I met Hiroshi S. a few years ago at a support group in Tokyo for socially isolated Japanese. A chain-smoking 43-year-old in a puffy down vest, he was one of an estimated one million or more Japanese known as a “hikikomori”, which roughly translates as “extreme recluse”.
Typically male, between the ages of 30 and 50, jobless or underemployed, they have largely withdrawn from society after Japan’s extended economic malaise since the 1990s prevented them from getting their working lives in order.
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