The Hikikomori Experience

 

The Japanese word “hikikomori” translates to “pulling inwards”. The term was coined in 1998 by Japanese psychiatrist Professor Tamaki Saito to describe a burgeoning social phenomenon among young people who, feeling the extreme pressures to succeed in their school, work and social lives and fearing failure, decided to withdraw from society. At the time, it was estimated that around a million people were choosing to not leave their homes or interact with others for at least six months, some for years. It is now estimated that around 1.2% of Japan’s population are hikikomori.

 
When this trend was identified in the mid-90s, it was used to describe young, male recluses. However, research has shown that there is an increasing number of middle-aged hikikomori. In addition, many female hikikomori are not acknowledged because women are expected to adopt domestic roles and their withdrawal from society can go unnoticed.
 
Japanese manga researchers Ulrich Heinze and Penelope Thomas explain that, in recent years, there has been a subtle change in how people understand the phenomena of hikikomori. This shift is manifested through increased awareness of the complexity of the hikikomori experience within the mainstream media and acknowledgement of social pressures that can lead to social withdrawal. They suggest that the refusal to conform to social “norms” (such as career progression, marriage and parenthood) can be understood as a radical act of introversion and self-discovery.
 
In line with this image change, some hikikomori have rich creative lives and this can sustain vital human connection. Many people are now living in compulsory isolation because of COVID-19. While this is not the same as being hikikomori, we can learn from the different different ways in which these people have navigated through, or are still navigating through, experiences of isolation.
 
Ex-hikikomori artist Atsushi Watanabe explains that his three-year isolation began through “multiple stages of withdrawal from human relationships, which resulted in feeling completely isolated”. At one point, he remained in bed for over seven months. It wasn’t until he began to see the negative impact that his withdrawal was having on his mother, that he was able to leave his room and reconnect with the world.
 
Tell me your emotional scars is an ongoing creative project by Watanabe. In this project, people can submit anonymous messages on a website, sharing experiences of emotional pain. Watanabe renders the messages into concrete plates, which he then breaks and puts back together again using the traditional Japanese art of kintsugi.
 
Kinstugi involves the joining of broken ceramics using a lacquer mixed with powdered gold. It is also a philosophy that stresses the art of resilience. The breakage is not the end of the object or something to be hidden, but a thing to be celebrated as part of the object’s history.

 
Tell me your emotional scars can be understood as a sublimation of this emotional pain – conveying negative, asocial feelings through a process that is socially acceptable, positive and beautiful. These works are a testament to suffering, but one that celebrates the possibility of healing and transformation.
 
For Watanabe, becoming hikikomori is often a manifestation of emotional scars, and he wants to create alternative ways of understanding unresolved past experiences. Watanabe asks us to “listen to the shaky voices that cannot usually be heard”. Listening to, and sharing experiences of hardship and even pain is one way to address the rise in loneliness that has resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Artist Nito Souji became a hikikomori because he wanted to spend his time doing “only things that are worthwhile”. Souji has spent ten years in isolation developing his creative practice, leading to a video game that explores the hikikomori experience.
 
The trailer for the video game Pull Stay opens with a scene in which three people break into the home of a hikikomori. The player must fights off intruders as the hikikomori’s robot alter-ego by, for example, frying them in tempura batter or firing water melons at them.
 
The aim of Pull Stay is to protect the home and seclusion of the hikikomori character. In doing so, the player begins to embody a visceral need for privacy. Pull Stay is testament to the creative outcomes that can come from carving out a profound sense of “headspace”. Souji explains his creative process as, “having hope and making a little progress every day. That worked for me”.
 
Despite choosing to withdraw from society, sustaining hope and indirect connection through creative practice has helped artists such as Souji use this time for self-development. His aim is, and always has been, to be able to reenter society, but on his own terms.
 
Well-known Japanese entrepreneur Kazumi Ieiri, himself a recovered recluse, describes the hikikomori experience as “a situation where the knot is untied between you and society”. But he continues, there is no need to hurry to retie social bonds, rather to “tie small knots, little by little”.
 
The process of returning to “normal life” might be gradual for many of us, but creative expression could be a powerful way of to both share experiences of isolation and to reconnect with others within and beyond lockdown.
 
Hikikomori artists – how Japan’s extreme recluses find creativity and self-discovery in isolation. By Jessica Holtaway. The Conversation, March 2, 2021.

One day in 2009, a nervous young man rushed out of his home in Incheon, South Korea, head held down. Having not showered in weeks, his skin was oily, his hair unkempt. The loungewear he had on, one of only two sets he owned, was badly stained. He knew he smelled. But he’d run out of necessities, so he’d have to go to the shop down the street. It’d just be five minutes. All he had to do was stock up on instant ramen, Coke and cigarettes, and then he’d be back.

 
After picking up his supplies, the man walked home. But as he was approaching the front entrance, a panic spread over him: he didn’t know the passcode to open the door. It had been so long since he’d gone outside, he’d forgotten how to get back in.
 
At this time, Kim Jae-ju was 29 years old and in the most extreme phase of his social seclusion. He’d already spent, off and on but mostly on, two years in his bedroom, and he would go on to spend another eight in the same manner. In this three-by-three-metre box, with little more furniture than a bed, desk and chair, Kim kept confined for close to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year – eating and smoking and staring at his computer screen.
 
He left only when he absolutely had to – to run to the bathroom, meet the food delivery driver, refill supplies and, very occasionally, go to work to earn a bit of money. Though Kim lived with his family, his room down the hall from his parents’ and younger sister’s, he saw them just once a month. He’d synchronize his comings and goings to avoid everyone, rushing out and back in when they were at work or asleep.
 
Time passed in this way for a decade. The door opened and closed. Outside, the world changed, but inside, Kim did not. No matter how many times he left his room, he always, and it seemed to him, inevitably, returned. “When I look back on that period, I feel incredibly sad,” he says, now 41. “I lost ten years of my life.”
 
In South Korea, people like Kim are known as hikikomori. A Japanese word that cannot be precisely translated, hikikomori essentially means “to pull back” and “shut oneself in”. South Koreans first borrowed the term when the phenomenon was newly emerging in the country in the early 2000s, and it is still more popularly used today than the Korean eundoonhyeong oiteollie.
 
 
Typically, hikikomori are young adults, mostly men, in their teens, 20s and 30s. They reside alone or, more often, stay holed up in a bedroom at their parents’ home. Because hiding from public view is their very motive, it’s hard to know exactly how many there are in South Korea, but the government estimates around 320,000. Some psychologists and former hikikomori, however, believe there may be many more that go unnoticed and unaccounted for. Some estimate the total is closer to 500,000. Others say over a million.
 
The term hikikomori was coined in 1998 by Japanese psychologist Saitō Tamaki, and is used to refer to both the person and their condition. In his book Social Withdrawal: Adolescence Without End, Saitō defines hikikomori as “those who withdraw entirely from society and stay within their own homes for more than six months… and for whom other psychiatric disorders do not better explain the primary causes of this condition.” In 2003, the Japanese government came out with its own, very similar definition. In extreme cases, the period of withdrawal can span a decade, as it did for Kim, or longer.
 
Because there are no standardised criteria for hikikomori, who qualifies is up for debate. The stereotype that has captured global attention looks much like Kim – a twenty-something East Asian male who hasn’t socialised in so long he’s completely forgotten how. But in addition to this “hardcore” type, who never leave their room or speak to anyone, some researchers have hypothesised a “soft” type, who might occasionally talk to other people. They have also proposed a distinction between so-called “secondary” hikikomori, whose social avoidance can be attributed to an underlying psychiatric disorder – say, depression or obsessive compulsive disorder – and “primary” hikikomori, who do not have another condition. Others, like Saitō, argue that only the latter can really be considered hikikomori, rendering the primary-secondary classification moot. “This alludes to directional uncertainty on whether prolonged social withdrawal is caused by, correlated with, or causes psychiatric disorders,” researchers write in a 2019 article in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
 
 
Although Japan was the first to identify, name and study hikikomori, cases have since been reported across Asia – in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and beyond, but perhaps most prominently in South Korea, Japan’s closest neighbour both geographically and culturally. Whether the phenomenon occurs outside of Asia is a point of controversy. Many researchers say that it can and does, pointing to documented instances in the US, Europe and other countries. Some, though, contend the syndrome is “culture-bound”, meaning it arises out of, and is unique to, the cultural context of Asian countries, with their particular emphasis on notions of shame, conformity, hierarchy, family structure and individual industrialism for national success. In recent years, this idea that hikikomori is “culture-bound” has given way to the broader “culture-influenced”.
 
Lee Ah Dang is a counseling centre in Seoul that specializes in hikikomori. Its clinical psychologists have treated dozens of hikikomori and say that, while their patients have varied widely in their individual conditions and rehabilitation needs, most have something in common: they feel they can’t cope in South Korea’s ultra-competitive society.
 

 
Lead psychologist Park Dae-ryeong says that this atmosphere, along with a poor job market, has put overwhelming pressure on people to perform, while disincentivising collaboration, discouraging the pursuit of passions and exacerbating feelings of inadequacy, disappointment and anxiety. Many young South Koreans compare their lives to running on a hamster wheel, because in order to get the suitable partner, the good job, the nice home, it feels like they can never take a break.
 
It doesn’t help that South Korean society’s concept of success is so rigidly defined. Counsellors at Lee Ah Dang explain that because hikikomori live outside the mainstream, they have often been subjected to some form of ostracism or marginalisation. They may have been bullied for low academic achievement, criticised for their shy personality, or pushed to conform to convention – and then rejected for failing to do so.
 
In Kim Ho-seon’s case, being more interested in hair and makeup than maths and science meant he didn’t get along well in secondary school and ended up dropping out. “It didn’t feel right doing things I didn’t want to do,” the 25-year-old says. After struggling with judgment and stigmatisation, he ended up calling the police to ask for help with his psychological problems.
 
Similarly, Yoo Seung-gyu, 27, says his goals didn’t live up to South Korea’s standards. He dreamed of being a content creator, he says, but was belittled until he lost all confidence. Lee Seung-taek, 24, says that not having any lofty plans for the future made him a social outcast. All he wanted was to earn a decent living and lead a simple life. But that wasn’t ambitious enough for everyone else – except for his father. When Lee was 16, his dad became ill, and in 2016 he died. “I became evasive. I ran away,” he says. “I could only achieve so much without my father, so why should I even try?”
 
For Kim Jae-ju, his retreat from public life came after the breakdown of a relationship. Before that, he was on the traditional road toward marriage and children and saw himself as a different person: outgoing, talkative, friendly. In retrospect, he now thinks it was all a show. Trying so earnestly to be the confident extrovert was just a way of covering up that, in truth, he was not. He began his withdrawal by turning down friends' invitations to have dinner or drinks. That escalated to changing his phone number and not telling anyone but his family.
 
Finally, Kim says, he “crawled into his room” and entered seclusion. He gained 27 kilos and his skin became dotted with acne. His room deteriorated, too. Disposable noodle cups and empty bottles and cans collected in heaps. Ash and dust cloaked the furniture, and the once-white walls turned a dingy brown. Looking back on his confinement, Kim says he’s repulsed. “I started becoming complacent in there,” he says. “One day became two days, then three days, then a year. I started thinking, ‘Maybe this lifestyle is okay?’ And my new friends just became the computer inside my room.”
 
 
If hikikomori are the misfit underdogs of their stories, their computers are their steadfast sidekicks. While excessive tech usage doesn’t cause hikikomori, researchers say, it does help make their near-total confinement possible. What previously required some interaction with society – feeding, clothing and entertaining oneself – now calls for nothing but the internet.
 
It’s for this reason that some researchers suggest the phenomenon is not so much culture-bound as it is society-bound – a reaction, perhaps, to the internet-enabled changes that make for an increasingly global society. “Hikikomori could represent the clinical answer to a social evolution,” write Italian psychiatrists in a 2020 paper in the International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice. This echoes the suggestion by Japanese researchers in a 2018 edition of the World Psychiatric Association’s official journal: “Within decades, following further advances in internet society, more and more people may come to live a hikikomori-like existence.”
 
Fourteen years ago, when Kim first began retreating, “untact”, a portmanteau of “un” and “contact”, was a yet-to-be-named concept in South Korea. Now, it's a full-blown industry, making it easier than ever for hikikomori to live invisibly. “In Korea, it is so convenient to live alone,” Yoo says. “We have an amazing delivery and on-demand system. The whole environment, from restaurants to entertainment, facilitates hikikomori, and everything caters to the single lifestyle.”
 
When hikikomori need to eat, they can order takeout with Yogiyo or Baedal Minjok, the country’s two major food-delivery apps, paying digitally and selecting contactless service so that the driver skips the face-to-face handoff and instead alerts them with a text that their meal is waiting on their doorstep (although often their mothers cook their meals and leave them outside their rooms). When hikikomori need to buy essentials, they can shop on the e-commerce site Coupang (although again, often their mothers shop for them). When they want to entertain themselves, they can watch a movie on Netflix or play a game online. And when they want to engage in some form of social interaction, they can turn to the non-threatening environment of forums, where they can shield themselves with anonymity.
 
When he was secluded in his room, Kim’s companions were the characters in the dramas he streamed and the vloggers he watched on YouTube. They were the porn stars he was intimate with and the avatars in the first-person shooter games he played. Aside from one friend he texted from his former life, the only other people he talked to were fellow gamers. While playing Sudden Attack, his favourite game, he would type to them in the chat. It wasn’t anything meaningful, little more than a jumble of gaming slang, but it was routine. After five years of casual chatting, there was one gamer in particular, whose real name he never knew, with whom he thought he’d formed something of a connection.
 
 But, in Kim’s eyes, his most important connection of all was the search engine. The internet made his room feel deceptively expansive, as each new search result led him in a different direction, down another rabbit hole, to another discovery. “My biggest friend and enemy was Google,” he says. “It never gave me the time to feel bored. I was always entertained. Whenever I searched for something, it was always there.”
 
If technology enables hikikomori to stay in, however, it can also give them the push to get out. It was when Yoo came across a study online mentioning a rehabilitation group called K2 International that he says he finally gained the courage to seek help. Kim Ho-seon says he was binging YouTube when he happened to see an ad for the same organisation that inspired him to escape his self-imprisonment. Within a month, both had moved out of their rooms and into K2. After a year, Yoo even became a programme manager there.

The foundational activity at K2 is communal living. Founded in Yokohama, Japan, in 1988, K2 has since expanded to Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, where, for the past eight years, it has run a shared house on a quiet street in northern Seoul. Here, 14 hikikomori, including Yoo and Kim Ho-seon, live together in a three-storey brick building, where the staff encourage them to establish healthy habits, complete assigned chores, keep up their hygiene and follow a routine. With funding from an organisation called the Korea Youth Foundation, K2 is able to offer the housing rent-free to some residents.
 
In addition to supporting communal living, the Korea Youth Foundation co-ordinates between K2, Lee Ah Dang and a nonprofit called Gong Gam In to provide hikikomori with one-on-one counseling, group therapy, activity clubs, employment training, job search assistance, socialisation practice and educational programming like lectures and creative workshops. Gong Gam In also manages a support group for the parents of hikikomori.

 
There is scant evidence on how best to treat hikikomori. Because the field lacks wide-scale systematic review, there has been very little research that would make it possible to know which of the variously offered treatments, from psychotherapy to medication, are effective. What is known is that because hikikomori vary so widely, individualised treatment is necessary. To that end, further international study is crucial. If psychiatrists can work towards a greater clinical understanding of the condition, it will promote not only earlier detection, but also improved assessment and services.
 
 
Technology may have a bigger role to play, too. Some researchers have been trying to figure out how to hijack hikikomori’s computer usage for interventionist purposes, perhaps by using augmented reality to entice people outside, introducing therapeutic gaming to build self-esteem or trying out VR exposure therapy to practice skills like maintaining eye contact and being in group settings.
 
But advocates contend that the most important thing is for the government to do more. “There is no national support to help hikikomori,” says Yeo In-joong, the first psychiatrist to identify reclusive types in South Korea. In a 2013 Korean study of hikikomori, 20 per cent believed that, had they been helped earlier, they wouldn't be in their situation.
 
It sounds silly, Kim Jae-ju says, but the online encounter that propelled him toward rehabilitation was a reality TV competition for aspiring K-pop stars. “I saw this young kid putting so much effort into achieving their dream,” he recalls. “That made me realise the reality I was in, and start to question what I was doing with my life.”
 
First, he got to work cleaning his room. Then, he turned his attention to himself. It had been so long since he’d been a part of society, he no longer knew how to behave or what to say. But he did know where he could begin to relearn. From that point on, Kim dedicated nearly all of his time to readying himself for the outside world. He watched TED Talks on self-acceptance and empathy, and YouTube videos about the art of conversation, weight loss and skincare. He studied up on all the new slang he'd missed while in seclusion. He Googled "how to tell a joke". For Kim, it all felt as heady as a drug. For the first time in a long time, he was thinking about the future – and was looking forward to it.
 
But when he shared his new plans with his Sudden Attack buddy, he was met with disinterest. “Even though I had been playing games with this person for the past five years, he didn’t care at all,” Kim says – which gave him all the more motivation to get out. After months of preparation, he was finally ready. Venturing out of his room, his first voluntary outing to a public event in a decade was to attend a lecture in Seoul about self-esteem.
 
Kim continued to seek out social activities that would help him reintegrate. He wrote and published a book, Unexpectedly Hikikomori for 10 Years. He lent his expertise to government officials, who were growing alarmed by this once-hidden phenomenon now emerging from the shadows, and its potential societal impact. He also started advising reintegration groups and mentoring other hikikomori.
 
Ultimately, Kim’s hard work led him to the chance to launch his own rehabilitation venture, a space with food and drinks and games, where all the people who reminded him of his former self could come and take a peek at life beyond four walls. Partnering with a social enterprise company that had some government funding, Kim opened a cafe he called Playground. He also started making plans to move into his own place in Seoul. He couldn’t wait.
 
 “Korea loves fads,” he says. “When there was the figure skating queen Kim Yuna, everyone sent their kids to skating lessons. When there is a golf star, everyone is interested in golf lessons. I wanted to be that successful example for hikikomori. My dream was to be standing outside the cafe and to see someone who used to come here walk past. And they would say hi and tell me they got a job.”
 
In 2020, hikikomori found themselves confronted with a new reason to fear the world outside their rooms. In January, reports of the novel coronavirus in China took over news headlines, and, soon after, the infection appeared in South Korea.
 
It would be easy to assume that amid a public health crisis that makes shared spaces so dangerous, hikikomori, already accustomed to solitude, would fare better than most. But hikikomori are not immune to pandemic pain. For those currently secluded, there is a risk their isolation may only get more prolonged and more severe, making it harder to reintegrate later. And for those who have begun efforts at rehabilitation, there is the risk of relapse.
 
The Korea Youth Foundation’s work was suspended for much of 2020. As more and more was cancelled, recovering hikikomori found themselves with less and less to do. “There was nothing fun or meaningful anymore,” says Yoo, the programme manager at K2. “Some people were sad because their opportunities were gone. Some were depressed. I felt concerned for them.”
 
Ahn Yoon-seung, a resident at K2, had applied for a role as a cafeteria worker at a secondary school and was anxiously awaiting a job offer. But because of Covid-19, it was delayed by over a month. He started to spiral. “I saw myself back in my old life, not doing anything,” he says. “I was worried that all the things I’d planned for might fizzle out, that nothing would work out for me.” Kim Ho-seon also wondered if he might be set back. “I don’t identify as hikikomori now, but I could return to that lifestyle at any moment,” he says.
 
Since the start of the pandemic, psychologists at Lee Ah Dang say they’ve observed increased stress, loneliness and despair among hikikomori. In one case, a woman who had improved so much that she was ready to find a job ended up completely regressing. Because of Covid-19, she couldn’t receive face-to-face assistance for two weeks, a gap that proved too long. “The pressure of doing it on her own was too much,” says Han Chae-won, another psychologist at Lee Ah Dang. “She couldn’t bear it. So she gave up.”
 
Lee Ah Dang switched its individual counselling from in-person to Zoom, but found it simply was not as effective. Some hikikomori even declined to participate. “Because they’re hikikomori, you might think that they would prefer Zoom or phone calls, but ironically, they don’t,” says Park, the lead psychologist. “They’re not used to it.” A 2014 study of male hikikomori across four countries found significantly more interest in in-person therapy than webcam therapy.

 
One reason for this may be privacy concerns. For many, talking from home means family members might be able to overhear. But most crucially, online meetings are not able to provide the same intensive therapy as in-person meetings. “When we met through Zoom, patients didn’t feel like they were really meeting me, and they didn’t have the same connection to me that they used to have,” says Lee Seung-min, another psychologist at Lee Ah Dang. “With in-person, you can look into each other’s eyes, you can hear each other’s breath – it’s more humane. With Zoom, it feels like there is more distance, so some people became even more isolated and depressed.” It wasn’t long before the clinic abandoned virtual sessions.
 
Another challenge for service providers was the anxiety some hikikomori felt, as they witnessed outbreak after outbreak, over catching the virus. It seemed to them that a public health crisis was the worst possible time to rejoin society. Many who had previously been in touch with the Korea Youth Foundation to begin their rehabilitation process ended up backtracking, according to co-ordinator Park Jae-young, with about 30 per cent postponing their start dates or no longer answering the centre’s phone calls. “For some of these individuals, the pandemic might have given them an excuse not to recover,” he says. “Because of this long period of time without any meetings, it worsened their fear of society.”
 
For those considering reintegration, he says, timing is everything: “It takes a lot of courage for them to ask for help.” If systems and staff aren’t ready the moment they do, there’s a good chance they’ll quit. To be hoping so desperately for change, and to have Covid-19 push it back, can be catastrophic.
 
And it’s not only current hikikomori that care providers are worried about. “Everyone has this small desire within to seclude from society... In this era of the coronavirus, it kind of ignites that tendency,” says Nam Ki-woong, manager of the Korea Youth Foundation. “We are concerned that if the pandemic continues on for a long time, there might be even more hikikomori created.”
 
As the pandemic progressed, Kim could see cafes were suffering, but he couldn’t help but hope that his might survive the slump. Despite multiple postponements, he forged ahead and opened Playground in May. But the dream was short-lived. Ministry resources were redirected. Funds dwindled. On some days, the cafe only saw one or two visitors. When it was forced to shutter in October, Kim was let go.
 
Now, with his life on hold, Kim finds himself exactly where he was before – in his room. “It’s disappointing to be tied to my room when I had an opportunity to get out. I’ve been waiting for this moment, to be part of society, for many years,” he says. “Physically, I am used to being at home, but psychologically, I am nervous and worried it will trigger me to repeat the isolated life.” When he thinks about those ten years, though, he knows he won’t.
 
Not long after seeing the K-pop episode that changed his life, Kim watched another online video that both terrified and galvanised him. This one was about eternal return, the idea that the dead are destined to repeat their former errors again and again in the afterlife. “I was afraid of living a life where I wasn’t able to communicate with other people, a life where I was secluded in my room, a life where I couldn’t speak out about the things that I want to speak out about, a life filled with low self-esteem,” he says. “To think that I had to live that same life over again felt miserable.”
 
Reflecting on the pandemic, Kim makes a comparison. “Someone who’s been living in the cold climate for a long period of time, like I have, is able to continue on in the cold weather," he says. "But if that person is from a hot place, they will find it hard to adapt to the suddenly freezing climate. I would say I’m numb to the coronavirus situation because I am so used to being secluded in my room. But I wouldn’t say I’m completely indifferent to it, because I’ve experienced, briefly, the warmth of being part of society.”
 
Updated 04.03.21, 08:45 GMT: This piece has been corrected to reflect that government estimates of hikikomori are 320,000.
 
They couldn’t go outside for years. Then Covid-19 trapped them again. By Ann Babe. Wired, March 3, 2021.

 

                 

      Loneliness is a big issue in Japanese society. Especially among its older population, it has become severe plight. Among elderly men who live alone, over 15% regularly have days when they don’t speak to no one, while 30% have no reliable people in their lives.
 
Japan’s aging population poses unique social challenges — but it’s not just the elderly. The so-called phenomenon of hikikomori, modern-day hermits or social recluses, has grown dramatically.
 
In 2010, the Japanese government estimated that there are 700,000 individuals living as hikikomori within Japan, with an average age of 31. Now, according to new research, the problem has become more common in many parts of the world — and we need a better diagnosis for it.
 
In the late 1990s, Japan collectively awoke to find that a large number of its adolescents and young adults were having almost no social contact at all, save for some communication with their families.
 
It was called hikikomori (or ひきこもり in Japanese), meaning “pulling inward, being confined”. It was characterized as “acute social withdrawal”, or more colloquially — being a shut-in. Hikikomori essentially withdraw from social life without any underlying physical or mental condition.
 
It’s important to note that this is not the run of the mill “I don’t want to see people today” introvert — the condition is characterized by extreme social isolation.
 
This condition also rarely changes for the better. Interviews and surveys with hikikomori have revealed that hikikomori feel strong levels of psychological distress and angst and, oftentimes, the mere thought of renouncing this lifestyle can produce distress.
 
Social withdrawal means hikikomori stay indoors almost every day, and they might live with their families or on their own. This is not just a form of social anxiety, most researchers studying it are pushing to classify it as a pathological condition.
 
A community‐based survey published in 2010 reported that the prevalence of hikikomori was approximately 1.2% of the Japanese population, and yet a consensus about what triggers this type of condition has not yet been reached yet.
 
It seems to affect both genders equally and seems to often be connected to previous trauma or unpleasant social experiences (including academic failure). It appears to affect middle- and upper-middle-class families, but that might also be the case because these families can afford to fully support an isolated son or daughter, whereas in families who aren’t as well-off, potential hikikomori would be forced to go to work.
 
Hikikomori is similar to the social withdrawal exhibited by some people with autism spectrum disorders, but no definite connection has been established. According to Michael Zielenziger‘s book, Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, the syndrome is more closely related to post-traumatic stress disorder, though published research suggests that this is speculative.
 
There is no underlying mental condition triggering this phenomenon (this is actually an important aspect in defining hikikomori), but it’s not entirely clear if this is a mental condition in itself or only an extreme form of behavior. To make matters even worse, the resulting social isolation, which is often coupled with shame or guilt coming from the family, are all barriers in identifying and characterizing these individuals.
 
Anecdotally, many instances of hikikomori appear connected to unpleasant or even traumatic childhood experiences. There may also be a link with dysfunctional family dynamics. Underwhelming achievements, particularly when combined with high family expectations, also seem to be factors in the development of hikikomori. Some particular social characteristics also seem to be at play.
 
It is no coincidence that the phenomenon first took shape in Japan. Hikikomori has been linked with a breakdown of social cohesion and a decay in social relationships, rapid urbanization, and quick technological progress — all of which are prevalent in Japan. These changes can dissociate individuals from society, making them feel out of place in any social situation. Individuals with a particularly predisposed psyche and family situation are particularly at risk.
 
Overall, ongoing research suggests that intrapersonal factors (self-esteem, emotional difficulties, impulse control, etc.) are greater risk factors than interpersonal ones (e.g., social anxiety, problematic peer relations, parent relationship difficulties, family functioning, etc.)
 
But there is one more important factor at play.

 
Technology, with internet and computer games at the forefront, appear to be linked with hikikomori.
 
The connection between internet and video games and hikikomori is still being researched, but it is considered, at the very least, a factor that can exacerbate this problem.
 
Hikikomori tend to use the internet profusely, they prefer communicating online, and they often (but not always) spend much of their time in the online world.
 
However, it would be too superficial to dismiss hikikomori as internet addicts. Internet use, and social media use, in particular, have exploded in recent years. A recent study found that 17–26.8% in adolescents in Hong Kong could be considered internet addicts, compared to around 1% which can be considered hikikomori. The age at which the phenomena start to emerge is also different: for internet addiction, it’s early teens. For hikikomori, it’s late teens and early adulthood.
 
It is possible that there is an overlap between internet addicts and hikikomori, but even then, it is not clear what causes what. Internet addiction can cause people to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, but the internet can also be a coping mechanism for people who have very limited communication with others. In addition, while the term “addiction” suggests something negative, internet addiction could actually be a good thing here.
 
According to some studies, the internet can actually improve the hikikomori’s quality of life, by offering a way to meet other people, including people with similar problems and common interests.
 
The internet is also sometimes the only way through which hikikomori interact with health professionals.
 
Nevertheless, according to Takahiro Kato, associate professor of psychiatry at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, video games and social media have reduced the amount of time that people spend outside and in social environments, which could serve as a gateway of sorts. The emergence of smartphones, food delivery services, and all services that reduce social interaction can also have a compounding effect on the issue. Essentially, you can live your entire life from your bed or desk and this is what many hikikomori are doing.
 
But although the phenomenon emerged and was defined in Japan and other parts of Asia, it’s long since become a global phenomenon — and one that’s not receiving sufficient attention.
 
 
Although the problem is still most prevalent in Japan, it has long since “spread” beyond the country’s borders. Previous studies reported the existence of Hikikomori in South Korea and Hong Kong, as well as the United States, Morocco, Oman, Italy, India, Finland and France.
 
Social isolation has been on the rise in many parts of the globe, and the phenomenon has taken an unexpected surge globally. But if the above-discussed causes are indeed to blame, this is hardly a surprising phenomenon.
 
Japan may be at the forefront of some social and technological changes, but many areas are slowly entering those phases, too. In particular, more and more parts of the world are becoming affluent enough to support young adults indefinitely (or young adults can work remotely, online, without needing to meet anyone face-to-face). It’s not always clear how hikikomori can survive or how they make money, but most come from middle-class or upper-middle-class families that can provide support for them. Needless to say, this adds an economic component to an already crippling social problem.
 
The cultural shift brought by technology (and the internet in particular) can also raise an abyss between children and their parents. Parents not being able to see the early signs of social isolation has been highlighted as an aggravating factor of this issue.
 
Interviews have shown that hikikomori are not only bound to Japan or Asia, and no single cultural aspect seems to be defining. It’s a complex phenomenon with complex causes.

 
Among the many aspects we still don’t understand about hikikomori, the lack of a clear definition is particularly pressing. This is where a new study comes in, helping define what makes a hikikomori
 
About a decade ago, a form of diagnostic interview was developed, but this was only semi-structured and fails to grasp the problem in its widest context. The idea of a young Japanese man, sad and isolated in his room, is not nearly sufficient to describe the problem. This definition is incomplete and insufficient, particularly as the phenomenon emerges in different countries and in different subsets of the population.
 
Hikikomori also isn’t necessarily permanent. A recent analysis defines it as “a psycho-sociological condition characterized by prolonged and severe social withdrawal for a time period of at least 6 months”.
 
Some researchers have suggested splitting hikikomori into two groups: the ‘hard’ ones, which almost never go out and don’t have face-to-face interactions with almost anyone, including their families, and ‘soft’ ones, which go out 1-3 days a week. Another classification suggests splitting them into those who live with their parents and those who live alone, as this could have somewhat different underlying causes.
 
Social phobia remains the core identity of hikikomori, but that’s just not enough to craft a definition. Instead, researchers from Kyushu University propose 4 key factors to define hikikomori as a pathological condition.
 
 
1.       First, the behavior of staying confined to home. The physical aspect of social withdrawal is the central and defining feature. The frequency of going outside still needs some further research, though, as there can be a great variety in this regard.
2.       Social interactions are not desired, but also not necessarily avoided. This comes in direct contradiction with previous surveys, but researchers say that in their interviews, hikikomori report having few meaningful social interactions — but deny avoiding social interaction. This would also indicate that hikikomori is not related to another social anxiety disorder.
3.       Functional impairment should be carefully assessed. Some sort of functional impairment is present in all pathological conditions, but this should be evaluated in its rightful context. Particularly as people spend more time in social isolation, feelings of loneliness or depression are more likely to appear, but these are not necessarily an underlying cause — they might be an effect.
4.       Lastly, hikikomori cannot be explained by other psychiatric disorders. It is clear that this disorder tends to co‐occur with other conditions and this relationship is still being investigated. It is also possible that hikikomori triggers a series of mental affections, but it may not be strictly caused by external diseases. The internet and other technological aspects cannot be considered causes by themselves.
 
 
 
A generation of hikikomori has already passed, and society is still not sure how to deal with this phenomenon.
 
The problem has been exacerbated by a lack of recognition. Parents rarely want to accept that there is an issue, or might be quick to overlook it as a “teen thing”. Accepting it as a reality and attempting to deal with it is a crucial first step.
 
Secondly, this issue is still poorly understood, partly because it is relatively new, but also because up until very recently, there have been very few studies conducted outside of Japan. This is starting to change and several promising studies are ongoing.
 
Thirdly, while there is likely no silver bullet, a therapeutic approach can help make a difference.
 
Particularly with advances in digital and communication technology that provide alternatives to in‐person social interaction, hikikomori may become an increasingly relevant concern. But these communication channels can also serve as leverage in helping deal with this phenomenon.
 
Some have argued that hikikomori might be a non-pathological or dissociative response to distress, but this phenomenon indicates a changing relationship between teenagers and their parents, as well as the surrounding environment. We’d be wise to pay it more attention.
 
What is Hikikomori, the Japanese phenomenon of extreme social isolation — and why it seems to be spreading. By Mihai Andrei.  ZME Science ,  January 22, 2021

 

After two months of lockdown, have we become like the hikikomori – the Japanese youngsters who choose to live in isolation, shunning the outside world? Natacha Vellut, a psychosociologist at the CERMES3 laboratory and co-author of a book on the subject, offers her analysis.
 
 Who are the hikikomori?
 
Natacha Vellut: The hikikomori are young Japanese men and women under 30, who spend periods of at least six months without leaving home. They stop going to school or work, they cut all social ties… Some live like recluses for years on end! The word ‘hikikomori’ literally means “to withdraw” or ‘to lock oneself up’. The phenomenon was described in Japan in the late 1980s, and the term was soon adopted by psychiatrists and physicians around the world who identified sufferers among their young patients. In France, an increasing number of families and youngsters are realising that they fit this definition, even though the condition itself is not considered a distinct medical category outside of Japan, and there are no statistics available. Some hikikomori are camouflaged by other labels, like “school dropouts”, for example. But not all dropouts are hikikomori, since some may have an aversion to school while maintaining social relations.
 
What is the cause of this withdrawal from the world?
 
N. V.: It’s essentially a psychosocial situation. It emerged in Japan during the severe economic crisis that followed the bursting of the country’s financial bubble. People began referring to young people at the age of entering the job market as a ‘lost generation’. Japanese society continued to impose obligations, but without making room for its youth. At that point, something broke. Beyond Japan, modern-day society sets extremely high standards, both professional and personal, at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to get a job and find one’s place in life – not to mention the norms that the pressure of social networks forces on young people today – ‘be like this, act like that’…
The level of ontological insecurity has risen sharply, further exacerbated by environmental threats, the climate crisis, and now a global pandemic. In a sense, as Bruno Latour aptly points out in his book Down to Earth, the ‘Zone to Defend ‘(ZAD) movement, as in Notre-Dame-des-Landes (western France), is also a way of reacting to this insecurity, of pulling back from the modern world, while in this case trying to create a different one.  
 
Are there similarities between the hikikomori and the confinement that we have endured, and continue to endure to a lesser extent?
 
N. V.: The confinement was imposed on us, so there was no intentional withdrawal from the world. However, while some people suffered through the period of reclusion, others had no problem with it, building a kind of bubble that they are now reluctant to leave – out of fear of Covid-19, of course, but not only. By cutting themselves off, the hikikomori pull out of social relations that they feel are too complex, too demanding. All such interactions, whether with teachers, co-workers or even friends, require an effort that they are no longer capable of making.
 
Those who did fine during the confinement find themselves in a similar situation: they felt as though the burden of social ties, whether professional (as we know, work is an ever-greater source of stress) or with family and friends, was lifted. They were in a cocoon, protected from the world, where they felt comfortable. Now that the lockdown is over, some people don’t want to leave home, urbanites who moved to the countryside during that period don’t want to return to the city… But what seems at first like a good way to avoid anxiety can soon become toxic.
 
In what way can extended confinement become toxic?
N. V.: To return to the hikikomori, an extended period of withdrawal accustoms these young people to a greatly reduced space-time context in which temporal reference points become blurred. In fact, many of them reverse the usual day-night routine. Time becomes highly cyclical, making them lose all perception of duration or the passage of time. The days go by, and are all the same. It’s a trap that the victim doesn’t notice until it’s too late, and that’s hard to escape. A French portmanteau term coined during the lockdown sums it up quite well: lundimanche (‘Sunmonday’) – which means that in confinement, every day is like Sunday.
 
After a withdrawal phase of several months, it becomes very difficult to return to having a schedule and goals. In addition, certain hikikomori suddenly realise that life has gone on without them. Their classmates have found jobs or moved in with someone, whereas they have nothing to show for all that time. Some go through an episode of depression, while others develop anxieties about space, which now seems too vast, too noisy. The emotions are too strong, they begin having dizzy spells…
To get back more specifically to confinement, the situation undeniably has a protective effect, even though it gives rise to other problems, amply demonstrated in research, like eating and sleep disorders. As a result, there is a real risk of increased anxiety as we return to normal life.
 
Does digital technology, by allowing us to keep in touch with the world while staying at home, contribute to such withdrawal?
 
N. V.: To some degree, yes, one could say that the Internet facilitates and perpetuates withdrawal. We can’t ignore the fact that the hikikomori phenomenon emerged in Japan at a time when the video game market was booming, and that these youngsters spend a great deal of time in front of their screens – playing online games, watching films, or satisfying their curiosity for a favourite topic. On the other hand, unlike most of us during confinement, they rarely use social networks – or do so anonymously, and certainly not to draw attention to themselves. In any case, it is likely that if hikikomori got bored more often, they might emerge sooner from their seclusion…
 
Has Confinement Turned Us All Into Hikikomori? Science Blog , June 24, 2020

 

Nobuko Yoshiya : Queer Manga Icon

There is an ordinary building in Kamakura, Japan, that used to belong to an extraordinary woman. Nestled among elms and red maples, the house is an oasis, resembling a traditional teahouse in the Sukiya style characteristic of Kyoto’s 16th-century imperial villas. Now it is a memorial and museum dedicated to its former occupant, prolific Japanese novelist Nobuko Yoshiya.

The Yoshiya Nobuko Memorial Museum is unusually hard to visit, but if you manage to make it inside, you will see a small arsenal of memorabilia from Yoshiya’s life: first-edition books, handwritten manuscripts, photos, and some of her original furniture. But the real allure is the house itself, preserved just as it was when Yoshiya died in 1973—including the study where she penned the novels that made her one of 20th-century Japan’s most successful writers.

Yoshiya never married; instead she lived with a female partner, Chiyo Monma, for 50 years. Despite a life lived against the grain, Yoshiya became one of Japan’s most beloved artists. She published feminist stories that focused on the strong emotional and romantic bonds between women—one with the notable title Danasama muyo (Husbands Are Useless). The impact of her novels is still being felt, far beyond the feminist and queer communities where she has become a particularly celebrated icon. Her writing laid the groundwork for shōjo manga, a genre of comics and graphic novels aimed toward teen girls that includes iconic titles such as Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena—widely devoured by millions upon millions all over the world. “There is not a single woman alive who doesn’t know who Yoshiya Nobuko is,” declared a 1935 profile published in the magazine Hanashi.

Yoshiya was born in 1896 in Niigata, Japan, the only daughter in a family of five children—an upbringing that had an impact on her approach to gender roles, and her resentment of the male domination of society. In 1915, Yoshiya moved to Tokyo, where she resided for the rest of her life. She began attending meetings of Seitō, Japan’s pioneering feminist magazine, where she met other modern female writers attempting to carve out lives not beholden to men. With the support of this community, she cut her hair into an unconventionally short bob and began to wear men’s clothing.

Just a year later, Yoshiya published a 52-story collection called Hana monogatari. Translated into English as Flower Tales, the collection details intense emotional relationships between girls—and introduced many of the motifs and symbols that define modern shōjo manga, such as the boarding school dormitory setting, imagery involving Western flowers, and a dreamily wistful style of writing. Yoshiya used flowers, most often roses, to symbolize the emotional intensity of these girls’ relationships. Each story was paired with an illustration by the famed artist and doll creator Jun’ichi Nakahara, who drew schoolgirls with the huge, bubbly eyes so characteristic of manga and anime today. Most of the Flower Tales concern unrequited crushes or longing among women, often for another student or a teacher.

These stories soared in popularity and cemented Yoshiya’s place among the canon of popular Japanese writers. According to Sarah Frederick, a professor of Japanese literature at Boston University, Yoshiya’s stories can be read two ways: as queer (though they hold back from anything more shockingly sexual than a kiss) or as purely, if intensely, platonic.

In 1919, shortly after Flower Tales, Yoshiya wrote one of her best-known—and most scrutinized—stories, ”Yaneura no nishojo” (“Two Virgins in the Attic”). Many critics read it as quasi-autobiographical, as it follows two students, Akiko and Tamaki, who feel like outcasts in their dormitory. They spend all their time in a triangular attic, where they develop a romantic longing. They spy on each other in the bathroom and smell each other’s scent of “lily magnolia”—all culminating in a kiss. Urban Japanese architecture has a notable lack of attics, yet they commonly appear in modern-day shōjos—a lineage almost directly traceable to Yoshiya.

Many manga scholars consider “Two Virgins in the Attic” to be the first prototype of yuri manga, the modern extension of shōjo that is more explicitly focused on lesbian romantic and sexual relationships, according to Hiromi Tsuchiya-Dollase, a professor of Japanese at Vassar College. Though yuri is now considered a genre in its own right, some of the most popular shōjo mangas of all time, including Sailor Moon, have subplots that veer into yuri.

Though male homosexuality had a long history in Japanese culture, literature, and art, at the time the country had no conception at all of sexual relationships between two women, Tsuchiya-Dollase says. In the Edo period, which spanned most of the 17th through 19th centuries, it was considered normal and often idealized for men to engage in love affairs with both women and men. These same-sex relationships existed under a code of ethics called nanshoku, wherein older men could pursue younger men who had not yet undergone coming-of-age ceremonies.

But at the turn of the 20th century, Japanese culture clearly understood the specific concept of an S relationship, or a passionate friendship between two girls (the “S” stands for “sister”). In the 1910s and 1920s, S relationships were everywhere in literature written for schoolgirls, where these intensely emotional relationships were seen as training for eventual marriage with a man. Though many modern readers classify Yoshiya’s work as lesbian literature, the term “lesbian”—or in Japan, rezubian—only came into popular use after Yoshiya’s death. Instead, her work belongs squarely in the acceptable realm of S relationships—though it was deeply imbued with what we now recognize as queerness.

These inclusive if shrouded conceptions of same-sex desire changed when Sigmund Freud began publishing works on the aberration of homosexuality in the early 1910s, according to Tsuchiya-Dollase. It suddenly became dangerous for women to hold hands in public, or even exchange letters. In 1911, two high school girls died together in a high-profile “love suicide” under the understanding that their love could not continue in the post-graduation world, writes Peichen Wu in the collection Women’s Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia.

This shift coincided with Yoshiya’s ascendance to commercial success. After “Two Virgins in the Attic,” she stopped writing about schoolgirls and turned to housewives. Her stories lost almost all explicit queerness, and instead focused on unhappy marriages in which a wife, after learning of her husband’s affair, takes solace in the arms of a close female friend. But whenever something resembling a queer relationship begins to form, one character will end it in a typical “bury your gays” trope—usually by dying or becoming a nun.

Yoshiya’s queerness may have been veiled in her work, but her private life was no secret. Early in her 20s, Yoshiya met Monma, who was working as a math teacher at the time. The two soon became inseparable, and in classic lesbian style, moved in together within a year of meeting each other. After Monma’s job sent her away for 10 months, Yoshiya mailed her beloved a rather practical proposal.

1. We will build a small house for the two of us.

2. I will become the head of household and officially adopt you.

3. We will ask a friend to serve as a go-between, and hold a wedding reception.

 Same-sex marriage was not, and still is not, legal in Japan, so adoption was the only legal recourse that would allow two unrelated women to co-own property or make medical decisions together. Monma accepted, and the two moved into a small house in Tokyo. By 1928, Yoshiya had amassed enough royalties to own five homes in Japan, one of which would become her future museum.

During Yoshiya’s life, Tokyo hosted other female writers with known romantic relationships with other women. In the early 20th century, prominent Japanese-Russian translator Yoshiko Yuasa became one of the first female Japanese writers to go public with her relationship with a woman, and later in life explicitly identified as a lesbian. But Yoshiya stands out as someone who both wrote about same-sex love and friendship, and also lived with a female partner for her entire life, according to Hiromi Tsuchiya-Dollase, a professor of Japanese at Vassar College. Japanese society didn’t seem to mind—or at least they managed to ignore it. During World War II, the government even commissioned Yoshiya to report on the war.

The first iterations of illustrated shōjo comics appeared in magazines not long after the war. Despite their intended audience of teenage girls, they were largely created by male artists who either needed the money or saw shōjo manga as a training ground for shōnen manga, the genre aimed at boys. Either way, these men didn’t know what their teen readers wanted. “So they read Yoshiya’s stories and copied her works,” Tsuchiya-Dollase says. She cites Osamu Tezuka’s popular Astro Boy manga, for example, as an example of an early manga that drew inspiration from Yoshiya’s themes of sentiment and melodrama. Similar to the plight of many of the orphaned heroines in Yoshiya’s work, Astro Boy is discarded by his father and creator, who had made him to fill the void of his dead son. Tsuchiya-Dollase believes this theme, of longing to be loved by absent parents, could derivey from Yoshiya’s work.

Women did not begin working as shōjo manga artists until the 1960s, often making their debuts—as Yoshiyo had as a young writer—by entering competitions in magazines. These new female artists began writing more complex and authentic stories of girlhood, which sold better among their target audience. By the 1970s, which some see as the golden age of shōjo manga, women artists outnumbered men. By the early 1990s, artists began expanding the genre to include young warriors (Red River and Sailor Moon) and ecologically inspired science fiction (Please Save My Earth and Moon Child). Steered by this new female vanguard, shōjo plots drifted away from heterosexual romance and toward self-fulfillment.

In the late 1990s, shōjo manga more directly inspired by Yoshiya—primarily focusing on the love between girls—experienced a major revival when writer Oyuki Konno published Maria Is Watching, which Tsuchiya-Dollase calls a direct descendant of Flower Tales. Like Yoshiya’s early work, Maria takes place in a dormitory, teems with melodrama, and tells the stories of strong emotional relationships between young girls. The manga also involves Yoshiya’s beloved European roses and distinctly floral dialogue.

In turn, Maria inspired a new burst of shōjo manga written by women that focuses on strong female bonds. Notable examples include Magic Knight Rayearth and Nana as well as Revolutionary Girl Utena, set in a magical academy featuring queer characters who transgress gender roles and so, so many roses—in tornadoes, graveyards, and even a garden that hosts a very queer dance.

Yoshiya’s work should be considered feminist for her women-centered narratives, according to Michiko Suzuki, a professor of Japanese and comparative literature at UC Davis. “Yoshiya created new ways for girls and women to imagine themselves,” she says. “They uphold the ideal of female sisterhood above all else.”

Early in her career, Yoshiya wrote a letter to her Monma threatening war on male writers who she saw as chauvinist pigs, who could care less about the meaningful relationships girls could have with each other. “Almost to the point of endorsing obscenity, they push on girls the idea that they should be flirting with men,” she wrote, coming to what she saw as a perfectly logical conclusion. “I will do battle with them face-to-face shouting ‘begone you demons’ and exorcise them from our midst.” The sensitive students, powerful magic-wielders, and ecological warriors in shōjo manga today are keeping up that fight.

 The Beloved Japanese Novelist Who Became a Queer Manga Icon. By Sabrina Imbler. Atlas Obscura , April 4, 2019. 

Nobuko was born on the 12th of January, 1896, in Niigata, Japan. She showed talent in writing from a very young age - her first short story was published when she was just twelve, and by seventeen, her work was being featured in prestigious literary magazines.

Her early works included Hana Monogatari (”Flower Tales”) - a series of 52 short stories focussing on relationships between women; and Yaneura no Nishoujo (”Two Virgins in an Attic”), a semi-autobiographical novel mirroring the romantic relationship between Nobuko and her roommate Kikuchi Yukie.

The relationship between Nobuko and Yukie didn’t last, but in 1923, a friend introduced Nobuko to maths teacher Monma Chiyo. In 1926 the two women moved in together, with Nobuko adopting Chiyo. As Nobuko explained: “I will … adopt you so you can become a legal member of my household (adoption being a formality since the law will not recognize you as a wife. In the meantime, I aim to get the law reformed).”

Nobuko’s writing was incredibly popular, especially amongst young women, and her success made her the richest woman in Japan. She continued to live with Chiyo for the rest of her life, and passed away at age 77 on July 11, 1973, holding Chiyo’s hand.

Irene, Alice and Eli  talking about Yoshiha Nobuko in a  Queer as Fact podcast, July 15, 2017.  This episode details the life and times of Yoshiya Nobuko, a prolific and extremely successful Japanese author of the 20th century and possibly the first Japanese woman to own a racehorse. Listen on for flower metaphors, fifteen page love letters and '20s flappers from all over the globe.

Yuri, the bittersweet girls’ love genre that has become a staple of gay ships in recent years. Its popularity in both the East and West makes sense. Ecchi and hentai yuri has seen an enormous audience in recent years, primarily with straight men. But yuri wasn’t always created for men. In fact, its history veers towards literature by and for women.

As Yuricon founder Erica Friedman notes in her abridged history of yuri, Yoshiya Nobuko didn’t introduce lesbian manga into Japan. But her writing popularized many of the tropes and ideas that drive today’s yuri manga. As a lesbian herself, her literature became popular with Japan’s young women, and works such as her 1919 novel Yaneura no nishojo (or “Two Virgins in the Attic”) became defining stories for the scenes and relationships that drive yuri today.

Nobuko’s appeal with teenage girls didn’t fade over the years. Her works emphasizing the “S” genre of love and intimacy between two young women began appearing throughout girls’ magazines in Japan, featuring stories that “centered the ‘S’ relationship as a form of sisterhood beyond blood ties, and a deep, intense, almost-relationship that still is the core of many yuri stories,” as Friedman puts it. To that extent, after an initial resurgence through the success of such series as Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena, the “S” genre saw new life in the beginning of the 2000s, quickly giving birth to the yuri genre as we recognize it today.

On first glance, that history seems to suggest there’s some sort of lesbian revolution going on in Japan through yuri. But that’s not quite the case. As writer Chris Kincaid points out, yuri isn’t supposed to capture adult sexual relationships. Rather, the genre is seen as a reflection of same-gender sisterhood in teen years. In traditional Japanese social relations, this is expected to fade away in adulthood, making room for heterosexuality in one’s later years.

“Yuri isn’t considered homosexual literature in Japan. Japan has a strong stigma against homosexuality,” Kincaid states. “Yuri falls into what is called tatemono honmono. The phrase refers to the space between how something [appears] and how it really is. Yuri appears to be lesbian literature, but in the Japanese sense it is just a fantasy world. This attitude is starting to change, but lesbianism isn’t something discussed in polite conversation.”

As you can imagine, the yuri “fantasy” has become a major selling point behind the genre. For straight men, works dealing with intimate relationships between two women is a form of fanservice, a way to objectify the feelings and bodies that women share with one another. Publishers tend to gravitate towards these stories because they appeal to a staple demographic across regions. And in the West, the idea that yuri was ever created for women (let alone popularized by a gay lady) is largely left out of the conversation. The assumption among most Western anime fans is that yuri is by and for the male gaze, and has always been by and for the male gaze.

New York Comic Con is this week, and I’ve already secured my press badge to cover the event. As an anime fan, I know where I’ll be spending a good chunk of the con: browsing through the artist’s alley and merchandise section, looking to spend a significant portion of my paycheck on manga and Blu-rays. I’m extremely predictable that way. But even though I’m a proud and out anime fan, I always feel a little self-conscious shopping for one thing in particular: yuri.

It’s not because I’m in the closet. In fact, I’m pretty open about being a queer lady. It’s not because I have internalized baggage about yuri, either; I post about how much I love girls pretty frequently on my Twitter. It’s definitely not because I’m squeamish about sexuality; earlier this year, I published a Twine about Sonic fandom kink. All things considered, I’m a pretty free-spirited queer lady.

But even though mainstream yuri deals with intimate relationships between women, and even though many of these series have explicitly explored same-gender relationships in recent years, it’s hard to feel like yuri stories are written for me. Their take on gay life feels fantastical, almost dreamlike. Even when things fall apart, they do so in ways that are big and tragic. They never touch on the smaller tragedies that haunt gay relationships: the growing apart, the desire for someone “different” or “new,” the personal baggage and self-hate some of us struggle with, the melancholy of living and loving another woman in a world that really isn’t all that supportive. Those experiences are missing from yuri, because, as Kincaid points out, yuri is not realistic. It’s a fantasy for a Japanese audience.

That’s understandable, to some extent. I’m an American looking for an American version of queer literature in a Japanese medium that markets towards a non-queer audience. I’m not going to find myself one-to-one in mainstream yuri stories, and I’m not about to ask another culture to change for my American preferences. But yuri isn’t coded as non-”homosexual literature” when the genre’s manga and anime are localized in the West. Yuri manga are labeled as homoerotic and homosexual. They become “gay” and “lesbian.” And that label isn’t used in a way that empowers queer relationships. It’s more akin to looking through someone’s search history on PornHub.

Granted, that’s not to say that queer ladies can never relate to yuri. Yuri is a complicated genre, and many American LGBTQIA women readers are perfectly fine with the way yuri is handled today. But the predominantly male focus in yuri publishing doesn’t necessarily have to be the only offering, nor should it. There should be more room in yuri for stories that aren’t just founded in sex appeal.

That’s certainly the case in Japan. As Friedman points out, there’s been a rise in lesbian narratives from female mangaka in recent years, shifting and expanding the Japanese definition of what can be called “yuri.” And while niche at first, these stories recenter yuri as autobiographical and lesbian works, challenging the yuri “fantasy” by focusing on real, day-to-day life experiences. [Editor’s note: one of the first shojo yuri manga, 1971’s Shiroi Heya no Futari, was created by a female mangaka, Yamagishi Ryoko.]

Mangaka artist Nagata Kabi has dealt with depression her whole life, in part because of the social pressures thrust onto her as a post-high school woman, and in part because of her family’s overbearing presence in her life. Hoping to find human contact and female companionship by embracing gay sexuality, she visited a lesbian brothel and lost her virginity to a female sex worker. In response, she wrote the comic essay Sabishisugite Lesbian Fuzoku Ni Ikimashita (better known as “The Private Report on My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness”) and published it on Pixiv, later turning the essay into a volumed series.

Interestingly enough, Kabi’s work hasn’t seen much exposure in the West. In fact, I first stumbled across her Pixiv essay through a site dedicated to adult video games. But her approach to yuri is one that challenges the traditional conception of the genre’s fantasies. In the full release, Kabi explores her social anxiety, her depression, her struggle with self-harm and eating disorders. She tells the reader about her codependent desire for a mother figure and its sexual manifestation. And, according to the Japanese publication KAI-YOU, when the final moment comes in which Kabi is deflowered by another woman, her first time isn’t a scene of erotic release that cures her loneliness. Instead, Kabi learns that sex won’t save her from her depression. Her life carries on with many of the same problems as before, which is a running theme throughout Kabi’s story.

Sabishisugite Lesbian Fuzoku Ni Ikimashita challenges the traditional yuri fantasy because it sheds light on the complicated emotional and mental dynamics involved in lesbian relationships. Her story is an open, honest, and deeply personal look at her struggles to fight back against her eating disorder, stop self-harming, and learn more about her sexuality. The events leading up to her sexual affair with a female sex worker shed a new light on how we can think about yuri. Yuri can, in essence, embrace lesbian experiences beyond fantasy. It can be a genre that explores everyday life and relationships, mental illnesses, or the social expectations thrust upon women when they engage in homosexual relationships. And it can turn the erotic into something deeper than just a fantasy: It can portray lesbian sexual relationships as something with its own traumas and flaws.

That’s not to say that Western yuri fans should tell Japanese creators how to create yuri. That would be extremely inappropriate; we are, after all, a different culture approaching Japanese works from a different cultural lens. But it does mean that yuri doesn’t have to be a genre that just focuses on the male gaze. Yuri can also fall into the realm of queer literature, created by and for queer women. Yuri can capture our lives, our struggles, and our relationships with other women beyond mere fantasy. Mangaka like Nagata Kabi show how that can be the case. And by supporting these artists in the West, by buying their works and raising up their voices, we can send a message to Japan’s independent yuri mangaka: We love your stories, we care about your work, and we want to see more. Because as queer women in the West, we relate to your art too.

Rethinking Yuri: How Lesbian Mangaka Return the Genre to Its Roots. By Ana Valens. The Mary Sue, October 7, 2016.