CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS IN JAPANESE ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION AND INTEGRATION OF HIKIKOMORI CHILDREN

Akio Daysuke Nakasato

Abstract


Culture-bound disorders, or culture-bound mental disorders, are psychological disorders or syndromes that are considered specific or closely related to cultural factors and or particular ethno cultural groups By definition, the hikikomori (the term can also be used in the plural) is one who retires from the community in order to have a solitary lifestyle. The Japanese term hiki means "to pull" and komoru means "retiring" or "withdrawing," hence the sense of pulling out from the community. The hikikomori is acknowledged a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. The typical hikikomori is a male (80% are male), teenaged to 30 years old, who has resigned from school or job, with poor technical skills. usually, the subjects are unemployed, residing in a separate room in his parents' house, avoiding any contact or coming out, taking meals left at his door by his friends or parents, spending the day reading, browsing, viewing television, idling.

 

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Keywords


hikikomori; social isolation; integration; alternative education system

References


Richard Lloyd Parry's article "This Man Won't Leave His Room. And He's Not Alone" (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/this-man-wont-leave-his-room-and-hes-not-alone-627576.html;

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Michael Zielenziger's book Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (New York: Doubleday, 2006) and his essay "Hikikomori and Other Pathologies," presented to RIETI, Japan's Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry, 2007. (http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/events/bbl/07061501.html).

http://www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1456

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejae.v0i0.27

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