How many japanese hikikomori are aspies?

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Danielismyname
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16 May 2009, 12:55 am

Zoonic wrote:
Japan has faced a growing problem of young people who one day just refuse to go to school and then stay at home until their parents die, basically.


That sounds like AS in regards to the actions, i.e., leaving school and living with their parents until they die.

(I just stopped going to school; good luck if someone tried to keep me there, and I'll live here until either my mother or I die. I do work, but that's because I need to do things other than sitting in my room all day, which I do like doing, but I need to get out to keep fit, hence, farmhand Daniel.)



Rocker82
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21 Sep 2009, 12:34 am

I've learned now that in Japanese culture if a person makes a lot of eye contact,it is viewed as disrespecting a person's personal space.The Japanese are more focus on their academic studies and work,other than socializing as in Western society.That's what I've notice of many Asians in particular,that there shy.
In regards to hikikomori,the male can either be an NT or any form of autism;Asperger's Syndrome.For a person shutting themselves in their rooms,is to avoid social pressures in their society;academic success.



zombiecide
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21 Sep 2009, 2:58 pm

It's been a time so I don't have any sources but I once read a detailed essay about hikikomori and how it can be compared to the west.
One thing is that Japanese parents do rarely say a straight 'no' but rather choose to encourage behaviour. Like when I am next to a child who is about to touch a hot stove I'd first shout 'NO!' expecting the kid to freeze at it (German way) and then explain to it that it can hurt itself and demonstrate the heat from a safe (but hopefully already frightening) distance. The Japanese way, I was told, would be to pay attention before the kid can get close, and just take it away from the stove without much explanation until it gives up. How true that is I don't know.
However that essay stated that in the west, when a child stops coming out of his room, the parents will soon give their best to force it to leave and be 'normal' again. In Japan, the parents are more likely to wait for a longer time, more months than weeks, concealing the unnormalness of their child.

It also doesn't help that modern Japanese society is a crazy mix of conformism and at the same time has an almost absurd tendency to worship people with unique and weird talents. (Basically they want their sumo ringers, they love their sumo ringers, but they wouldn't want to be sumo ringers themselves ... like that?)
Ijime (mobbing without a mob leader) is reality and I think a quarter to a third of high school students admit to having been the victim of ijime sometime during their school years. This of course leads easily to social anxiety and social phobia.
I would believe that there aren't a higher number of people with ASD in Japan (unless some solid statistics prove it otherwise), but that they are more singled out, and that there is a higher number of people with social phobia than probably anywhere else.



Callista
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21 Sep 2009, 8:32 pm

I'm really surprised someone from Japan hasn't already spoken up on this thread. English is a common second language there just like it is in many places. It would be interesting to talk to someone about what it is like for them in Japan; the culture around you has almost as much an effect on your experience of autism as your own brain does.


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