Saito is a 20-year-old middle-class boy who’s been locked alone in his room for years, spends most of the day sleeping and night watching TV or playing video games, are they your only virtual friends?never go beyond the computer screen.
Saito won’t let anyone into his room. Does your mom leave your food at the door every day, with a resignation that overwhelms you with deep sadness?His parents live with great shame and guilt, thinking they did not know how to educate their child and trying to hide him from the community. and neighbors.
- Your room is your only world.
- Where you sleep.
- Eat.
- Urinate and defecate Saito starts accumulating garbage and neglects?But no one wants or anyone can do anything Your parents don’t know how to handle the problem either.
Saito’s case is a fictional story based on the reading of many cases such as that of the protagonist of our story, who have the same type of behavior, this is hikikomori, a term consolidated in 1986 which means “far from society” and refers to teenagers. and young adults, mainly men and firstborns, because there is more pressure on men than on women in Japan.
A social phenomenon that seems to rest on the strict Japanese society, in which its inhabitants live, in many cases, especially among the youngest, society drowns them, Japan has one of the best educational systems in the world, the best companies and a remarkable economy.
Unfortunately, the phenomenon is spreading and, in Spain, there are 165 cases, according to the Institute of Neuropsychiatry and additions of the hospital do Mar de Barcelona, the first study at European level.
Since the Japanese girl entered a kindergarten, competition has begun. You even have to pass an exam to enter. The school system and the prospects for the future are absurdly demanding with the Japanese.
Many do not support the system, they feel so much pressure, so afraid of failure, that the only way they can find is to take refuge in their room, where nothing and no one can demand anything or cause harm. percentage of cases that end in suicide, although others, fortunately, end up reintegrated into society.
In Japan, this remains a very sensitive problem and society continues to turn its back on it, so more than ten years ago, a retired professor, Futagami Noki, who in the 1990s had students with this problem, decided to create an NGO to help this type of child. The NGO is called New Start.
Their method is to accommodate the kids in shared apartments and during the week they can do certain activities offered by the center that motivate them: cafeteria, bakery, farm, support of the elderly, nurses’ school and even a newsroom publications in a local newspaper. . When there is an improvement they enter the reintegration program, which the NGO has in different companies.
This is a serious problem that this brave and fighting NGO faces every day. In some cases, Hikikomori voluntarily enters New Start, but in many cases it is the parents who ask for help.
An arduous work begins in which letters are sent to the boys asking them to leave the room and go to New Start. However, letters almost never receive an answer; As a last option, the rental brothers and sisters go home several times to try to convince them.
In fact, the problem is devastating, as one of the NGO’s collaborators, Ayako Ogury, tells us. “Sometimes we can visit them for more than a year until they leave the room, if they leave.
“The Hikikomori are a powerful message to Japanese society,” according to Dr. Hisako Watanabe, “Their mere existence will have to force change. “