Why is the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan being treated like a national crisis? Are there legitimate health concerns involved or is it more related to culture?
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One of the subreddits that has been getting recommended to me now often is r/lostgeneration. It’s a group of millennials and gen z folk who feel that their future has been taken away from them by the selfishness of previous generations, mostly the baby boomers.
The term Lost Generation was in use in Japan from the end of twentieth century when their economy began to drop from it’s metioric heights of the 80s and 90s. Opportunities for advancement and fulfillment were destroyed by the economic downturn but the culture of Japan still put intense pressure on its youth to sacrifice their life and their happiness for success many people felt they could no longer achieve.
So many of them, mostly men because Japan is very patriarchal so that’s where most of the pressure was, chose to withdraw. Better not to struggle if your only result is failure anyway.
It’s a concern because with fewer men our in the workforce there’s fewer people getting married and having children. It’s similar to the “millennials are killing X industry by not having kids/buying houses” thing. Plus the openings left on the job market have to be filled and that often means hiring foreigners and Japan is still very xenophobic. There’s a common insult in Japan that translates to “Stupid Korean”.
All of this piled on top of a society that already had a high suicide rate and is one of the only industrialized worlds that treats mental health *worse* than in America you have a major crisis in a society that is not set up to handle it.
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