Most of us, when we find ourselves in a society where we are unfamiliar with practically no one, feel some discomfort. Someone suffers from tightness, fear, and feelings of inferiority, for some this test is accompanied by arrhythmia, digestive upset, or headache. Such conditions are caused by our personal psychological and mental problems. Many, having discovered such manifestations in themselves, turn to psychologists and psychotherapists for help, thanks to whom they learn to control negative reactions or even completely get rid of them. However, there are people who solve such problems in a completely different way: hikikomori are hermits in modern society. They break all social contacts in the real world and completely go into themselves or virtual reality.
Without working or studying anywhere, most of them are dependent on their parents. In this article we will try to figure out who the hikikomori are, what causes people to join this community, as well as the features of this subculture and its impact on the individual.
What does this word mean?
Translated from Japanese hikikomori means “tearing away”, “retreating”, “retreating”, “being imprisoned”, but in recent times it has been increasingly understood as acute social self-isolation, into which teenagers and youths all over the world voluntarily go. There are many reasons why youth breaks all kinds of personal and social contacts.
When and where did hikikomori appear?
Every developed society, no matter what part of the world it is in, requires its members to comply with certain standards and requirements. In Japan, unlike most other countries, society expects parents, and those, in turn, from children, to meet social standards. For the Japanese, this is, first of all, successful studies, a high score when passing the tests, thanks to which you can start climbing the career ladder, as well as emotional restraint, perceived by Europeans as cold. At the end of the 70s of the last century, the first hikikomori appeared in Japan.
These are young and not very people who are tired of meeting the expectations placed by them by society and family, wearing unusual masks and playing imposed roles. In order to avoid social contacts and interactions, hickeys, as they call modern hermits, retire to their room.
The cultural foundations of this phenomenon
Understanding what hikikomori is, the historical and cultural roots of this phenomenon should be noted. The country of the rising sun until the middle of the XIX century was closed from the Western world. Japanese culture is quite specific. Loneliness here is seen as a manifestation of asceticism and knowledge of oneself and the world in solitude. This is a certain stage necessary for human development. That is why many Japanese people perceive hickey as the continuation of the traditions of hermits of bygone centuries.
Unconditional love
There is such a phenomenon in Japanese culture - amae. This is the unconditional love of the mother for her son, which to some extent contributed to the appearance of hikikomori. Such qualities as constant care for her child and maternal virtue are appreciated in Japanese women above all. Japanese women are ready to accept their child and sympathize with him, regardless of how old he is: 5 or 35. It is easier for a Japanese mother to cook and put food on the threshold of a hickey's room than to take his hand and take him to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Who's getting hickey?
If a decade ago only the Japanese could tell what hikikomori is, today more and more teenagers and young people around the world limit their contacts with the real world and deliberately drop out of social life.
The reason for going to hickey, as a rule, is that a person cannot meet all the requirements that his family and school have for him. As in any other country, there are weakened and not particularly socially active children who are slow or unwilling to communicate, and simply introverts who feel lagging behind, uninteresting for peers and teachers. They would like to meet parental and pedagogical expectations, but it just doesn’t work out, and they have practically nothing else to do but become hikikomori.
Hikikomori are born or become?
Hickeys are not born, they become as a result of an unsuccessful experience in communication or personal changes due to any traumatic events and relationships. Hikikomori syndrome develops over many months, and in most cases, over the years. Negative experiences, various stresses and unresolved problems, gradually accumulating, will eventually lead to the fact that at some point a person decides to hide, to isolate himself from the traumatic reality and relationships in his house or room. No one will be able to answer how long such confinement will turn out, since it depends on the personality, individual mental characteristics of each person.
What do hickeys do?
Hiding from the real world in their room, hickeys read, play computer games, listen to music, program or simply look at the walls of their shelter. However, most spend their time watching anime or manga.
Hikikomori are often confused day and night: they sleep from morning to evening, but at night - the time of their activity. Quite often, those who consider themselves hickey spend a lot of time talking in chats of various online games, on forums, on social networks. This is due to the need for communications, as well as the ability to create in virtual reality a different, more “cool” and more successful than in real life, self-image. There are freelancers among them, using the remote work capabilities. Some hikikomori go outside, but only in the evening or at night to buy groceries or pay bills. But there are those who rarely leave their room, only occasionally sneaking into the kitchen or toilet. It should be noted that parents who consider themselves hickey feed their food, leaving food on the threshold of a room or table.
Quite often, hikikomori, realizing their own dissimilarity and the fact that they can not overcome their problems, hate themselves and their own environment. In some cases, anger and aggression are directed not only at oneself, but also at parents and others.
Hickey in other countries
The largest number of hikikomori today in Japan, some researchers call figures from 600 to 850 thousand people. This phenomenon is also common in Asian countries with a high population density, for example, in South Korea and China. Hickeys also exist in Europe, they only call them neet, which stands for “not in employment, education or training”.
Literally translated into Russian means "not in the field of employment, education or training." In the United States, people who lead a similar lifestyle are called “basement dwellers,” “basement dwellers.”
Are there any hickeys in Russia?
There are not many real hikikomori in Russia. There are several reasons why this phenomenon has not become widespread. First of all, economic: if the average Japanese family may well contain hickeys, then the economic situation of most Russians is such that no neet will last long and will either go to work or “fall off” from constant parental notations. Do not forget the peculiarities of national psychology: we often run away from a problem from home than they tend to stay alone with her in her own room. Those who consider themselves Russian Nits have created a VK group hikikomori. Here they communicate with soul mates.
Hikikomori: parasite or sufferer?
As a result of the foregoing, a quite reasonable question arises as to whether a person who has become a hickey feels good, comfortable.
In the opinion of an ordinary person, hikikomori are loafers and lazy people who have conveniently settled on the parent's neck and are making themselves “wretched”. Like among the most ordinary young people living an active and full social life, there are some among the hickeys, however there are not many of them. Most of these hermits and recluses have problems communicating and interacting with people. It is difficult and even painful for them to be in human society. Some of the hikikomori, judging by the messages they left on various Web resources, would like to change and get out of loneliness, only they lack courage, strength and self-confidence. Each hickey needs an individual approach, since among frank parasites there are people with vulnerable psyche and specific individual characteristics of communication or other features of behavior or development.
Is there a way out?
As with most life situations, with this, with rare exceptions, one can find a way out. It will be difficult and even almost impossible to help those hickeys who have a seriously impaired psyche or some kind of mental disorder is progressing. Today, Japan already has special centers created by the Hikikomori Rehabilitation Association, where people with similar problems are helped to socialize and establish a communication process.
In Russia, psychiatrists are usually involved in such problems, who, through medical treatment and other psychotherapeutic methods, try to “extract” the hickey from his “shell” and teach them how to live in society.
Hikikomori in art
The first sign that showed the hickey in the movie was the 2004 Daniel Sugawar Tamago tape. It tells the story of the Japanese boy Kiyoshi, who lived in the kitchen of his parental home for more than three years. He only spoke live with his younger sister, all other contacts took place via the Internet. Parents who could not do anything with their son were ashamed of him and told everyone they knew that Kiyoshi was studying abroad.
After this film, the Japanese managed to romanticize this phenomenon. Suffice it to recall such anime about hikikomori as Welcome to the NHK or Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. In the third part of the film "Tokyo!" - “Shaking Tokyo” - just like in Cat Girl Kiki, the main characters are Hickeys. The main characters in such computer games as Yume Nikki and Silent Hill 4 are true hikikamori in their way of life. The famous Japanese writer Ryu Murakami did not ignore this social phenomenon . In his thriller Parasites, the main character of Hickey slowly but surely approaches the verge of madness.