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New starts at New Start: Recovery and the work of hikikomori

Defined by psychologist Tamaki Saito as a period of social isolation in the absence of any other clear mental health issues for a period of six months or longer, hikikomori (social withdrawal) emerged as a condition among Japanese youth in the late 1980s. Used as both a noun to identify those afflicted, as well as describe their condition, the word immediately captured the attention of the Japanese and international public. According to various government and third-party surveys, hikikomori number from approximately 500,000 to two million people. Thus, while hikikomori are understood to struggle with long bouts of loneliness and isolation from their peers and parents, due to constant anxiety over their inability to perform among Japan’s competitive capitalist-oriented social expectations, both academics and professionals continue to struggle to comprehend exactly who hikikomori are and how to help them. Based on fieldwork at New Start, a non-profit organization located just outside the city limits of Tokyo that helps hikikomori recover, this article examines the ways residents at New Start navigate this uncertainty and gain moral agency. Drawing from over a dozen interviews with parents, clients, and staff conducted while working as a volunteer at New Start, I focus on three representative trajectories that demonstrate how residents navigate the competing discourses surrounding the clinical and social categories of hikikomori and NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), through which they embark on a journey from economically unproductive recluses, to productive capitalist citizens pursuing their own version of a “nearly normal” life. I argue that the various accomplishments of hikikomori, as individuals and as a social category, which both support existing social relations and provide an alternative mode of fitting within them, is “the work of hikikomori.”