori, with the depiction
of a neat clean room where a man is collecting pizza boxes and turning them into Warho-
lian pieces of art. In the west within the past few years a minimum of three novels tapping
into the hikikomori narrative have been published. Kevin Kuhn’s hikikomori, Jeff Backhaus’s
hikikomori and the Rental Sister, and in Germany Milena M. Flasar wrote Ich nannte ihn Kra-
watte (I called him necktie) all represent a change in the image of hikikomori as a form of
resistance to traditional and out-dated notions of obligation, work, and masculinity in
Japan (Heinze and Thomas 2014).
Here hikikomori can be read as a form of counter-cultural tendency and a direct
response to the constraints of Japanese society by young people. Much of the mainstream
cultural discourse on hikikomori disguises an alternate narrative that is rendered through
social media, chat lines and counter-popular culture reshaping and to some extent creat-
ing a hikikomori mythology. Moving beyond the idea of a common ground of shared
knowledge this paper argues for a dynamic in which the particular and the subjective
are at the centre. This hazy knowledge that arises from self-reclusion becomes a crucial
seed for further imagining. Of particular salience is the question of what elements go
into the creation of mytho-poetic spaces and experiences and how these are interpreted
and transmitted across different cultural, linguistic, and formal boundaries. The act of
rising up against a given reality builds identity and the act of severing contact with the
outside has to be considered both as a propulsive force just as much as a refraining
impulse, this is a nodal point.
800 N. BERMAN AND F. RIZZO

The idea of deliberately retreating into one’s own centre (at least a perceived centre)
implies a conflicting relation to the concept of the other as a potential extension of
oneself. Judith Butler in her Giving an Account of Oneself (2005) asserts that ‘The decenter-
ing follows from the way in which others, from the outset, transmit certain messages to us,
instilling their thoughts in our own, producing an un-distinguishability between the other
and myself at the heart of who I am’ (124). This zone of ‘undistinguishable’ knowledge of
the other implies a crucial passage: from materialisation of ancestral fears of loss, in Japan
made tangible by the decline of the population, to a confused extension of ourselves. An
invisible presence, a pointer to a cluster of knots that ultimately are present within our-
selves whether or not we acknowledge them.

Hikikomori as norm violation

The institutional, social and cultural production of hikikomori strongly evokes the deviant
subject. This is illuminated by the countless prejudicial terms accompanying hikikomori
that include: syndrome, epidemic, acute, refusal, rejection, truancy, trauma, dysfunctional
(family dynamics), dependency, apathy, nihilism, disillusionment, unmotivated, protest,
anxiety, school refusers, non-conforming, failure, maladaptive, cultural dropout, parasitical
tendencies, indifference, misanthropic, adultolescent, avoidant, impaired (social net-
works), and, comically, individuals who do not take baths. These labels ensure that a
focus on the individual persists, rather than the discursive production of limiting
subjectivities.
Durkheim’s ([1893] 1997) concept of anomie which has previously been widely appro-
priated in the youth development literature to describe or explain the dangers of youth, is
unsurprisingly revived in discussions about hikikomori whereby the phenomenon is con-
strued as an anomic response by young people to unmet social and economic expec-
tations and failed social relationships (Furlong 2008; Yong and Kaneko 2016). The
central tenet of Durkheim’s notion is one of norm deviation and to this end hikikomori rep-
resents an estrangement from traditional and accepted norms of behaviour. In its most
extreme expression, it is collapsed with deviant or disordered behaviour in mainstream
media accounts of hikikomori-related crimes (Inkhand 2011). On the basis of a few
high-profile cases in Japan involving alleged hikikomori, an anti-social behaviour label
has increasingly been ascribed (Slater and Galbraith 2011).
A similar trend can be observed in the discourses surrounding Attention Deficit Hyper-
activity Disorder (ADHD) whereby a set of biologically determinist medico-scientific truth
claims surrounding ADHD feed populist myths that link ADHD to (juvenile) delinquency or
crime (Prosser 2015). In much the same way as ADHD whereby popular cultural imaginings
exist alongside medical knowledge in stigmatising the individual for his or her perceived
failure to live up to social behavioural expectations, the deficit models perpetuated
through a psycho-medical gaze configuring hikikomori have significant implications for
how it is apprehended in the social imaginary.

Deviant mothers
Curiously, gender remains a largely unattended dimension of the discourses constituting
hikikomori. At best, discussions of the family are invoked in psychological explanations
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 801

whereby an association between hikikomori and family environment is drawn, including a

link between higher socio-economic and educational levels of parents and incidences of
hikikomori (Umeda and Kawakami 2012). This is partly explained by the practical exigen-
cies of wealthier families having larger homes with multiple rooms, as well as a financial
ability to support an individual on a long-term basis. The argument that declining birth
rates and an increase in single-child families in Japan produces a form of co-dependency
between parents and children, with implied affects on child development, also has cur-
rency (Tajan, Hamasaki, and Pionnié-Dax 2017).
This focus on Japanese parent–child relationship is also evident in notions of ‘absent
fathers’ leading to ‘extremely prolonged and close’ bonds with mothers that, it is
alleged, leads to insufficient development of independence and social skills leaving the
individual vulnerable to self-isolating behaviours (Kato, Kanba, and Teo 2018, 106).
However, such theories have troubling consequences for the ways in which women, as
mothers, are implicated in hikikomori debates. For example, somewhat disconcertingly,
attempts to link a mother’s mental condition (e.g. panic disorder) to hikikomori in children
have been made (Umeda and Kawakami 2012).
The configuring of deviant mothers in hikikomori discourse relies on two prevailing
Japanese concepts: the ‘mother child capsule’ (boshi kapuseru), whereby cut off from
work and community interactions, a mother channels more attention onto the child
and a co-dependency between mother and child arises; and ‘mother friend’ (mama
tomo) referring to a competitive disposition in which the mother continually compares
her child to others, reinforcing the high value placed on social and academic achievement
that (again) contributes to co-dependence (Tajan, Hamasaki, and Pionnié-Dax 2017, 8).
Such pathologising constructions of poor mothering practices and their connection to
the development of hikikomori in children or later adults is problematic.
An existing male bias in the reported incidences of hikikomori (Stip et al. 2016), has led
to the invisibility of girls and women as hikikomori. The pronounced gendered divisions
between the public and private spheres in Japan might contribute to greater social accep-
tance of girls staying in the home, leading to either greater acceptance and/or under-
reporting of hikikomori. Additionally, a cultural correspondence between otaku and hiki-
komori constructions also contributes to the invisibility of girls and women. Slater and Gal-
braith (2011) argue that otaku emerged from the collapse of ideals and expectations
around middle class masculinity during the period of labour fragmentation in Japan.
However, such cultural notions of masculinity linked to workforce participation elide
women’s participation. In the national employment surveys relating to NEET, young
women (15–34) are excluded if they reportedly engage in housework (kaji) (Toivonen
2013a). Not only are such exclusionary practices problematic for women in policy decisions
regarding hikikomori, but their inconspicuousness coterminously positions men as
somehow maladaptive, vulnerable or lacking resilience to setbacks.

Moral panic
It comes as no surprise that discussions about pathologised and socially dysfunctional hiki-
komori and the implied threat of fragmentation and disintegration of social bonds, lend to
imaginaries of moral panic. The frequency of provocative hikikomori portrayals in the
media, particularly in the two national Japanese newspapers, Asahi Shinbun and Yomiuri
802 N. BERMAN AND F. RIZZO

Shinbun, has been increasing dramatically since 2000 (Ishikawa 2007). Moral panic usually
requires a shocking event to propel a social problem into this potent discursive realm. In
the case of hikikomori, there were three major incidents between 1999 and 2000, includ-
ing an incident involving the hijacking of a bus and the stabbing of a passenger by a 17
year old who had ceased attending school, that assisted in transforming social withdrawal
into hikikomori as a major media-driven public interest, and largely distorted, concern.
Consistent with Cohen’s (1972) original thesis, the morally controversial media popularisa-
tions during this time whereby the media frequently described perpetrators as hikikomori,
an ‘episode of moral panic around mentally unstable reclusive young men’ was created
(Toivonen and Imoto 2013, 74).
The social anxiety that surrounds hikikomori is strongly connected to notions of failed
economic participation on behalf of the deviant subjects. In one of the few discussions that
consider the deviant effects of discourses on hikikomori, Toivonen and Imoto (2013) recog-
nise the application of putative labels that accompany moral panics, particularly in relation
to young people and how this is situated within policy cycles. In spite of occupying a
central location within youth problem debates, moral panics nonetheless ‘ … should be
viewed as intense but brief episodes within larger policy-making cycles’ (Toivonen and
Imoto 2013, 268). The emergence of moral panic over NEET between 2004 and 2006,
for example, where it shifted from a dry policy term to a more popularised negatively
framed notion of lazy unemployed youth illustrates the complex and strategic interplay
between social labels and policy agendas, and how moral panics pave the way for
youth policies and the interests of a few being privileged (Toivonen 2013b).

Conclusion: rethinking social isolation

At the heart of this paper is an exploration of the tensions and contradictions in the realm
of the social world. This paper has attempted to challenge some of the dominant dis-
courses framing hikikomori, particularly in relation to normative expectations concerning
the social, civil and economic participation of young people. Despite largely existing in the
private sphere, hikikomori are discursively positioned as residing outside of the prevailing
system of social relationships and as such are perceived as a threat to social order, high-
lighting a subtle form of moral panic. This discussion has sought to shift the debate away
from institutionally given efforts to ‘correct’ this behaviour towards a deeper understand-
ing of the structural forces, discourses and cultural factors that constitute and perpetuate
its existence. Similarly, persistent normative psycho-medical and idiosyncratic cultural
depictions of hikikomori, including as passive victims of their own behaviour, trapped
and somehow incomplete, continues to obscure those who are doing the defining. The
question of who benefits and who is disadvantaged by the ways in which this phenom-
enon is discursively produced and institutionally managed is neglected in current debates.
We assert that there needs to be a broadening of the concept away from the atomised
individual to one that situates hikikomori within a social context, including a recognition of
alternate portrayals, paving the way for counter-discourses (Toivonen and Imoto 2013).
The current media reinventions of hikikomori are incarnating a new form of heroic percep-
tion of reality, curated by self-narratives that connect to a much larger trans-national nar-
rative. This collective narrative of a ‘heroic’ self simultaneously excluded and secluded
side-steps normative models of behaviour. In this sense hikikomori can be read as a
 JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES 803

form of passive protest, an imploded form of refusal of social norms and expectations.
While tackling issues of revolt, the philosopher Julia Kristeva underlines ‘when revolt
exists our spectacle-oriented society marginalizes it as one of its tolerated alibi’ (Kristeva
2002, n.p), and so it is that the hikikomori is instantly turned into a scarecrow, a legitimisa-
tion of normative behaviours. However, through this marginalisation, the multiplication of
media outlets delivers it back to us in diverse incarnations; the reinvention is mostly done
without intention having significant implications for identity and notions of personhood in
contemporary, digital Japan and beyond.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to offer their thanks for and deep appreciation of the generous feedback from
Lucy Glasspool and Veruska Cantelli during the development of this paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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