I was recently pointed to the Wikipedia article on this fascinating Japanese phenomenon. Hikikomori is a Japanese term referring to acute social withdrawal by adolescents or young adults.
…Sometimes referred to as a kind of social problem in Japanese discourse, the hikikomori phenomenon has a number of possible contributing factors — young adults may feel overwhelmed by modern Japanese society, or be unable to fulfill their expected social roles as they have not yet formulated a sense of personal tatemae and honne needed to cope with the daily paradoxes of adulthood. The dominant nexus of the hikikomori issue centers around the transformation from young life to the responsibilities and expectations of adult life — indications are that advanced capitalist societies such as modern Japan are unable to provide sufficient meaningful transformation rituals for promoting certain susceptible types of youth into mature roles within society.”
Middle class affluence allows many families to support their isolative child indefinitely. There may be a contribution from the particularly Japanese codependent collusion (amae) between mother and son, making an effective response to the isolationism more difficult. And the decreasing job security in the Japanese corporate environment, combined with extreme performance pressure, may contribute to making social withdrawal rampant.
There appears to be considerable debate about whether hikikomori should be considered a sociological or psychological phenomenon. A variety of psychological diagnoses could contribute to its phenomenology, including anxiety disorders including agoraphobia and social phobia (social anxiety disorder); avoidant personality disorder; and depression. I think the social vs. psychological debate is a specious one, as there is likely a coalescence of internal and social factors at play here. There are a number of so-called “culture-bound syndromes” in which a behavioral symptom pattern appears to be particularly prevalent, and unique, in a given culture. These include amok, latah, wendigo, etc. I usually see them as variants of common psychiatric disturbances brought to the fore by the particular social stresses of a given culture.
