Resistance through Withdrawal, an extreme response

In a fascinating New York Times Magazine article by Maggie Jones called “Shutting Themselves In” (mid-January), Jones explores why thousands of boys and young men are “retreating” to their bedrooms and secluding themselves there for many years.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=a&query=&srchst=nyt&hdlquery=&bylquery=Maggie+Jones&daterange=period&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=02&day2=26&year2=2006&submit.x=23&submit.y=11
I have a paper copy, but here is the link. Select the first article.

The “problem is known in Japan as hikikomori, which translates as ‘withdrawal’ and refers to a person sequestered in his room for six months or longer with no social life beyond his home” (48). How many are living this way in Japan? Some claim as many as one million (1% of population), while others claim between 100,000 and 320,000. It’s overwhelmingly a male phenomenon, and hikikiomori can hide away for years and even decades. And the after they leave the world, the longer they’re gone the less likely they’ll ever reenter it.

It is only in the last decade that it has become a social phenomenon, Jones says. People can compare it to largely Western-bound anorexia in that it is considered by many to be a “culturebound syndrome that thrives in one particular country during a particular moment in its history” (48). This description of it as a culture-bound syndrome is somewhat odd to me, since it’s not a communicable disease that manifests in specific physical environments. I didn’t even realize people consider anorexia to be only a Western phenomenon. I am sure dancers, at least, around the world all regulate their eating habits and risk anorexia or bulimia. What does it mean for there to exist syndromes that are culturally locatable?

Another question is what does this mean for the level of the individual in a global world. Is this one kind of response to globalization factors? And what does it mean? “One result is a new underclass of young men who can’t or won’t join the full-time working world and who are a stark counterpoint to Japan’s long-running image as a country bursting with industrious salarymen” (48). Says the founder of one of the programs to help hikikomori and their families, “I suspect there will be a bipolarization of this society. There will be people who can be in the global world. And then there will be others, like the hikikomori. The ones who cannot be in that world” (48).

Is this the extreme case of what happens to the individual who cannot function in a global world? Is being able to live in the world as it is becoming increasingly difficult on levels beyond the physical but into the psychological?