Hikikomori

anne mcknight annekmcknight at gmail.com
Fri Mar 23 17:38:34 EDT 2007


Tsuchiya Yûtaku's film/video _Peep "TV" Show_ has an interesting
hikikomori character.

The character is featured in one of the film's "cinéma verité"
sequences, when the character, a college age-ish boy, directly faces
the camera and speaks, a bit emotionally, in defense of himself,
responding to what he sees as unfair typing by pop sociology writers
and academics. These are writers who typically see hikikomori as a
kind of sad-sack failure to engage with reality in more conventional,
less mediated ways. This character is skeptical of the glee with which
the term is often applied, and treats it quite clinically himself.

While the advocates of "sociologising" are not named in the film, the
very judgemental tone and their quick typing of hikikomori as a
"social problem" resonate with writers such as sociologist Miyadai
Shinji, who has many publications speaking and diagnosing the
unconscious of hikikomori. Other such sequences in _P"TV"S_ include a
female sex worker of a similar age, who also speaks her mind in the
face of sociologising stereotype, and a salaryman who is about to
explode out of anger at the sentimental rituals devoted to nationalist
war memory as August 15 approaches, in the film.

I think the three are linked because each snaps at a certain point,
and has an outburst directed, in cinéma verité form. The roles that
antagonise them are different--the boy who "doesn't want to grow up,"
the girl who "sells her body" yet makes more money as a "health
worker" than in a respectable job, the salaryman who "takes things too
seriously."

I use all these scare quotes just to indicate how critical the film
is, in general, of social typing, and how the mysteries of social
types fuel media hysteria about various crises in the film--from 9/11
and its relation to Tokyo, to the crisis of boys who stay in their
rooms.

Amazon now carries the film, so you can get your hands on it pretty easily.

Anne

On 23/03/07, Rob Smith <robixsmash at gmail.com> wrote:
> I apologize if this has been brought up before I joined the list, but I was
> wondering if anyone could offer a list of Japanese films about hikikomori
> (that have English subtitles, of course), whether as the main plot or as a
> subplot.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> -rob
> http://www.robixsmash.com/


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