A NATION OF hikikomori
The first time I heard the term hikikomori was in Wisconsin, at a conference of Colombian writer Mario Mendoza. Referred to a million young Japanese who had decided to reject his society and to live enclosed in their rooms, often even covering the windows with black curtains. A million? I thought it was an exaggeration. Then I read on the blog of Alberto Fuguet mention of Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage, 2006), a book by journalist Michael Zielenziger trying to explain the phenomenon of hikikomori . Intrigued, I read the book. Zielenziger The fascinating work has helped me better understand this complex country lllamado Japan, speculation about one of the paradoxes of contemporary society (a greater communication, greater isolation), and ask about the possibility that other developed societies lost in the path of progress and prosperity, lack of social cohesion strategies.
For Zielenziger, the hikikomori pathology is mysterious, because it is not a disorder mental or have equivalents in other cultures. It is rather a social disorder: the hikikomori are generally very intelligent men who have decided to abandon self in Japanese society, not suffer depression or their desire to turn people has something to do with agoraphobia, preferring to stay at home and devote himself to read, play games, surf the net, drinking vodka and Sochua (Japanese vodka). Neither work nor go to school or college.
Zielenziger understands the hikikomori as a product of conformity, insularity and homogeneity of Japan. In a country where there has been no political revolutions, sexual and gender of the West, where racial mixing is almost forbidden due to draconian immigration laws, which has relied heavily on the American model in the postwar years, being different is paid with rejection. Japanese teenagers who show patterns of behavior and a different sensitivity in school are, in general, verbally and physically abused by their partners (with the addition that, when that happens, parents end up justifying the abuse of those being subject their children). Faced with such abuses, many of these young people become afraid to go to school, and little by little, they're leaving. They stay in their homes, and used their parents as the only contact with the world. In the most extreme cases, stop talking with their parents and communicate with them through written messages on paper (parents, ashamed at the situation, do not go to anyone for help, and finance their children's parasitic life .)
"hikikomori The boys are the intangible value," says the mother of one of them. And there is much room for intangibles in a materialistic society such as Japan, where there is not no Western concept of self-esteem. When the economy began to fail after the prosperous decade of the eighties, social dysfunction and rigidity of the Japanese system were unable to adapt to the challenges of globalization. In the most controversial chapter of the book, Zielenziger, which also discusses other issues to understand China's social dislocation, for example, the large number of professional women who do not want to marry - uses the concept of hikikomori as a metaphor to understand the Japan of today to the "increased uncertainty and risk in the world", Japan, instead of doing like, say, South Korea - to adapt to changes and seek independent development - Alternatively, as hikikomori , "Take refuge in the protective womb of his room" (265).
Zielenziger exaggerating: not all different beings in Japan become hikikomori , some become video game designers, illustrators sleeves, anime writers. Artistic creativity that is very influential in the world. In addition, although no longer dominates as in the eighties, Japan remains an economic and cultural superpower. However, it has a million hikikomori not say anything good of the Japanese system. Perhaps the lesson that other countries can draw from the Japanese case is that the development of a country should not be solely economic or cultural, must be, well, a modernization of the prejudices and traditions, mental flexibility that will address the new challenges of the present without any social group feels excluded system.
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