But our lives aren't like that. All we get day after day are a bunch of vague anxieties that are never really resolved."
The topic of hikikomori and otakus is not as new a topic as I had thought, though the exact beginning of such phenomenon is quite difficult to pin down, nor is it merely a national problem of Japan. It is a problem that exists in the current age, more pronounced as a problem in itself in Japan and neighbouring Asian countries, but nonetheless can be a phenomenon worldwide. It can be argued that the prevalence and ease of someone to become and stay as a hikikomori has been made easier thanks to the advent of mass media and the Internet, but the true nature of a person who decides to stop interacting with the society is rooted in far deeper and complex causes. In 2010, the Japanese government estimates that "700,000 individuals are in a state of hikikomori", with an average age of 31. With the disdain for individuals that deviate from the social normative image of a successful salaryman, such a figure does come as a rather nasty surprise. Or rather, as I shall elaborate, this could be interpreted as a chain of cause and effect, which should come off as less of a surprise than it apparently is.
Instead of expounding on the traits of hikikomoris and alluding only to abstract arguments, I shall present my views centred on some shows presenting such phenomenon, with the most obvious one none other than Welcome to the NHK (NHK from here on), a show I have done way inadequate justice in the past. Another remarkable one is Densha Otoko, a 2005 hit that brought a great spike of attention towards the issue of hikikomoris, but that is too much homework for an informal exposition like this one.
1. What is a hikikomori/otaku?
"You are a hikikomori, aren't you?"
The most fundamental thing one would approach when solving a problem is to define the problem itself. There are, of course, official definitions set by authorities to diagnose potential "patients" "suffering" from being a hikikomoris, but unfortunately, in an attempt to control the scope of the definition, it is rather dry and lacks a punchline. I personally favour the characterization of hikikomoris as recluses. Similarly, hikikomoris can be described as hermits, or loners. Yet, "recluses" carries a hint of rejection and refusal, which in my opinion is near the core of a true hikikomori. It also carries a trace of disdain of the external, as opposed to the traditionally recognized hermit, who makes peace between their internal self and the natural world, or a loner, which is quite neutral and objective (quantitative) in meaning. For example, to say that an ascetic is a hikikomori would be absurd.
There is a tendency to mistakenly define otakus as someone with an obsession with anime/manga, though this subset of otakus obviously occupy a large portion of the current generation of otakus. Otakus simply refer to a person with obsessive interest in something, be it electronics, automobiles, or even weaponry. There is also a motif of drawing an equal sign between hikikomoris and otakus, but in my opinion they merely overlap. An otaku could be a hikikomori, but also can function well in a society. A hikikomori can be an otaku, or wander aimlessly in the field of their isolation.
2. The Image of a Hikikomori
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
The reason why hikikomoris fail at social interaction is often cited as their failure to put up an acceptable image for themselves. They are often depicted as unkempt, creepy and physically unfit. This almost makes too much sense: A fit, well-groomed individual would tend not to avoid social interaction, since the whole point of maintaining an image is to gain social favour. This preemptive depiction of hikikomoris is, dare I say, the major reason why hikikomoris are demonized and ostracized. Are hikikomoris really people who give no regard to their image and thus alienate themselves from the society?
In NHK, the reason why Satou fell into the state of being a hikikomori is precisely because of his consciousness of his image. He is so aware of his image that whenever he is in a crowd, he envisions everyone laughing at his pathetic appearance, even when he looks quite ordinary. He even attempts to leverage his sense of shame and asked his neighbour Yamazaki to photograph him performing indecent acts in the public. The quote from T.S. Elliot's Prufrock quite vividly sums up the anxiety of introverts facing the public, which is common to the minds of hikikomoris as well. The reason why hikikomoris never go out is due to their fear of people judging their image, and when they remove themselves from the public, they become even more detached to the need to keep clean and tidy, and thus spiral into the mess that they present themselves in.
3. The "Human world"
A hikikomori does not become one on his own volition, nor does he suddenly decide to become one a day and stops going out completely. To them, the normal member of the society (akin to the concept of "normies" within the 4chan /r9k/ community) is something that they simultaneously disdain and envy. They must have been rejected or shunned somehow from the society, causing a feeling of failure, and cannot but shut themselves in a confined space to avoid contact with others as much as possible. They only gave up on society because they were given up by the society.
While a sociable person would often release their welled-up emotions, whether of rage, sadness or whatnot, through talking to others and sharing their pain, there is no route for a hikikomori to do so. As a result, their negativity simply feeds back onto themselves, forming a vortex that never resolves itself. In NHK, this is readily seen from the delusions of Satou when he is alone (which is the case for most of the anime anyway), often aimed at twisted explanations around the reason why he has become a hikikomori. The lack of human interaction is indeed poisonous, and this is a very evident message from this show.
4. Boredom
Yet, perhaps even more prevalent and quite easily as destructive is the sense of boredom. The world of a hikikomori is grey. It is not full of passionate anger, as evangelists might be, or full of hope for the future, as aspiring teenagers will be. It is filled with a void with occasional blips of anxiety and trouble that never resolve themselves. They lead the most uninteresting lives imaginable.
Examining the soundtrack of NHK, one would find a lot of the conspicuous ones convey a strong sense of ennui, almost to the point where sickness comes into mind, where one's mind is so damaged he is incapable of any interesting thought. Examples include Gosui ni Tarasu Tsuri Ito, Hitori no Tame no Lullaby, Kyou Wa Yuuhi Yarou. They are all quite tranquil, yet extremely unsettling. To say that these tracks invoke a sense of sadness is not inaccurate, but whence does the melancholy come from? Perhaps more accurately they could be described as a sense of pity when viewed by an outsider, a sense of dread when viewed from people like me, who borders on being a shut-in, and a sense of realization for people similar to Satou to different degrees...
This is one of the most outstanding parts of the show. It speaks to the audience not through words but through invoking the sense of resonance. This was why I was not able to enjoy the show to the extent I am currently able to, since I barely knew what a prolonged incubation of solitude feels like when I first entered university, when I first viewed this show. This returns me to my point that hikikomoris do not willingly become one, like one would apply for a job. It is a mixture of fear, boredom and loneliness, the most dangerous poisons to the mind.
5. Lies
One of the criticisms of NHK that I often see is the cringy behaviour of Satou, for lack of a better word. When is Satou cringy? For me, it seems that the moments where he deliberately puts up an image of being "functional" in front of Misaki, fabricating lies after lies about how he is productive and not a hikikomori, and in front of his mother, feigning a satisfactory and on-track life that induces the most cringe. The reason why this is cringy is his poor attempts at it, begging the question of why he would bother to lie at the first place.
Whether he is convinced that his own lies are effective is debatable, but the more lies he tells throughout the series, the more he realizes how hollow his life must be. He had no accountability to Misaki, yet instinctively tried to display some form of well-being. He has become so used to lying to get out of inconvenient situations and explanations, that he lies to his mother like second nature. In a stereotypical show, the villain would lie to the world, hiding his machinations until the very end. Here, Satou's lies serve only as a self-destructive move, pushing him further and further down the spiral of despair. This is where the echo chamber really closes in.
6. The necessity of Manga/Anime (and everything peripheral)
"This is a sub-culture Japan prides itself on!"
The reason I got into anime is admittedly the most obvious one: To attempt to seek replacement for the lack of affection, love and friendship when I was in my first year. It turns out that it did not work, and I (very thankfully) never got into the mindset to be attracted to imaginary characters (the only reason I would like a character is when he/she is someone I can relate to, usually characters with some sort of troubled minds). However, this highlights the necessity of associating anime/manga and other "otaku" cultures with hikikomoris, who clearly suffers the plights I described above.
I suppose for some, these media do work "as intended", in that the characters really serve the purpose of replacing real life humans well, so that they can sate the urge for human interaction and somehow alleviate loneliness. NHK provides a completely different viewpoint though. It attempts to subvert the gratuitous connection between hikikomoris and anime. Satou's case is obvious: His enjoyment in the "galges" Yamazaki gave him as research materials quickly dissipated, and he found himself unable to disconnect the protagonist for which he was supposed to create for the game he was creating with Yamazaki with the image of Misaki. For Yamazaki, even though he prides himself in being an otaku, filling his room with merchandise and going to vocational school for creating these games, he eventually gave all this up in pursuit of Nanako, his classmate, and even used it as a method to make a clean, but painful, cut with Nanako after he discovers he has to leave Tokyo for his family. We can therefore see that anime is but a superficial attempt at replacing reality to anyone with reasonably sane minds. It may carry meaning as an art form, just like any other medium, and does very well in certain cases (such as the anime in question, NHK), but it does not work as a form of hard escapism, at least not to the degree that one would think it does to hikikomoris. Therefore, when I see people blaming anime for the problem of hikikomoris, I cannot but feel unconvinced.
7. The necessity of (MMO) Gaming
"You have to log out... Permanently..."
Gaming, especially (massive) multiplayer online (MMO) games, are a totally different story. I again speak from personal experience here, but the interactivity of games and the feeling of accomplishment one can get from them cause them to be much more of an addiction than anime/manga. They are much better at providing a sense of productivity, that hikikomoris desperately crave to fill the void that is their daily lives.
In NHK, the concept of real money trading (RMT) is introduced as a further motivation for sticking to games. Instead of only gaining achievements virtually, the possibility of real life monetary gains is opened up to hikikomoris. The illusion that one can simply sit at their computers and naively grind at the game and sustain their lifestyle (which in ordinary circumstances would generate no income at all), all the while garnering respect from others (also desperately craven) because of their "smart" way of earning is formed within the minds of hikikomoris. It all seems too perfect for them.
Now I am not one to bash video game companies for "deliberately getting customers addicted to their products", because that is the essence of their purpose as a commercial entity, as with any other commercial entities really. I merely remark here that the moment a person's craving for achievement and recognition is sated is the moment they truly disconnect themselves from the society, and that could be a dangerous thing as per the discussion above.
8. The Past of Hikikomoris
We have discussed at length about the face of hikikomoris, but do they hide anything from their appearance? What could be their history, leading up to such a person in the modern day?
I particularly like the story of Satou's high school life in NHK. One would expect Satou's past to be much more like Yamazaki's: Bullied and ostracized for being a nerd. Yet, Satou could be deemed completely opposite in a way: He ostracizes himself. Every time Satou reminisces about the past, it is accompanied by Kyou Wa Yuuhi Yarou, a soundtrack that clearly brings out the boredom and a lingering hint of dissatisfaction that is almost to the point of annoyance. Satou willingly isolates himself from others, because he finds no interest in interaction with people. One could even say he is quite cool, a descriptor I am sure would not be applicable to hikikomoris.
"Why would you make an effort at all? What difference does it make?" is the attitude of Satou, and is what he said to the class president Kobayashi while she was busy with the work for the school festival. This attitude quickly becomes defeatism and escapism in the world outside of high school, and is indeed not far from what hikikomoris think about the world: A hostile place that is not worth wasting energy on. They would rather spend their days closed off in a virtual world than interact with reality.
It is quite eerie how some mild cynicism, characteristic of quite a lot of teenagers, could quickly turn into the toxin leading to the life of a hikikomori.
9. Attitude to Love
"Go to hell, bitches!"
This is what Yamazaki said with regards to women. A clear disdain and hatred, it seems. It would not deviate much from the overarching theme of misanthropy displayed by hikikomoris. But again, is this their true self? Or are they sexual deviants that crave the opposite sex only for carnal desires, as displayed much throughout the series by Satou's delusions as well?
Such an interpretation would fail to account for why Satou did not take advantage of Hitomi in various occasions, or how Yamazaki rejects Nanako's advances, or how Satou rejected Misaki's confession towards the end. It is clear that hikikomoris are more than the perverts the society would portray them as. What they desire is companionship, someone to convince them that the world is not as horrible as it seems.
It would even stand to say that hikikomoris are not sexual deviants because they are hikikomoris, and they subscribe to an extremely pessimistic view of the world. I am sure for most pessimists, what they eventually hope is not actually a world that verifies their ideas, but a world that comes out to prove them wrong, as entitled as it may sound. Pessimists are often the most devout idealists, and this couldn't be more true for hikikomoris. Exactly the same goes for their craving for pure love, instead of the commercialized and sexualized version of cheap and shallow "love" that is promoted in the modern world. Thus, when they see their ideals getting destroyed, such as the time when Yamazaki saw his girl friend lie to him to go to the fireworks with another guy, he is more than crushed.
10. Attitude to Death
"I don't want to meet anyone. I don't want to answer my cell phone. I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to live, but dying is such a hassle."
It is truly when one comes face to face with death that he would be honest about everything. And indeed it should be that, despite living a life largely built on escapism, when a hikikomori faces with death, he cannot escape anymore. Or can he?
The "offline meeting" arc of NHK struck me as the most expressive few episodes in the whole show. It is the climax of the show, where the zenith of Satou's path as a hikikomori occurs. Or rather, I should say it is the opposite of a climax, an anti-climax of sorts, as Satou, wishing to change his life for the better and face his long buried affection for Hitomi, decides to tag along on the trip Hitomi is going for. Unbeknownst to him, Hitomi intended this to be the last trip of her life, going to the "island closest to heaven" to take her own life due to her depression.
A person reaching the end of the route of severe depression or pain, wishing for death, would become almost fearless towards the end. He has nothing to fear anymore, once he has overcome the barrier of death. Despite the continual depression of hikikomoris, they have a strange attachment to live. Perhaps they know that they are a failure and burden to the society and their families, and wallow in guilt and self-loathing all day, but the primordial fear that surrounds death is not dispelled, and they would cling onto the last trace of life left in them, for they fear, and the best thing they can do is, unfortunately, fear.
The will to live is biologically inherent in every human, hikikomori or not, so much as the drive for sex and craving for food. As we witness towards the end, even when life looked the most miserable to them, the party looking for death had a small but undying hope that things will turn out for the better, and they would not need to commit suicide. Despite being played around like a fool for the duration of the trip, and finding out the Hitomi has never had him in her heart. Even when he decided to take his own life together with Hitomi, somehow like a romantic suicide, Hitomi's fiance shows up at the last second, denying him of this possibility. Yet, Satou could not bring himself to actually die, but instead letting out a pathetic scream down the cliff. Perhaps the quote from Yamazaki concludes this feeling of fear:
"People like us [hikikomoris/otakus] aren't qualified to be involved in such a dramatic incident as suicide. No matter how depressed we are, no matter how much we suffer, we will just come back and live idiotically every day."
It is at this point that Satou realized why he has not taken his life yet, and why he would never be able to. It turns out that even in the face of death, a hikikomori is so filled with anxiety and inferiority that he cannot go forward, all the while escaping from the society and shutting themselves in a room, like a dying patient relying on life support machines to sustain what's left in a shell of a human body. The world of hikikomoris is truly at the brink of absurdity, yet they drag on, like zombies, because they fear.
11. The World Around Hikikomoris
Apart from looking at hikikomoris, NHK also features a range of side characters that represents the society around them.
What happens when one feels worthless? How does one gain some sense of worth? The simple solution is to find someone even more worthless than you and abuse them. This is probably the reason why bullies exist, and why they are so relentless. When a person reaches the end of their sense of self-esteem, the will to look for someone to belittle grows stronger than ever. NHK places the characters around Satou and Yamazaki cleverly to expose this fact.
Hitomi: The working class
If hikikomori tendencies stem from laziness and inability to work and fit in as a functional member of the society, then supposedly a member of the working class, or rather, one with a stable and well-paying job, like Hitomi, working as a civil servant, would be something to dream of. However, the portrayal of the hardships of her life seem to point out why hikikomoris cannot accept the aspect of having a job in the society. Her life is far from rosy, and what she imagined would be ideal. She has a creative and inquisitive mind, wanting to fight against the "conspiracy" that surrounds every inexplicably unfortunate happenstances of the world. Yet, her job basically forces her to stay low, and when she tries to improve on the status quo by suggesting revolutionary changes, she would be silenced and isolated.
Moreover, the prospect of having a lover is not as rosy as it seems either. She feels even more lonely as her fiance puts work over caring for her, never trying to listen and understand her personally. He is a perfectly successful person, dedicated to his work and looks nice, but this very perfection leaves no space for mutual connection between Hitomi and him. Even when Hitomi eventually falls into depression, having to take various anti-depressants, and eventually went on to participate in a suicide pact, he never notices till the last second.
Why did Hitomi find Satou to chat before her "offline meeting"? It is precisely the possibility of finding someone whom she can extract a small sense of self-worth out of that drove her to find him. This is apparent when she never drops the small references to how Satou is a hikikomori every time she meets him. But to condemn her is not totally justified either. Maybe she is simply trying to relive the times she had spent with Satou in high school, where she had no worries about life.
To Satou, Hitomi is exactly what he always calls her: Senpai (upperclassman), someone unreachable, of a higher rank than he is. Despite holding disdain against the society, hikikomoris never let go of the prospect of being re-accepted into the society. To him, she also is the embodiment of regrets, of how he held the cool and aloft image in front of her and never reached out. It seems that she is the perfect analogy of what living the "normal" and "successful" life is to hikikomoris, and the way Satou idolizes him is quite symbolic indeed.
Kobayashi: The Marginalized
As apparent from the presentation of Hitomi, hikikomoris are not the only "losers" that suffer in the world of NHK. From a hard working class president, Kobayashi has fallen into the lure of pyramid schemes in order to fund his brother's hikikomori lifestyle (or lack of one, to be frank). Her brother shares a similar attitude with Satou, only even more entrenched in the depths of illusions of grandiose from the MMORPGs mentioned previously. He never leaves his room, and completely relies on his sister to bring him food literally to his doorstep to sustain himself in the completely enclosed room only lit by the computer screen.
Kobayashi seems to be a reflection of how hikikomoris not only damage themselves, but also affect people who care about him, whom a lot of hikikomoris, drowned in cynical thoughts, often neglect. I for one had quite some disgust for Kobayashi's dirty tactics to lure the main characters into the scheme along with her, because a pyramid scheme is, by its own nature, a scheme where one benefits from abusing others. Nevertheless I could not take some if not most of it back when the story behind her struggles were revealed.
Yet on the other hand, we see the fears, the reasons hikikomoris hate the society manifest themselves on the fate of Kobayashi. She was an upright person, willing to work and motivate others to do so under her leadership, and shared her own portion of hardships in finding a job after graduation. Yet, company upon company shut down in front of her, and she never gained a stable job. With her brother's degenerate lifestyle, the blame could not be completely placed on her when she was lured by the promise of freedom from monetary stresses by simply joining an organizations and promoting its products. All the excuses of how the job market is fierce, and with no skills a hikikomori cannot possibly find a job are all coming true somehow.
Her story (or rather her brother's story) does end on an uplifting, albeit rather sardonic note though: When Kobayashi's organization was exposed and its head arrested, she was truly out of ways to sustain herself, let alone her brother. In the midst of despair, her brother stopped receiving food from Kobayashi. It was only near the brink of starving to death that her brother dragged his half-dead body out of the house and found a job. The solution was in front of the Kobayashis' eyes the whole time...
In the relentless attempts of Kobayashi in trying to drag the main characters into her scheme, we again see how, once a person is at his/her wit's end, when he/she can only go on by being the villain and abuse others for psychological/economical well-being, he/she would not hesitate to do so. Amidst Satou's journey of trying to redeem himself as a hikikomori, this plotline antagonizes Kobayashi very severely. But, upon my second viewing, I find that it is more apt to say that she is again a symbol for the hostile environment around hikikomoris, which feeds back into itself, creating more and more hikikomoris.
Misaki: Mutual Abuse
"Society wants unemployed hikikomoris to exist, because people always need someone they are comfortable looking down upon."
In the first viewing of this show, I almost missed the backstory to Misaki Nakahara, the cute heroine who almost seems too good for Satou, knocking on his door to ask him to participate in her hikikomori reformation project, bringing food to him when he ran out of money, pretending to be his lover to fool his mother... Just because she enjoyed looking down on Satou from her hilltop mansion down into his measly tiny flat like a voyeur. However, one could almost say that Misaki acts out of subconsciousness, telling from the way she reacts when Satou falls out with her eventually, discovering her spying into his daily life. As someone who empathized with Satou more initially, I too was covered by annoyance and anger to listen to anything she had to say.
Misaki was portrayed pretty much as a foil to Satou initially: A clean, attractive, well-off and well-mannered girl coming from the upper class. It does seem really ridiculous almost that she would have her eye on Satou, the "failure of a human being" (in Misaki's words) that he is. As we stand on Satou's point of view, other characters gradually open up to him. People such as Yamazaki, Hitomi, Kobayashi all have their stories and struggles told to us in one way or another. However, Misaki, despite appearing the earliest in the show, remained a mystery for the majority of the show. It is as if she was hiding something from Satou, and by proxy, us. As we venture through the journey of Satou through his attempts to escape from being a hikikomori, we almost learn nothing of her until the very final episodes.
It is not until the last episode that Misaki's backstory was fully revealed. Her flashbacks to her mother committing suicide (off of a cliff, just like Satou attempted to), and the domestic abuse she had to endure for years all came falling into one whole picture. Upon the second viewing, when I chose to adopt a less judgmental and subjective angle and tried to understand Misaki, I found that it was equally plausible to stand on her side as well, as I was (and to an extent, still am) someone like her.
It turns out that Misaki is not that much of a foil to Satou. Much as Satou, Hitomi and Kobayashi are both victims of the society, Misaki is no exception. Since her traumatic experience with her family, she has closed herself off from others. The project that she organizes with Satou was merely a disguise, to allow her to know Satou better in order to pry into his weaknesses and, though the process, be reassured that someone is more pathetic than she is.
If Hitomi and Kobayashi would represent groups of people in the society, Misaki would better be deemed as a symbolism of the entire attitude towards hikikomoris. Under a facade of helping them get back to society and be functional, they never would want them to be surpassed by the people they are helping, since the very purpose of them helping the hikikomoris would then be gone. But can we really blame them? After all, they are acting out of instinct: to find comfort in knowing that there are people who fare much worse than them, and almost everything that humans do eventually would boil down to this sole motive. More or less.
12. Conclusion: The Salvation of hikikomoris?
"Save you? No I can't do that. You are the only one who can save yourself." -Bakemonogatari
NHK ends on a really anticlimactic note, just as most of the arcs in the story itself: Once a hikikomori runs out of money, he will no longer be able to sustain himself, and only then will they crawl out of their room to look for work. So anticlimactic that it almost resembles a hikikomori's life. It turns out that they are not trapped by the society itself, but their own escapism from the potential that they will be rejected and ostracized, which feeds back upon itself: The more they isolate themselves, the more they are detached from the outer world, the more they are ostracized.
However, this show does not serve to condemn. It is almost like a documentary, except the documented is not examined with the lens of science but with literature, and depictions of the psychology of such people. This alone speaks more than any horrifying statistics or photo evidence of the squalor of a hikikomori's room would ever hope to achieve. There are times of sadness and empathy for Satou's loneliness, of frustration and irritation for his cringeworthy acts, of happiness for him improving on his attitude a bit, just to be followed by annoyance of him falling back to his ground state. And at the end of the day, as a borderline hikikomori myself, NHK understands, comforts and warns, which is what a show about hikikomoris will ever need.
Instead of expounding on the traits of hikikomoris and alluding only to abstract arguments, I shall present my views centred on some shows presenting such phenomenon, with the most obvious one none other than Welcome to the NHK (NHK from here on), a show I have done way inadequate justice in the past. Another remarkable one is Densha Otoko, a 2005 hit that brought a great spike of attention towards the issue of hikikomoris, but that is too much homework for an informal exposition like this one.
1. What is a hikikomori/otaku?
"You are a hikikomori, aren't you?"
The most fundamental thing one would approach when solving a problem is to define the problem itself. There are, of course, official definitions set by authorities to diagnose potential "patients" "suffering" from being a hikikomoris, but unfortunately, in an attempt to control the scope of the definition, it is rather dry and lacks a punchline. I personally favour the characterization of hikikomoris as recluses. Similarly, hikikomoris can be described as hermits, or loners. Yet, "recluses" carries a hint of rejection and refusal, which in my opinion is near the core of a true hikikomori. It also carries a trace of disdain of the external, as opposed to the traditionally recognized hermit, who makes peace between their internal self and the natural world, or a loner, which is quite neutral and objective (quantitative) in meaning. For example, to say that an ascetic is a hikikomori would be absurd.
There is a tendency to mistakenly define otakus as someone with an obsession with anime/manga, though this subset of otakus obviously occupy a large portion of the current generation of otakus. Otakus simply refer to a person with obsessive interest in something, be it electronics, automobiles, or even weaponry. There is also a motif of drawing an equal sign between hikikomoris and otakus, but in my opinion they merely overlap. An otaku could be a hikikomori, but also can function well in a society. A hikikomori can be an otaku, or wander aimlessly in the field of their isolation.
2. The Image of a Hikikomori
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
The reason why hikikomoris fail at social interaction is often cited as their failure to put up an acceptable image for themselves. They are often depicted as unkempt, creepy and physically unfit. This almost makes too much sense: A fit, well-groomed individual would tend not to avoid social interaction, since the whole point of maintaining an image is to gain social favour. This preemptive depiction of hikikomoris is, dare I say, the major reason why hikikomoris are demonized and ostracized. Are hikikomoris really people who give no regard to their image and thus alienate themselves from the society?
In NHK, the reason why Satou fell into the state of being a hikikomori is precisely because of his consciousness of his image. He is so aware of his image that whenever he is in a crowd, he envisions everyone laughing at his pathetic appearance, even when he looks quite ordinary. He even attempts to leverage his sense of shame and asked his neighbour Yamazaki to photograph him performing indecent acts in the public. The quote from T.S. Elliot's Prufrock quite vividly sums up the anxiety of introverts facing the public, which is common to the minds of hikikomoris as well. The reason why hikikomoris never go out is due to their fear of people judging their image, and when they remove themselves from the public, they become even more detached to the need to keep clean and tidy, and thus spiral into the mess that they present themselves in.
3. The "Human world"
A hikikomori does not become one on his own volition, nor does he suddenly decide to become one a day and stops going out completely. To them, the normal member of the society (akin to the concept of "normies" within the 4chan /r9k/ community) is something that they simultaneously disdain and envy. They must have been rejected or shunned somehow from the society, causing a feeling of failure, and cannot but shut themselves in a confined space to avoid contact with others as much as possible. They only gave up on society because they were given up by the society.
While a sociable person would often release their welled-up emotions, whether of rage, sadness or whatnot, through talking to others and sharing their pain, there is no route for a hikikomori to do so. As a result, their negativity simply feeds back onto themselves, forming a vortex that never resolves itself. In NHK, this is readily seen from the delusions of Satou when he is alone (which is the case for most of the anime anyway), often aimed at twisted explanations around the reason why he has become a hikikomori. The lack of human interaction is indeed poisonous, and this is a very evident message from this show.
4. Boredom
Yet, perhaps even more prevalent and quite easily as destructive is the sense of boredom. The world of a hikikomori is grey. It is not full of passionate anger, as evangelists might be, or full of hope for the future, as aspiring teenagers will be. It is filled with a void with occasional blips of anxiety and trouble that never resolve themselves. They lead the most uninteresting lives imaginable.
Examining the soundtrack of NHK, one would find a lot of the conspicuous ones convey a strong sense of ennui, almost to the point where sickness comes into mind, where one's mind is so damaged he is incapable of any interesting thought. Examples include Gosui ni Tarasu Tsuri Ito, Hitori no Tame no Lullaby, Kyou Wa Yuuhi Yarou. They are all quite tranquil, yet extremely unsettling. To say that these tracks invoke a sense of sadness is not inaccurate, but whence does the melancholy come from? Perhaps more accurately they could be described as a sense of pity when viewed by an outsider, a sense of dread when viewed from people like me, who borders on being a shut-in, and a sense of realization for people similar to Satou to different degrees...
This is one of the most outstanding parts of the show. It speaks to the audience not through words but through invoking the sense of resonance. This was why I was not able to enjoy the show to the extent I am currently able to, since I barely knew what a prolonged incubation of solitude feels like when I first entered university, when I first viewed this show. This returns me to my point that hikikomoris do not willingly become one, like one would apply for a job. It is a mixture of fear, boredom and loneliness, the most dangerous poisons to the mind.
5. Lies
One of the criticisms of NHK that I often see is the cringy behaviour of Satou, for lack of a better word. When is Satou cringy? For me, it seems that the moments where he deliberately puts up an image of being "functional" in front of Misaki, fabricating lies after lies about how he is productive and not a hikikomori, and in front of his mother, feigning a satisfactory and on-track life that induces the most cringe. The reason why this is cringy is his poor attempts at it, begging the question of why he would bother to lie at the first place.
Whether he is convinced that his own lies are effective is debatable, but the more lies he tells throughout the series, the more he realizes how hollow his life must be. He had no accountability to Misaki, yet instinctively tried to display some form of well-being. He has become so used to lying to get out of inconvenient situations and explanations, that he lies to his mother like second nature. In a stereotypical show, the villain would lie to the world, hiding his machinations until the very end. Here, Satou's lies serve only as a self-destructive move, pushing him further and further down the spiral of despair. This is where the echo chamber really closes in.
6. The necessity of Manga/Anime (and everything peripheral)
"This is a sub-culture Japan prides itself on!"
The reason I got into anime is admittedly the most obvious one: To attempt to seek replacement for the lack of affection, love and friendship when I was in my first year. It turns out that it did not work, and I (very thankfully) never got into the mindset to be attracted to imaginary characters (the only reason I would like a character is when he/she is someone I can relate to, usually characters with some sort of troubled minds). However, this highlights the necessity of associating anime/manga and other "otaku" cultures with hikikomoris, who clearly suffers the plights I described above.
I suppose for some, these media do work "as intended", in that the characters really serve the purpose of replacing real life humans well, so that they can sate the urge for human interaction and somehow alleviate loneliness. NHK provides a completely different viewpoint though. It attempts to subvert the gratuitous connection between hikikomoris and anime. Satou's case is obvious: His enjoyment in the "galges" Yamazaki gave him as research materials quickly dissipated, and he found himself unable to disconnect the protagonist for which he was supposed to create for the game he was creating with Yamazaki with the image of Misaki. For Yamazaki, even though he prides himself in being an otaku, filling his room with merchandise and going to vocational school for creating these games, he eventually gave all this up in pursuit of Nanako, his classmate, and even used it as a method to make a clean, but painful, cut with Nanako after he discovers he has to leave Tokyo for his family. We can therefore see that anime is but a superficial attempt at replacing reality to anyone with reasonably sane minds. It may carry meaning as an art form, just like any other medium, and does very well in certain cases (such as the anime in question, NHK), but it does not work as a form of hard escapism, at least not to the degree that one would think it does to hikikomoris. Therefore, when I see people blaming anime for the problem of hikikomoris, I cannot but feel unconvinced.
7. The necessity of (MMO) Gaming
"You have to log out... Permanently..."
Gaming, especially (massive) multiplayer online (MMO) games, are a totally different story. I again speak from personal experience here, but the interactivity of games and the feeling of accomplishment one can get from them cause them to be much more of an addiction than anime/manga. They are much better at providing a sense of productivity, that hikikomoris desperately crave to fill the void that is their daily lives.
In NHK, the concept of real money trading (RMT) is introduced as a further motivation for sticking to games. Instead of only gaining achievements virtually, the possibility of real life monetary gains is opened up to hikikomoris. The illusion that one can simply sit at their computers and naively grind at the game and sustain their lifestyle (which in ordinary circumstances would generate no income at all), all the while garnering respect from others (also desperately craven) because of their "smart" way of earning is formed within the minds of hikikomoris. It all seems too perfect for them.
Now I am not one to bash video game companies for "deliberately getting customers addicted to their products", because that is the essence of their purpose as a commercial entity, as with any other commercial entities really. I merely remark here that the moment a person's craving for achievement and recognition is sated is the moment they truly disconnect themselves from the society, and that could be a dangerous thing as per the discussion above.
8. The Past of Hikikomoris
We have discussed at length about the face of hikikomoris, but do they hide anything from their appearance? What could be their history, leading up to such a person in the modern day?
I particularly like the story of Satou's high school life in NHK. One would expect Satou's past to be much more like Yamazaki's: Bullied and ostracized for being a nerd. Yet, Satou could be deemed completely opposite in a way: He ostracizes himself. Every time Satou reminisces about the past, it is accompanied by Kyou Wa Yuuhi Yarou, a soundtrack that clearly brings out the boredom and a lingering hint of dissatisfaction that is almost to the point of annoyance. Satou willingly isolates himself from others, because he finds no interest in interaction with people. One could even say he is quite cool, a descriptor I am sure would not be applicable to hikikomoris.
"Why would you make an effort at all? What difference does it make?" is the attitude of Satou, and is what he said to the class president Kobayashi while she was busy with the work for the school festival. This attitude quickly becomes defeatism and escapism in the world outside of high school, and is indeed not far from what hikikomoris think about the world: A hostile place that is not worth wasting energy on. They would rather spend their days closed off in a virtual world than interact with reality.
It is quite eerie how some mild cynicism, characteristic of quite a lot of teenagers, could quickly turn into the toxin leading to the life of a hikikomori.
9. Attitude to Love
"Go to hell, bitches!"
This is what Yamazaki said with regards to women. A clear disdain and hatred, it seems. It would not deviate much from the overarching theme of misanthropy displayed by hikikomoris. But again, is this their true self? Or are they sexual deviants that crave the opposite sex only for carnal desires, as displayed much throughout the series by Satou's delusions as well?
Such an interpretation would fail to account for why Satou did not take advantage of Hitomi in various occasions, or how Yamazaki rejects Nanako's advances, or how Satou rejected Misaki's confession towards the end. It is clear that hikikomoris are more than the perverts the society would portray them as. What they desire is companionship, someone to convince them that the world is not as horrible as it seems.
It would even stand to say that hikikomoris are not sexual deviants because they are hikikomoris, and they subscribe to an extremely pessimistic view of the world. I am sure for most pessimists, what they eventually hope is not actually a world that verifies their ideas, but a world that comes out to prove them wrong, as entitled as it may sound. Pessimists are often the most devout idealists, and this couldn't be more true for hikikomoris. Exactly the same goes for their craving for pure love, instead of the commercialized and sexualized version of cheap and shallow "love" that is promoted in the modern world. Thus, when they see their ideals getting destroyed, such as the time when Yamazaki saw his girl friend lie to him to go to the fireworks with another guy, he is more than crushed.
10. Attitude to Death
"I don't want to meet anyone. I don't want to answer my cell phone. I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to live, but dying is such a hassle."
It is truly when one comes face to face with death that he would be honest about everything. And indeed it should be that, despite living a life largely built on escapism, when a hikikomori faces with death, he cannot escape anymore. Or can he?
The "offline meeting" arc of NHK struck me as the most expressive few episodes in the whole show. It is the climax of the show, where the zenith of Satou's path as a hikikomori occurs. Or rather, I should say it is the opposite of a climax, an anti-climax of sorts, as Satou, wishing to change his life for the better and face his long buried affection for Hitomi, decides to tag along on the trip Hitomi is going for. Unbeknownst to him, Hitomi intended this to be the last trip of her life, going to the "island closest to heaven" to take her own life due to her depression.
A person reaching the end of the route of severe depression or pain, wishing for death, would become almost fearless towards the end. He has nothing to fear anymore, once he has overcome the barrier of death. Despite the continual depression of hikikomoris, they have a strange attachment to live. Perhaps they know that they are a failure and burden to the society and their families, and wallow in guilt and self-loathing all day, but the primordial fear that surrounds death is not dispelled, and they would cling onto the last trace of life left in them, for they fear, and the best thing they can do is, unfortunately, fear.
The will to live is biologically inherent in every human, hikikomori or not, so much as the drive for sex and craving for food. As we witness towards the end, even when life looked the most miserable to them, the party looking for death had a small but undying hope that things will turn out for the better, and they would not need to commit suicide. Despite being played around like a fool for the duration of the trip, and finding out the Hitomi has never had him in her heart. Even when he decided to take his own life together with Hitomi, somehow like a romantic suicide, Hitomi's fiance shows up at the last second, denying him of this possibility. Yet, Satou could not bring himself to actually die, but instead letting out a pathetic scream down the cliff. Perhaps the quote from Yamazaki concludes this feeling of fear:
"People like us [hikikomoris/otakus] aren't qualified to be involved in such a dramatic incident as suicide. No matter how depressed we are, no matter how much we suffer, we will just come back and live idiotically every day."
It is at this point that Satou realized why he has not taken his life yet, and why he would never be able to. It turns out that even in the face of death, a hikikomori is so filled with anxiety and inferiority that he cannot go forward, all the while escaping from the society and shutting themselves in a room, like a dying patient relying on life support machines to sustain what's left in a shell of a human body. The world of hikikomoris is truly at the brink of absurdity, yet they drag on, like zombies, because they fear.
11. The World Around Hikikomoris
Apart from looking at hikikomoris, NHK also features a range of side characters that represents the society around them.
What happens when one feels worthless? How does one gain some sense of worth? The simple solution is to find someone even more worthless than you and abuse them. This is probably the reason why bullies exist, and why they are so relentless. When a person reaches the end of their sense of self-esteem, the will to look for someone to belittle grows stronger than ever. NHK places the characters around Satou and Yamazaki cleverly to expose this fact.
Hitomi: The working class
If hikikomori tendencies stem from laziness and inability to work and fit in as a functional member of the society, then supposedly a member of the working class, or rather, one with a stable and well-paying job, like Hitomi, working as a civil servant, would be something to dream of. However, the portrayal of the hardships of her life seem to point out why hikikomoris cannot accept the aspect of having a job in the society. Her life is far from rosy, and what she imagined would be ideal. She has a creative and inquisitive mind, wanting to fight against the "conspiracy" that surrounds every inexplicably unfortunate happenstances of the world. Yet, her job basically forces her to stay low, and when she tries to improve on the status quo by suggesting revolutionary changes, she would be silenced and isolated.
Moreover, the prospect of having a lover is not as rosy as it seems either. She feels even more lonely as her fiance puts work over caring for her, never trying to listen and understand her personally. He is a perfectly successful person, dedicated to his work and looks nice, but this very perfection leaves no space for mutual connection between Hitomi and him. Even when Hitomi eventually falls into depression, having to take various anti-depressants, and eventually went on to participate in a suicide pact, he never notices till the last second.
Why did Hitomi find Satou to chat before her "offline meeting"? It is precisely the possibility of finding someone whom she can extract a small sense of self-worth out of that drove her to find him. This is apparent when she never drops the small references to how Satou is a hikikomori every time she meets him. But to condemn her is not totally justified either. Maybe she is simply trying to relive the times she had spent with Satou in high school, where she had no worries about life.
To Satou, Hitomi is exactly what he always calls her: Senpai (upperclassman), someone unreachable, of a higher rank than he is. Despite holding disdain against the society, hikikomoris never let go of the prospect of being re-accepted into the society. To him, she also is the embodiment of regrets, of how he held the cool and aloft image in front of her and never reached out. It seems that she is the perfect analogy of what living the "normal" and "successful" life is to hikikomoris, and the way Satou idolizes him is quite symbolic indeed.
Kobayashi: The Marginalized
As apparent from the presentation of Hitomi, hikikomoris are not the only "losers" that suffer in the world of NHK. From a hard working class president, Kobayashi has fallen into the lure of pyramid schemes in order to fund his brother's hikikomori lifestyle (or lack of one, to be frank). Her brother shares a similar attitude with Satou, only even more entrenched in the depths of illusions of grandiose from the MMORPGs mentioned previously. He never leaves his room, and completely relies on his sister to bring him food literally to his doorstep to sustain himself in the completely enclosed room only lit by the computer screen.
Kobayashi seems to be a reflection of how hikikomoris not only damage themselves, but also affect people who care about him, whom a lot of hikikomoris, drowned in cynical thoughts, often neglect. I for one had quite some disgust for Kobayashi's dirty tactics to lure the main characters into the scheme along with her, because a pyramid scheme is, by its own nature, a scheme where one benefits from abusing others. Nevertheless I could not take some if not most of it back when the story behind her struggles were revealed.
Yet on the other hand, we see the fears, the reasons hikikomoris hate the society manifest themselves on the fate of Kobayashi. She was an upright person, willing to work and motivate others to do so under her leadership, and shared her own portion of hardships in finding a job after graduation. Yet, company upon company shut down in front of her, and she never gained a stable job. With her brother's degenerate lifestyle, the blame could not be completely placed on her when she was lured by the promise of freedom from monetary stresses by simply joining an organizations and promoting its products. All the excuses of how the job market is fierce, and with no skills a hikikomori cannot possibly find a job are all coming true somehow.
Her story (or rather her brother's story) does end on an uplifting, albeit rather sardonic note though: When Kobayashi's organization was exposed and its head arrested, she was truly out of ways to sustain herself, let alone her brother. In the midst of despair, her brother stopped receiving food from Kobayashi. It was only near the brink of starving to death that her brother dragged his half-dead body out of the house and found a job. The solution was in front of the Kobayashis' eyes the whole time...
In the relentless attempts of Kobayashi in trying to drag the main characters into her scheme, we again see how, once a person is at his/her wit's end, when he/she can only go on by being the villain and abuse others for psychological/economical well-being, he/she would not hesitate to do so. Amidst Satou's journey of trying to redeem himself as a hikikomori, this plotline antagonizes Kobayashi very severely. But, upon my second viewing, I find that it is more apt to say that she is again a symbol for the hostile environment around hikikomoris, which feeds back into itself, creating more and more hikikomoris.
Misaki: Mutual Abuse
"Society wants unemployed hikikomoris to exist, because people always need someone they are comfortable looking down upon."
In the first viewing of this show, I almost missed the backstory to Misaki Nakahara, the cute heroine who almost seems too good for Satou, knocking on his door to ask him to participate in her hikikomori reformation project, bringing food to him when he ran out of money, pretending to be his lover to fool his mother... Just because she enjoyed looking down on Satou from her hilltop mansion down into his measly tiny flat like a voyeur. However, one could almost say that Misaki acts out of subconsciousness, telling from the way she reacts when Satou falls out with her eventually, discovering her spying into his daily life. As someone who empathized with Satou more initially, I too was covered by annoyance and anger to listen to anything she had to say.
Misaki was portrayed pretty much as a foil to Satou initially: A clean, attractive, well-off and well-mannered girl coming from the upper class. It does seem really ridiculous almost that she would have her eye on Satou, the "failure of a human being" (in Misaki's words) that he is. As we stand on Satou's point of view, other characters gradually open up to him. People such as Yamazaki, Hitomi, Kobayashi all have their stories and struggles told to us in one way or another. However, Misaki, despite appearing the earliest in the show, remained a mystery for the majority of the show. It is as if she was hiding something from Satou, and by proxy, us. As we venture through the journey of Satou through his attempts to escape from being a hikikomori, we almost learn nothing of her until the very final episodes.
It is not until the last episode that Misaki's backstory was fully revealed. Her flashbacks to her mother committing suicide (off of a cliff, just like Satou attempted to), and the domestic abuse she had to endure for years all came falling into one whole picture. Upon the second viewing, when I chose to adopt a less judgmental and subjective angle and tried to understand Misaki, I found that it was equally plausible to stand on her side as well, as I was (and to an extent, still am) someone like her.
It turns out that Misaki is not that much of a foil to Satou. Much as Satou, Hitomi and Kobayashi are both victims of the society, Misaki is no exception. Since her traumatic experience with her family, she has closed herself off from others. The project that she organizes with Satou was merely a disguise, to allow her to know Satou better in order to pry into his weaknesses and, though the process, be reassured that someone is more pathetic than she is.
If Hitomi and Kobayashi would represent groups of people in the society, Misaki would better be deemed as a symbolism of the entire attitude towards hikikomoris. Under a facade of helping them get back to society and be functional, they never would want them to be surpassed by the people they are helping, since the very purpose of them helping the hikikomoris would then be gone. But can we really blame them? After all, they are acting out of instinct: to find comfort in knowing that there are people who fare much worse than them, and almost everything that humans do eventually would boil down to this sole motive. More or less.
12. Conclusion: The Salvation of hikikomoris?
"Save you? No I can't do that. You are the only one who can save yourself." -Bakemonogatari
NHK ends on a really anticlimactic note, just as most of the arcs in the story itself: Once a hikikomori runs out of money, he will no longer be able to sustain himself, and only then will they crawl out of their room to look for work. So anticlimactic that it almost resembles a hikikomori's life. It turns out that they are not trapped by the society itself, but their own escapism from the potential that they will be rejected and ostracized, which feeds back upon itself: The more they isolate themselves, the more they are detached from the outer world, the more they are ostracized.
However, this show does not serve to condemn. It is almost like a documentary, except the documented is not examined with the lens of science but with literature, and depictions of the psychology of such people. This alone speaks more than any horrifying statistics or photo evidence of the squalor of a hikikomori's room would ever hope to achieve. There are times of sadness and empathy for Satou's loneliness, of frustration and irritation for his cringeworthy acts, of happiness for him improving on his attitude a bit, just to be followed by annoyance of him falling back to his ground state. And at the end of the day, as a borderline hikikomori myself, NHK understands, comforts and warns, which is what a show about hikikomoris will ever need.
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Maybe there really is a conspiracy by the NHK, and everyone you have ever met stands on their side, leaving you all alone. Even so, you can fight and live on, and by god you better put on a damn good fight. |
