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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(Im not going to talk about Japanese culture, because I am not Japanese)
>ELI5: Why is the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan being treated like a national crisis?
Answer: because it largely is
Japan is almost-unique among nations in that it has an aging population *but does not allow easy immigration*
Other (pretty much all, IIRC) developed nations have aging populations, but they “import” usually-younger immigrants that keep the wheels of the economy turning, between paying taxes and providing services.
Japan, broadly speaking, does not. They do not allow many long-term immigrants, for….various reasons. As such, Japan largely only has its “native” population to drive its economy.
You need workers working, to pay taxes and provide goods and services. Not just to grow your economy, but even to keep it stable. With an aging population, that means more and more people stop working and start requiring more resources, from pensions to healthcare. If you dont have people paying taxes to provide those pensions or to provide healthcare workers, it becomes more difficult to provide those.
There are increasing trends among younger (by this I mean young adults) people in pretty much all Developed countries where they just…give up? They stop striving to succeed and improve at work, they dont have children, they might not be interested in relationships at all. They just keep on keeping on, or take lower-pay and less-stress jobs and focus on hobbies, or withdraw from society as the case of Hikikomori.
While the above has an effect on individuals, it also has an effect on society. Fewer people having children means fewer workers down the line, which means less taxes to fund programs and fewer workers to staff them, which means the workers that are there are overstressed, which means they might choose to stop contributing, which means fewer workers, so on and so forth.
Japan has a sizable chunk of its workforce that “arent contributing as much as society thinks they should”, and that is a problem (for society). It isnt just men, either: many Japanese women arent getting married or having children, because they have (or want) to work instead.
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