18 Oct 2020, 2:16 am
19 Oct 2020, 10:39 am
“In Japan, people don’t want to show their problems to the outside world out of shame,” Fukaya said. “There are cases where people become hikikomori, and then their parents stay in the house with them to hide the problem and effectively become recluses themselves, too.”
Low self-esteem is at the heart of extreme reclusiveness, often triggered by redundancy or bullying at workplaces and schools, according to Fukaya. He believes it can happen to anyone, including the successful, noting there have been cases of people being headhunted, bullied at their new company and then becoming hikikomori. “I look at hikikomori as like a car without petrol; if you try to move a car in that state, it doesn’t work. The petrol is respect and love,” said Fukaya, who advises families to develop mutual understanding.
In a few cases hikikomori in Japan have been tied to acts of extreme violence and murder. So these social outcast have taken a deep shadow, and have become a sinister subpopulation in Japanese society. This is part of the desperation that drives parents to take drastic action. Several companies have sprung up called hikidashiya – literally ‘those who pull people out’. Some desperate parents are paying large sums of money to businesses to use violent means to reintegrate their reclusive children into society.
When the mother of a hikikomori social recluse in her 30's paid a Tokyo company 5.7 million yen (US$53,300), she had hoped they would reintegrate her daughter into society. Instead, workers from Elixir Arts broke down the woman’s front door, forcibly removed her from her flat, took her money and phone, and confined her to a company-run dormitory.
On June 15, another hikikomori lodged a complaint with Tokyo police over a similar case in which his parents paid 7 million yen ($65,400) to a different firm, which dragged him out of the family home, put him in a psychiatric institution for 50 days, and confined him for another 40 days in a dormitory.
Source: In Japan, extreme bids to help hikikomori are causing them further distress
The article also points out that hikikomori are being seen in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also cultures known for multigenerational homes, Confucian thinking and high levels of societal pressure.
