Oye

Spending months and months in virtual self-imposed solitude in my room just isn't my cup of tea.

Interesting items in the NY Times Magazine article about the causes of the mainly Japanese boys and men who become reculses.

"We used to believe everyone was equal," said Noki Futagami, the founder of New Start [treats the problem]. "But the gap is growing. I suspect there will be a bipolarization of this society. There will be the group of people who can be in the global world. And then there will be others, like the hikikomori [shut ins]. The ones who cannot be in that world."

.........

[Dr.] Saito, who has treated more than 1,000 hikikomori patients, views the problem as largely a family and social disease, caused in part by the interdependence of Japanese parents and children and the pressure on boys, eldest sons in particular, to excel in academics and the corporate world. Hikikomori often describe years of rote classroom learning followed by afternoons and evenings of intense cram school to prepare them for high-school or university entrance exams. Today's parents are more demanding because Japan's declining birth rate means they have fewer children on whom to push their hopes, says Mariko Fujiwara, director of research at the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living in Tokyo. If a kid doesn't follow a set path to an elite university and a top corporation, many parents - and by extension their children - view it as a failure. "After World War II," Fujiwara told me, "Japanese only knew a certain kind of salaryman future, and now they lack the imagination and the creativity to think about the world in a new way."

..........
In other societies the response from many youths would be different. If they didn't fit into the mainstream, they might join a gang or become a Goth or be part of some other subculture. But in Japan, where uniformity is still prized and reputations and outward appearances are paramount, rebellion comes in muted forms, like hikikomori. Any urge a hikikomori might have to venture into the world to have a romantic relationship or sex, for instance, is overridden by his self-loathing and the need to shut his door so that his failures, real or perceived, will be cloaked from the world. "Japanese young people are considered the safest in the world because the crime rate is so low," Saito said. "But I think it's related to the emotional state of people. In every country, young people have adjustment disorders. In Western culture, people are homeless or drug addicts. In Japan, it's apathy problems like hikikomori.

Interesting stuff and well worth the read.