What I came across in Tokyo is a dark shadow, a shadow without clear boundaries, revealer of an irksome, disturbing and uncomfortable reality. What I am referring to is the world of shadow in which the hikikomoris, those who fall into self-seclusion, live; those who, invaded by a feeling of impotence and alienation, to protect themselves from a world that frightens them, lock themselves in their room and stay there, even for many years.
Contrary to what one may suppose, what these young Japanese do by withdrawing is not an act of free choice, as this does not occur with the awareness of wanting to refuse the society in which they do not recognize themselves. On the contrary, most of them would like to take part in that society, if only they were able to. Ending up in hikikomori is instead something that resembles an unexpected turning point on a path that has become impassable; a place of defense where one can hide his tired and inadequate self, a pause for settling the mind that requires rest, which however never ends, as if with it one could stop time.
Hikikomoris were born grown children of Japan, a place where people live a social reality made of a past that knows not how to be forgotten and a present that already wants to be future. Even if the Japanese sacrifice themselves by participating with self-abnegation in the collective effort without allowing yielding to transpire and considering endurance an important cultural value, social suffering and mental unease become increasingly more visible under different forms of depression and phobias that affect mainly adolescents and young adults. Hikikomoris, too, are an expression of this suffering. However, contrary to all the others, they carry out an exclusive action that is entirely unique, and a sensational act. They practice their self-seclusion, which, though charged with social implications and responsibilities, is disapproved by society and tacitly forgotten, as it represents an expression of weakness and failure, like a samurai who, mad with fear, puts away his sword and retreats.
If we look deeper into the cultural path of the Japanese, the way they place themselves before life, before themselves and in relationship with others and - in parallel - observe the current economic situation, what emerges in the end is the Land of the Rising Sun has now been transformed into a land that is particularly fertile for generating hikikomori. Nonetheless, once we have reached the core of hikikomori, what makes it vibrate is something that goes beyond any border and identity. It is a beat that is hampered and slowed down by the impotence of not finding a significant reason and by the frustration for having to participate in something that one finds no sense in. The fact is that that non sense can neither be understood nor transformed because it is not visible, it has no odor nor shape, but just an anguishing load that no one knows how to lighten. This is made visible also by the fact that withdrawal into hikikomori - that the young Japanese have been the first to carry out - has now gone beyond its special boundaries; many cases have in fact been documented in China, Korea and Italy and I believe that, if one searches deeper, the problem will prove to be even vaster. This is a fact that substantially modifies its contours that with it are illuminated with a different meaning: hikikomori can therefore no longer be defined as something strange that happens to someone far from us, but rather it shows us a heart charged, bound and affected by the tired breath of the world and its inhabitants. It shows us a self that, regardless of the culture shaping it, possesses the urgent unaware need to comprehend itself and to do this it seeks a shelter to unravel the confusion and relieve itself of everything that hinders this quest. Nevertheless, in reality, this withdrawal almost always offers a result that is of a totally different nature.
Society, and it matters not which society we talk about, will never be able to provide the suitable tools for facing the problem of hikikomori even if it is society itself that has generated it. The only reality able to act is the family. Most of the families with hikikomori, whether Japanese or not, commit to doing their best to change the state of their child, without however almost never obtaining stable and lasting success. Many elements determine failure. Nonetheless, I think this mainly depends on the fact that the family attempts to intervene on the child, but not on itself. The fact of practically doing everything possible gives them a sense of relief. However, I believe something more is required that questions absolutely everything. It is something that involves a deep mental change of a different type. Locked up in the room with the child there are also the weaknesses and conflicts of his family; that sense of emptiness that he is escaping from also belongs to the parents who, on the contrary, have over time learned to manage and suffocate it. He has not. His is still the pure vigor of adolescence that makes him see the frustrations very well, even if he is still unable to recognize them. If in the place called "family" one does not face that event with a spirit of reflection, no improvement will be possible because medications and therapy alone can offer no benefit. That fact must generate in all a humble and deep desire for psychological emancipation that wipes away the superfluous and reaches the essence. If this context is created, however feeble, the hikikomori and his family will lay the foundations for an extraordinarily powerful understanding of themselves, and everything that rotates around the problem and may have in some way influenced the withdrawal - such as difficult school relations - is stripped and observed once again from a completely different perspective.
My project, which includes my books, conferences and this "place of observation", was initiated to document my experience of studying and taking an in-depth look at young hikikomoris, their families and the nature of this suffering. It shall continue, following its own natural evolution, to accompany not only those who shut themselves in but all those who wish to investigate this sense of non sense.
As for me, I would like to observe in the "darkness of the heart" that unites all hikikomoris, an extraordinary inborn potential that peeps out precisely when everything loses hope. This because this darkness does not consist of a feeling of desperation such as - for example - that which leads to suicide, but rather is illuminated by a desire - though fragile and unaware - for rebirth, which can be generated only by this type of death. It could be that, if the conditions and adequate tools existed, from that locked up state a new, unprecedented form of feeling unknown to all, even to those who never locked themselves up in room could take shape; something similar to an intimate release able to breathe of its own essence, a new lucidity free from all conditioning.
In order to create this fruitful yet rough path that I have named anthropology of the self, able to lead to one's place, where the sacredness of an unknown pureness does not allow deceitfulness to enter, I will - unconditionally - do my part.