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An estimated 541,000 people aged between 15 and 39 in Japan avoid social contact and shut themselves in their homes, according to a government survey released Wednesday [JS required].
The figure compares with the previous Cabinet Office survey in 2010 that found an estimated 696,000 such people — known as hikikomori — across the country. Despite the decline, the latest survey does not give an overall picture of the full extent of the phenomenon as it did not include those aged 40 or older.
But the survey does highlight a trend in which people who have withdrawn from society have done so for longer periods, as those who have shut themselves in their homes for at least seven years accounted for about 35 percent of the total.
It also showed the number of such recluses between the ages of 35 and 39 has doubled, according to the survey.
The article mentions there is a nonprofit formed to help hikikomori re-integrate with society. Wikipedia names NPO lila as one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2016, @12:06PM
If your rent is low, that might be 25% of what you need to survive day to day.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 10 2016, @02:07PM
Exactly. We're talking about a lifestyle that's quite different from an apartment dweller in Manhattan, for whom $2K/yr would pay maybe 60% of your rent for 1 month. But that different lifestyle could come with a higher score on the happiness index, depending on how adaptible you are. If you want to live in the middle of the taiga in Alaska and be able to walk out your door and have world-class French cuisine and pop into Micro Center to pick up components for a new gaming rig, then you're going to likely be unhappy because you can't have that cake and eat it, too.
But there may come a time in your life when the world-class French cuisine loses its appeal, and you realize the gaming rig puts you into multiplayer games with nothing but snarky 13-yr olds, and you think maybe there might be something terrifically appealing about solitude.
Washington DC delenda est.