Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

By William Kremer and Claudia HammondBBC World Service
Links - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23182523

Listen to the broadcast here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p01bdmw7

A best-selling work of Japanese psychology that brought attention to the widespread problem of acute social withdrawal

This is the first English translation of a controversial Japanese best seller that made the public aware of the social problem of hikikomori, or “withdrawal”—a phenomenon estimated to involve approximately one million Japanese adolescents and young adults. Drawing on his own clinical experience with hikikomori patients, Saitō Tamaki creates a working definition of social withdrawal and explains its development.

Hikikomori was a ground-breaking book when it appeared in Japan in 1998 and will no doubt generate enormous interest with its publication in English. It was Saitō’s work that first brought the phenomenon of social withdrawal to notice in Japan, and it promises to have a similar effect in the United States. Angles’s translation is superb.

—

J. Keith Vincent, Boston University

Source - http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/hikikomori

Other Links:

http://www.khj-h.com/ (Japanese Language)

https://www.facebook.com/khj.ho (Japanese Language)