Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The label of hikikomori, coined by Tokyo Psychologist Saito Tamaki, describes
an increasing trend of Japanese youth, primarily male, that shut out contact with society
by hiding within their parents’ homes for months or even years at a time. In the process,
these youth become truants, failing out of school and work through their long absences
from the outside world. Reentry into society in middle class adult roles proves a difficult
barrier for recovered hikikomori due to institutional features of Japanese society. This
paper examines Takeyama, a private rehabilitation institution for hikikomori located in
Tokyo Japan. Over the three-year span of Takeyama’s rehabilitation program, hikikomori
youth from middle-class backgrounds are exposed to daily social rehabilitation structured
around an idealized norm of conduct through group participation, routinization, and
repetition. My central research question for this paper examines how the process of
hikikomori rehabilitation observed at Takeyama involves gender and class socialization.
Namely, the normalization of male hikikomori youth with middle class backgrounds into
a viable adult masculine identity entwined with a working class future.