The Problem of Hikikomori

Nowadays, men are open to new experience and contacts, traveling all over the world and meeting new people, in the Internet, too. Nevertheless, there is a class of people whom societies of different countries suppress information about. “Hikikomori” is a Japanese term to refer people (mostly young) who have chosen to withdraw from social life, self-isolate themselves from the surrounding world due to some personal and social factors in their lives.

Hikikomori isolate themselves from the society step by step. They give up going to school, if they are graduates already – they don’t enter the university. Young people break off relations with their friends – they may chat with several persons per Internet in web-cafés, but hikikomori severs connection with the outside world fully with time. Very often hikikomori stop socializing even with their parents. They simply have no need in communication with other people, feeling comfortable and safe being all alone in their rooms, keeping themselves to themselves. Most of hikikomori are great individualists, that’s why the only possible way for them to be returned back into society is doing it little by little, carefully and non-hurtfully. Parents shouldn’t just close their eyes on this situation: they should talk with their children, be interested in them and their life, and accept their characters with all their failings. An alternative way to combat this problem is to encourage young people to socialize with others at least per Internet.

Another feature denoting hikikomori is refusing to go outside – not only on streets, but even out of the room. They build their own world in their rooms, reading books, watching films, sefing the Internet, or just lying and staring at the ceiling. Their parents bring them food and leave it on the step, or hikikomori sneak into the kitchen at night and take it. It would be a good idea if their parents ask them to go and buy newspapers or to take out the garbage. Even fifteen minutes in