A growing number of Japanese have become recluses
ABOUT A YEAR ago Mika Shibata’s youngest son returned to the family home and went wordlessly upstairs. He has yet to emerge from his bedroom. At the age of 26, he sleeps during the day and stays awake at night. His mother feeds and shelters him, hoping he will emerge from this state. But she frets he never will. “The longer this situation continues, the harder it is for him to step back into society,” she says.
The Shibata family’s pain is shared by many others in Japan. The government says there are more than 1m hikikomori, or recluses, defined as people who have played no part in society for at least six months. Many have barely stepped outside their homes for decades. A handful of alarming crimes have pushed them back into public view. In May a recluse, aged 51, stabbed two people, including a child, to death in the city of Kawasaki before committing suicide. In June a retired official murdered his own son, a middle-aged hikikomori, because he said he feared he might hurt someone.
When the phenomenon became widely noticed over a generation ago, few understood it. Recluses were considered lazy or odd. Mental-health care was scarce and official support nonexistent. Parents felt responsible and were too mortified to look for help. But even now, occasional crimes involving...