The Life of a Female Hikikomori: The Truth The Media Will Never Share
In Japan, the government estimates that nearly one point five million people are on the verge of becoming a hikikomori. That one million are already at that stage, if not more. The term hikikomori is a word defined to be a person who declines to full social reclusion and often stays hidden in their rooms and homes for over six months, if not even years, to avoid all contact with society and have no other mental disorders such as Agoraphobia.
The word was popularised by psychiatrist Tamaki Saito from his popular book Hikikomori: Adolescence without End. Since the mid to late eighties, when this issue began to grow traction and become familiar to that of the public, now in the twenty-first century this issue has not just grown but is becoming a mainstream problem so big not just Japan is dealing with such an issue and now also growing numbers of technologically advanced countries are soon following in suit, ever since knowledge of this societal phenomenon grew into the western realm.
Modern life is now creating a universally shared problem. Technology having a pivotal role in elevating issues to the forefront. However, when it comes to attending to them, not much is changing or being done to address these issues arising from the usage of the internet and technology itself.
They are being used as tools to avoid reality. A reality that if not dealt with is only going to grow to an even bigger problem we will face in the future. Japan itself has now named the 2030 problem, due to an aging population and the first batch of elder people suffering from this disorder facing hikikomori life at a higher age and who will face a lack of family support due to that, making it even harder for not just their recovery but the future of the younger generations outlook too. The hikikomori disorder is one of the fastest-growing issues to not only hit Japan but now beginning to be noticed in the rest of the world and yet the problem is still not being dealt with and only given more labels.
Destruction can come in two forms: physical and mental. Physical destruction is something we can see. A scar, an impairment, an injury. Most times that being something we can empathise with because our eyes generally psychically can see something and we believe more into that view. Because we as humans often have to see, to believe. However, when it comes to mental destruction, it’s often silent, hidden, untreated and because it can be unseen, mental destruction is so much harder to empathise with. However, with a growing proportion of the western modern world opening up to mental health issues, this hidden pain that many for years have either been too afraid to share or people just cannot understand because they cannot psychically see the hurt, is beginning to be understood. We are now opening up to mental health issues unlike we have as a society ever before.
Though there is still an ignoring of many of these modern issues we face and if they are not opened up about, this 2030 problem is very much going to not just be a Japanese born issue but a modern warfare of losing our youth to that of extreme reclusion because we did not learn from the first batch of people suffering and will soon lose modern youth who are facing a technological advancement so extreme and fast-paced, reclusion is going to become more of a natural state than error and this is a dangerous game to let play out, sit back and just let watch unfold in hopes it will fade out like some phase.
However, this disorder has been growing stronger with each year that has come and the more we advance technologically, this hermit life is only going to become more prevalent and that is more apparent than ever with its gain of traction this issue now has in the western world. The 2030 issue will not just be singular to Japan but every country that fails to understand the danger of this growing disorder. Here I am; a girl with my own story of living as a female Hikikomori. A side of this phenomena rarely heard.
A small room, lit only by a computer screen. The heavy purple curtains hide away all of the light during the day hours but since they aren’t dark enough, a thick blanket is placed over the fabric as well as some hanging clothing to hide away the last peaking light rays. Now it is stark darkness, the comfort of the scene is heightened.
The small bedroom holds nothing but a messy bed, clothing piles scattered all over the floor as well as some odd dishes and a desk, covered in cups, wrappers, and plates. However, as long as the computer is functioning and the darkness fills up the room to erase the chaos, what is happening around does not matter. It doesn’t exist and this scene would be one that I would only see for four years straight.
You could describe it as a self-made prison. However, to my situation, that would be incorrect. It was a defence created in the only way I knew how to battle off things outside of that space that I could not handle. It was my shield against the actual darkness, that were my problems. That room acted as a repellent from reality. As if there were only me and that computer in the world. The computer was almost acting as the brain I wanted at the moment. As if the internet held the human that I was and the state I was truly living in, was just some strange dream. The internet was my true way of living. It was my second brain.
A message beeped onto my phone screen. “Dinner is ready.” It read.
The same reply over and over again on the thread chain with my mother saying the same exact thing. I paused my game and headed to my bedroom door, scuttling through the floor disaster zone that had remained untouched for months. My body ached as I stretched up into a walking position for the first time in hours, my spine cracking in ways it never had as I tried to straighten my body to the best degree I could. Even at fifteen years old, my body was completely weak.
My bones ached so profusely sometimes I would have to force some communication through my phone just to get my mother to bring me some medicine. I never replied to the texts. And if I were to do that, then you knew it was serious. Because communicating was dead to me at this time. And if I had to do it, then it meant it was a great circumstance. But I swallowed the pain relief and continued with my bad joints and deteriorating condition. However, I could always just muster up enough energy for small intervals, or what I called survival tasks, before retreating back to my space.
I stood at my bedroom door, placing my ear against the white wood and made sure there was complete stillness on the other side. Before I quickly pulled it open, grabbed the food that had been left on the floor on a tray in the hallway and soon retreated back into my safe space. Back into my online world, the only place I felt comfortable. And each day, adding in a bathroom break, I would do the exact same thing.
A simple routine of, sleeping, making sure my room was still dark, rising from my bed and stepping a few inches over to my computer and waiting for the text again to hit my phone of my food being ready from my mother. And for four years, this is how my life would be.
It was a doomed fate. Or so, I believed it was a fate that had been presented to me for a reason. A fate where my bedroom became my only home, only need and only friend. A space where time felt like it had frozen and the world was moving at an extremely slow pace. But one month passed, to four years and before I knew it, I was from a child to a teen. Not even thinking of how I had gotten there. My body had grown but my mind had remained frozen, blank. Stuck in the same destructive cycle of whiling away my young years to that of a need for isolation and avoidance of a reality I could not handle.
Some recall where it began, others think of nothing else and some, like me, are confused as to how it got to that stage at all. The notion of a shut-in had never been uttered to my ears at this time. None of the four years I was in this state. Because it is a word in the west we still look at as not much of an issue. Reclusion.
I was twelve years old, how would I have known? That after starting my first year of high school at eleven years old, I would become a person who did not leave their own bedroom for four years. Who was hiding from reality just to survive mentally. It truly was a doomed state. But one that now I knew had a lesson to teach me about society and how we view things.
I looked into the screen, my second brain and the darkness that held me tightly like a second skin blanked out the truth that lay outside those four walls. But every wall has a time it must fall and the truth must be faced one way or another.
This room was once all I had. This room existed as a part of me, so much so I began to delude myself as to what the world looked like. But I want you to understand that this image of closing yourself into one space for so long should not be the entire thought you have when thinking of a Hikikomori. A loner who can’t face reality. Especially, when it comes to the complexity of a female person suffering from this issue.
It’s so complex, even I as a person who suffered this fate find it hard to explain to people what it meant to me. Being this way. Pressure, uniformity, society expectations, hardships, being a growing woman, marriage, children, technology, work, unable to find work, failing, co-dependency, anxiety, inability to filter stress in a healthy manner. These are just some of the many feelings that exist within me. Even to this day. I barely escaped this prison my mind had created for me. Never would I have if I didn’t have a supportive family. A factor that is one of the main keys out of this.
The reality is when I see people speaking of this issue, it feels robotic and trendy to talk of. The reality; my body has become sick from years of having no sun, my eyes have permanent damage from the lack of nutrients, I deal with anxiety that makes it hard for me to do anything alone, stress is still my biggest weakness and I have zero connections out of my family. All I want people to understand is that this way of living is real and is affecting more people of the daily, no matter the gender or background.
Modern living is a drain and is sucking us all down with it if we don’t learn to face it and not just send out a new story of it every other month when another person dies from negligence of suffering alone. We need to find ways in both the West and Asia on a way out of this fast growing issue. Because as technology grows so will this issue and if we keep masking over the problem, the wound will continue to bleed and then we will never be able to end the hell we began. The hell of the negligence to mental health.