Why Should Hikikomori be Examined Under the Lens of Sociotechnical Imaginaries?

Written by Yao Chen

Hikikomori, a Japanese neologism, signifies a portion of Japanese population, mainly young men aged from 15 to 35, who withdraw into their homes or ‘willfully’ shut themselves off from the social sphere (Overell 2018, 206). A governmental survey shows that the “first-generation hikikomori,” the oldest among them, have isolated themselves from almost all human contact for more than 20 years. Though the statistics varies between organizations, it is estimated that over half a million people live in such a status of hikikomori in Japan and this phenomenon has been increasingly observed across the world in recent years (Gent 2019). Portrayed by media as “childishly lazy” or parasites for them living on their family and the country, these people are also viewed in a negative way in academia. They are either considered pathologically in psychology or passive victims of the structural change of Japanese economy and submissive subjects under the dominant heterosexual discourse in humanities (Overell 2018, 206).

Among studies on hikikomori, one common debate is around the role of technology. It is noticed that a certain percentage of hikikomori are heavy internet users. Some research argues that the change of means of communication caused by social media grounds the emergence of social withdrawals. Others believe that technology could facilitate and deepen the isolation even if it does not necessarily cause withdrawal (Adamski 2018, 59; Gent 2019). One artistic approach outside of the academia striving for a better understanding of hikikomori’s life is to record the changes of body and mentality of the artist who lived completely alone for a month. A bed is specially designed to afford most of the utilities that she might need for her daily activities so that she could spend possibly most time lying. Her project shows that more changes happen on the psychological level rather than on the physical level: she found herself soon getting depressed and the longer she stayed inside the room, the more courage she needed to step out of the room (Yiyun 2018). Although this is not strictly a scientific experiment, the psychological aspect observed in her project is still a meaningful reference to understand hikikomori. Moreover, her project shows that living isolatedly is largely feasible with today’s technological infrastructure.

I argue an investigation on the case of hikikomori from the angle of sociotechnical imaginaries could lead to fruitful results in understanding this phenomenon as well as open up discussions on the scope of this theoretical notion itself. The term sociotechnical imaginaries is defined as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology”(Jasanoff 2015, 6). It serves to glue together two realms of studies on technological objects: one is the specific normative dimension which situates technological objects in the social and political landscape; the other is the material aspect that is often addressed by the science and technology studies (STS). The case of hikikomori is exactly in need of such an intersectional account. Many researches that focus on hikikomori are either under the discipline of psychology or sociology. Being a co-production of the social and technical, the phenomenon of hikikomori needs more than a singular reading for unpacking its complex causality and mechanism. Sociotechnical imaginaries, invented for bridging such gaps, potentially provide a fruitful lens for understanding such a case.

One may argue that hikikomori is apparently not a “desirable” object thus seems irrelevant to sociotechnical imaginaries. As Jasanoff herself points out, however, the desirable future is always bound with the obverse, that is, ”shared fears of harms that might be incurred through invention and innovation, or of course the failure to innovate” (2015, 6). Therefore, the undesirable could never fall out of the concern of the desirable. Moreover, Rosemary Overell’s (2018) counter reading on hikikomori shows the potential of hikikomori being a queer subject as they initiatively choose to live outside of heteronormative and masculinary culture in contemporary Japan. This interestingly leads to a what-if question – what if the hikikomori way of living is not necessarily negative? Should the normative understanding on hikikomori be reconsidered not only in public discourse but also in academia? For the notion of sociotechnical imaginaries per se, is there possibility that this queer case could bring up new discussion on the scope of sociotechnical (positive) imaginaries? Or at least, next time when it comes to imaginaries, the “undesirable” brought by the advances in science and technology should also be taken into consideration instead of being merely a tacit attachment.

References

Adamski, Dawid. 2018. “The Influence of New Technologies on the Social Withdrawal (Hikikomori Syndrome) Among Developed Communities, Including Poland.” Social Communication 1(17): 58-63.

Gent, Edd. 2020. “The Plight of Japan’s Modern Hermits.” BBC Future, January 29, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190129-the-plight-of-japans-modern-hermits.

Yiyun, Chen. 2018. “Horizontal Living – Chen Yiyun.” Accessed February 18, 2020. http://chen-yiyun.com/horizontal-living/.

Jasanoff, Sheila. 2015. “Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity.” In Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, 1-33.

Overell, Rosemary. 2018. “Queer Will: Hikikomori as Willful Subjects.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 19(2): 206-219.

This article is part of the graduate seminar series Urban Ecologies 2020.