A growing number of Japanese have become recluses
Nov 30th 2019TOKYOABOUT 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.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address