Hikikomori is ... Hikikomori syndrome. How to become a hikikomori

Most of us, having found ourselves in a society where we are unfamiliar with almost anyone, experiences a certain discomfort. Someone suffers from restraint, fear and feelings of inferiority, for someone this test is accompanied by arrhythmia, a digestive disorder or a headache. Such conditions are due to our personal psychological and mental problems. Many people, having discovered such manifestations, seek help from psychologists and psychotherapists, through which they learn to control negative reactions or even completely get rid of them. However, there are people who solve similar problems quite differently: Hikikomori are hermits in modern society. They break all social contacts in the real world and completely withdraw into themselves or virtual reality. Nowhere working or studying, most of them are dependent on parents. In this article, we will try to figure out who are hikikomori, what causes people to enter this community, and also in the peculiarities of this subculture and its impact on the individual.

What does this word mean?

Translated from Japanese Hikikomori is "breaking away," "getting away," "withdrawing," "being imprisoned," but more recently, it is understood by him to be a sharp social self-isolation, into which teenagers and boys all over the world go voluntarily. The reasons for which young people are breaking all sorts of personal and social contacts, there are many.

When and where did the hikikomori appear?

Every developed society, no matter in which part of the world it is, requires its members to meet certain standards and requirements. In Japan, unlike most other countries, society expects from parents, and those in turn, from children, meet social standards. For the Japanese, this is, first of all, successful study, a high score in passing the tests, so you can start climbing the career ladder, as well as emotional restraint, perceived by Europeans as coldness. In the late 70s of the last century, the first hikikomori appeared in Japan. They are young and not very people who are tired of meeting the expectations of their society and family, wearing disguised masks and playing imposed roles. In order to avoid social contacts and interactions, the hickies, so called modern hermits, retire in their room.

The cultural basis of this phenomenon

Understanding what hikikomori is, one should note the historical and cultural roots of this phenomenon. 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 is seen here as a manifestation of asceticism and knowledge of oneself and the surrounding world in solitude. This is a certain stage necessary for human development. That is why many Japanese perceive hikki as continuers 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 emergence of hikikomori. Such qualities as constant caring for your child and maternal virtue are valued in Japanese women above all. Japanese women are ready to accept their child and sympathize with him, no matter how old he is: 5 or 35. It is easier for a Japanese mother to cook and put food on the threshold of a hikki room than take his hand and take him to a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Who becomes hickey?

If only a decade ago about what hikikomori was, only the Japanese could tell, today more and more adolescents and young people around the world limit their contacts with the real world as much as possible and deliberately drop out of social life. The reason for leaving for hikki, as a rule, is that a person can not meet all the requirements that the family and school impose on him. As in any other country, there are weakened and not particularly socially active children, slow or unwilling to communicate, and just introverts who feel lagging behind, uninteresting for their peers and teachers. They would like to meet the parental and pedagogical expectations, but that just does not work, and they do not have much else than to become a hikikomori.

Hikikomori are born or become?

Hickey is not born, they become as a result of unsuccessful experience of communication or personal changes due to any psychotraumatic events and relationships. Hikikomori syndrome develops over many months, and in most cases even years. Negative experiences, various stresses and unsolved problems, gradually accumulating, will eventually lead to the fact that at some point a person makes a decision to hide, to shield himself from the traumatic reality and relations in his home or room. How long such a confinement will be, no one will be able to answer, since it depends on the individual, the individual psychic characteristics of each person.

What do hickey do?

Hiding from the real world in their room, they read hickey, play computer games, listen to music, program or just look at the walls of their shelter. However, most spend their time watching anime or manga. Hikikomori often confuse day and night: they sleep from morning till night, but at night - the time of their activity. Quite often those who consider themselves hickey spend a lot of time chatting in various online games, forums, social networks. This is due to the need for communication, as well as the opportunity to create in the virtual reality a different, more "cool" and luckier, than in real life, image of oneself. There are among them freelancers using remote work opportunities. Some hikikomori go out into the street, but only in the evening or at night to buy food or pay bills. But there are those who rarely leave their room, only occasionally make their way to the kitchen or to the toilet. It should be noted that they feed those who consider themselves hickie, parents, leaving food on the threshold of a room or a 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 themselves, but also at parents and others.

Hickey in other countries

The largest number of hikikomori today in Japan, some researchers call numbers 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. In Europe, there are also hickey, only they are called neet, which stands for "not in employment, education or training". In a literal translation into Russian means "not in the field of employment, education or vocational training". In the US, people who lead a similar way of life are called "basement dwellers" - "the inhabitants of the cellars."

Is there hickey in Russia?

There are not a lot of real hikikomori in Russia. There are several reasons why this phenomenon has not become ubiquitous. First of all, the economic: if the average Japanese family can quite contain hickey, then the economic situation of the majority of Russians is such that no neet will last long and either go to work or "fall down" from permanent parent notations. Do not forget the peculiarities of national psychology: we often run away from the problem from home, rather than try to stay with her alone in her own room. Those who consider themselves Russian detached have created a group of hikikomori VC. Here they communicate with "kindred" souls.

Hikikomori: a parasite or a sufferer?

As a result of all of the above, it is quite reasonable to ask whether a person who has become a hickie feels comfortable. At the sight of an ordinary person, hikikomori are loafers and idlers who comfortably settle on their parents' neck and build themselves "miserable". As among the most ordinary young people who live an active and full social life, there are some among them, but there are not many of them. Most of these hermits and recluses have problems with communication and interaction with people. It is difficult and even painful for them to be in human society. Some of the hikikomori, judging by the messages they leave on various Web resources, would like to change and get out of loneliness, only they lack courage, strength and self-confidence. Every hickie needs an individual approach, since among the frank parasites there are people with a vulnerable mentality and specific individual features of communication or other characteristics of behavior or development.

Is there an exit?

As with most life situations, these, with rare exceptions, you can find a way out. It is difficult and even impossible to help those hickey who have a seriously disturbed psyche or progresses any mental disorder. Today, special centers created by the Hikikomori Rehabilitation Association are already functioning in Japan, where people with similar problems are helped to socialize and establish a communication process.

In Russia, such problems are usually dealt with by psychiatrists who, through medication 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 hickey in the movies was the tape of Daniel Sugawara in 2004 "Tamago". It tells the story of the Japanese boy Kiyoshi, who lived more than three years in the kitchen of the parents' house. Live he communicated only with his younger sister, all other contacts occurred via the Internet. Parents who could not do anything with his son, he was ashamed and all friends were told that Kiyoshi is studying abroad.

After this film, the Japanese managed to romanticize this phenomenon. Suffice it to recall such an anime about hikikomori as Welcome to the NHK or Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. In the third part of the movie "Tokyo!" - "Shaking Tokyo" - the same as in the tape Cat Girl Kiki, the main characters are hickey. The main acting characters of such computer games as Yume Nikki and Silent Hill 4, in their way of life - true hikikamori. This social phenomenon was also not ignored by the famous Japanese writer Ryu Murakami. In his thriller "Parasites" the protagonist of hikki slowly but surely comes to the brink of insanity.