Mental Health and Social Withdrawal in Contemporary Japan PDF Download

Author: Nicolas Tajan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351260782
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This book examines the phenomenon of social withdrawal in Japan, which ranges from school non-attendance to extreme forms of isolation and confinement, known as hikikomori. Based on extensive original research including interview research with a range of practitioners involved in dealing with the phenomenon, the book outlines how hikikomori expresses itself, how it is treated and dealt with and how it has been perceived and regarded in Japan over time. The author, a clinical psychologist with extensive experience of practice, argues that the phenomenon although socially unacceptable is not homogenous, and can be viewed not as a mental disorder, but as an idiom of distress, a passive and effective way of resisting the many great pressures of Japanese schooling and of Japanese society more widely. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351260800, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CCBY-NC-ND) licence.

Author: Yuko Kawanishi
Publisher: Global Oriental
ISBN: 9004213023
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This book addresses the profound question of mental malaise in its many forms in contemporary Japanese society, focusing on three main areas: work, family and youth. The purpose is to provide an analytical, critical account of the social psychological state of the Japanese today, as well as to present possible measures that could contribute to positive outcomes. Following the boom and bust years of the Japanese economy in the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese society was faced with the burden of rapid change and adjustment resulting in a significant increase in psychological and personality disorders at a level unknown in the past. These include karo-jisatsu (suicide by overwork), sekkusu-resu (sexless marriage), kateinairikon (in house divorce) and hikikomori (complete social withdrawal). This study will be widely welcomed by sociologists, psychologists and mental health professionals interested in the interconnectedness of culture and social structure, personality and psychopathology, and the historical development of these issues. It also offers valuable insight into questions relating to cross-cultural understanding.

Author: Teppei Sekimizu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666900958
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Hikikomori, which literally means “withdrawal,” is considered an increasingly prevalent form of social isolation in Japanese society. This issue has been attracting worldwide attention for two decades. Based on interviews with people who have experienced it, Teppei Sekimizu explores what the hikikomori experience is like from a sociological perspective. He also examines the characteristics of four decades of hikikomori discourse by governments, professionals, and mass media; the difficulties faced by parents with hikikomori children; and the social policy which has relegated most provision of welfare for citizens to the private sector. Through these examinations, the author illustrates how the exclusive labor market and familial social policies create masses of family-dependent and isolated individuals in contemporary Japan. A Sociology of Hikikomori leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the manifold hikikomori phenomenon and Japanese society itself.

Author: Tamaki Saitō
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816654598
Category : Alienation (Social psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the first English translation of a controversial Japanese best seller that made the public aware of the social problem of hikikomori, or "withdrawal"--a phenomenon estimated by the author to involve as many as one million Japanese adolescents and young adults who have withdrawn from society, retreating to their rooms for months or years and severing almost all ties to the outside world. Saitō Tamaki's work of popular psychology provoked a national debate about the causes and extent of the condition. Since Hikikomori was published in Japan in 1998, the problem of social withdrawal has increasingly been recognized as an international one, and this translation promises to bring much-needed attention to the issue in the English-speaking world. According to the New York Times, "As a hikikomori ages, the odds that he'll re-enter the world decline. Indeed, some experts predict that most hikikomori who are withdrawn for a year or more may never fully recover. That means that even if they emerge from their rooms, they either won't get a full-time job or won't be involved in a long-term relationship. And some will never leave home. In many cases, their parents are now approaching retirement, and once they die, the fate of the shut-ins--whose social and work skills, if they ever existed, will have atrophied--is an open question." Drawing on his own clinical experience with hikikomori patients, Saitō creates a working definition of social withdrawal and explains its development. He argues that hikikomori sufferers manifest a specific, interconnected series of symptoms that do not fit neatly with any single, easily identifiable mental condition, such as depression. Rejecting the tendency to moralize or pathologize, Saitō sensitively describes how families and caregivers can support individuals in withdrawal and help them take steps toward recovery. At the same time, his perspective sparked contention over the contributions of cultural characteristics--including family structure, the education system, and gender relations--to the problem of social withdrawal in Japan and abroad.

Author: Junko Kitanaka
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069114205X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Exploring how depression has become a national disease in Japan, this work shows how psychiatry has responded to the nation's ailing social order & how, in a remarkable transformation, the discipline has begun to overcome longstanding resistance to its intrusion in Japanese life.

Author: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520383494
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Introduction : disconnected people and the lonely society -- Subjectivity and empathy -- Too lonely to die alone : internet group suicide -- Connecting the disconnected : suicide websites -- Meaning in life : exploring the need to be needed among young Japanese -- Surviving 3.11 -- The anatomy of resilience -- What loneliness can teach us.

Author: Roger Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041566926X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This book puts forth a sociology of Japanese youth problems showing that the Japanese media draw on an equally, if not more, perplexing gallery of social categories when it discusses youth than affluent Western societies such as the US or UK and that Japan is no less replete with social problems involving young people and no less capable of generating hysteria over the fate of its youth than affluent Western societies such as the US or UK.

Author: Karen Nakamura
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801467993
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Bethel House, located in a small fishing village in northern Japan, was founded in 1984 as an intentional community for people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Using a unique, community approach to psychosocial recovery, Bethel House focuses as much on social integration as on therapeutic work. As a centerpiece of this approach, Bethel House started its own businesses in order to create employment and socialization opportunities for its residents and to change public attitudes toward the mentally ill, but also quite unintentionally provided a significant boost to the distressed local economy. Through its work programs, communal living, and close relationship between hospital and town, Bethel has been remarkably successful in carefully reintegrating its members into Japanese society. It has become known as a model alternative to long-term institutionalization. In A Disability of the Soul, Karen Nakamura explores how the members of this unique community struggle with their lives, their illnesses, and the meaning of community. Told through engaging historical narrative, insightful ethnographic vignettes, and compelling life stories, her account of Bethel House depicts its achievements and setbacks, its promises and limitations. The book is accompanied by a DVD containing two fascinating documentaries about Bethel made by the author-Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan and A Japanese Funeral (winner of the Society for Visual Anthropology Short Film Award and the Society for East Asian Anthropology David Plath Media Award). A Disability of the Soul is a sensitive and multidimensional portrait of what it means to live with mental illness in contemporary Japan.

Author: Jeff Kingston
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351139622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This new and fully updated second edition of Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan provides undergraduate and graduate students with an interdisciplinary textbook written by leading specialists on contemporary Japan. Students will gain the analytical insights and information necessary to assess the challenges that confront the Japanese people, policymakers and private and public-sector institutions in Japan today. Featuring a comprehensive analysis of key debates and issues confronting Japan, issues covered include: A rapidly aging society and changing employment system Nuclear and renewable energy policy Gender discrimination Immigration and ethnic minorities Post-3/11 tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown developments Sino-Japanese relations An essential reference work for students of contemporary Japan, it is also an invaluable source for a variety of courses, including comparative politics, anthropology, public policy and international relations.

Author: Michael Zielenziger
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307490904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The world’s second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries, and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Equally as troubling are the more than one million young men who shut themselves in their rooms, withdrawing from society, and the growing numbers of “parasite singles,” the name given to single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children. In Shutting Out the Sun, Michael Zielenziger argues that Japan’s rigid, tradition-steeped society, its aversion to change, and its distrust of individuality and the expression of self are stifling economic revival, political reform, and social evolution. Giving a human face to the country’s malaise, Zielenziger explains how these constraints have driven intelligent, creative young men to become modern-day hermits. At the same time, young women, better educated than their mothers and earning high salaries, are rejecting the traditional path to marriage and motherhood, preferring to spend their money on luxury goods and travel. Smart, unconventional, and politically controversial, Shutting Out the Sun is a bold explanation of Japan’s stagnation and its implications for the rest of the world.