"Hikikomori as a Gendered Issue: Analysis on the discourse of acute social withdrawal in contemporary Japan", Dziesinski 2004; excerpts:

"It was only months after the word hikikomori appeared in the Japanese media that English language news stories, authored by Japanese media outlets and foreign correspondents, began to disseminate the new expression of hikikomori to the rest of the world. Attached to the news clippings about hikikomori was the subtle implication that hikikomori was indigenous to the cultural environment of Japan serving to further perpetuate the nihonjin-ron stereotype of Japanese uniqueness; a debatable proposition considering many social factors that are thought to 'cause' social withdrawal in Japanese society are found elsewhere in other information-based societies around the world.

Some Western observers were quick to point out the 'utility' of the term hikikomori by those in positions of power in Japanese society and cynically questioned motivations for its usage as,
> "Hikikomori man [emphasis mine] could have been tailor-made for a government needing an official label, and a ravenous press seeking a human face for a national ennui. Cameras rolled, Web sites were made and printing presses went hyperactive, churning out almost 30 hikikomori-related books in the past three years." (Benjamin Secher, 2002)

...Is the usage of the word hikikomori by institutional professionals the 'medicalization' of an anti-social behavior into a psychological illness? Could not this 'medicalization' be wielded as a means of social control on a population segment of youngsters that, in their withdrawal, are also conspicuously absent from traditional social institutional influences such as school, work, and peers? Is it necessary or appropriate for Japanese psychologists and health professionals to 'medicalize' an anti-social behavior pattern as a condition seriously deviant from the 'norm' and thus requiring psychological treatment as well as institutionalized control (Lofland 2002)? Is the avoidance of social interaction in Japanese society, currently dubbed hikikomori, a legitimately 'new' phenomenon or is it merely a new label for an older social phenomenon in Japanese culture such as tôkôkyohi, school refusal, or otakuzoku, obsessive anime and manga fans?

...Most of the literature cited on hikikomori, such as the BBC report, "Japan: The Missing Million" (Rees 2002), which originally brought the issue to Western awareness, indicates that it's one million young men who are the crux of this social crisis in Japan; its young males who are cause for concern: 'why are they hiding in their rooms?' From the viewpoint of a Western observer, conspicuous absence of reportage on female hikikomori begs the question: Are there female hikikomori? And if there are in fact females suffering from acute social withdraw, why is there no vocal concern by the Japanese public for their plight? If the stresses of similar school systems and family structures in Taiwan, Singapore and Korea are reportedly producing phenomenon of social withdraw in those countries similar to hikikomori, thus disproving the nihonjin-ron argument, are not the stresses of school and family the also same for both genders of youth in Japan?

...Several media resources (Arita 2001, Ashby 2002, Tolbert 2002.) were forwarding psychiatrist Tamaki Saito's theoretical estimates that between 500,000 to over 1,000,000 Japanese male youths aged fourteen-to-twenty years were suffering from the hikikomori condition as evidenced by their dropping out of active participation in society and sequestering themselves into the social safety of isolation in their rooms (Saito 2002). According BBC's Phil Rees (2002), who uses Saito's estimates, one in ten Japanese male youth today suffer from the hikikomori syndrome.
... if the variously quoted Saito statistics of 500,000 to 1.2 million male hikikomori shut-ins from the 14-20 age group is reasonably correct (Larimer 2001, Rees 2002, Secher 2002, Tolbert 2002), then the pervasiveness of hikikomori phenomenon in the Japanese population is disquieting; and this not even taking into consideration that the actual hikikomori population might be double what Saito has stated if female incidents of social withdraw are also taken into account. Population census data collected by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunication (2000) provides an illustrated population pyramid of Japan. Adding up just the males in the 14-20-age bracket elicits a total population of roughly 4.2 million males in that combined gender and age demographic in Japan; doubling this to fairly reflect uncounted female hikikomori would put the total population of Japanese youths in that age bracket closer to 8 million. What this means, is if over 1 million Japanese males, by Saito's reckoning, aged 14-20 indeed suffer from hikikomori, then the public discourse in Japan is stating that 20% of all adolescent males in Japan, and approximately 1% of the [entire] population, are abstaining from participation in Japanese social institutions! Calculating in the theoretical population of female hikikomori unrecognized or ignored by Japanese experts would make that figure closer to 2 percent of the entire population of Japan; a figure pushing the hikikomori issue, based on Saito's and the mass media's claims, even further into the realm of either a national emergency or total implausibility.
...If the outside observer were to accept Saito's assessment on the scope of the hikikomori problem in Japan today, it would mean that a notable proportion of the next generation of the Japanese workforce, both male and female, has already dropped out of the system and Japan can expect serious labor shortages as well as verging on a welfare state in order to support over one million non-productive members of society over the next fifty years!

...It would appear that the alarmingly high quotes of hikikomori numbers by psychiatric experts, as well as high-profile incidents of violence attributed to hikikomori, caused the Japanese government  finally take some action on the hikikomori question. Their initial action was to undertake the first official survey on the hikikomori issue as conducted through the Japanese Ministry of Health and Labor and release the results to the public May 4, 2001 (The Australian 2001, Secher 2002). Conducted over a twelve-month period, the survey revealed 6,151 cases of hikikomori, though there is no indication of gender in that report, registered at 697 public health centers across Japan between May 8th and November 30th in 2000; a concrete number in sharp contrast with Saito's estimated 1.2 million hikikomori nationwide...Results from the Ministry of Health and Labor survey indicate that despite popular public perception that the hikikomori syndrome is the dominion of younger Japanese males, the numbers potentially indicate a much more complex and troubling social issue; possibly a decades-long problem that has been, up to this point, unrecognized by the media and social institutions. In the surveyed 6,151 hikikomori cases, the 10-15 age cohort number was 8.4 percent of the total. The 16-20 age cohort was 19.8 percent, those aged 21-25 equaled 20.8 percent, while the 26-30 age cohort equaled 18.2 percent. After age 30, percentages drop off with the 31-35 age cohort equaling 10.2 percent and those 36 and above totaling only 8.6 percent. This would mean that of the reported cases, those over the age of 26 equal 36.8 percent of the group surveyed; if nearly 40 percent of hikikomori are in their late twenties or older then the prevailing discourse by the media and the medical establishment are way off base in what actually constitutes a hikikomori.

...The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology has figures indicating that the number of school refusals, tôkôkyohi, by students is twice the figure ten years ago with 134,000 absent for thirty consecutive days or more in the 2000-2001 academic year (Secher 2002, Tolbert 2002).

...In various conversations with them during the course of my two months of field research, it became clear that in their long experience treating hikikomori, the prevailing attitude of the TG staff was that the number of cases of female hikikomori that they had encountered pretty much followed the population distribution of both genders in Japan, meaning that the incidence of social withdraw among young females was roughly even to young males.
However, considering the student population at TG during the time of my field research, of the sixty students I encountered at the main TG complex, I only ever witnessed seven female students, and of these, one was a recovered hikikomori who stayed on to help out with the center. I asked the TG staff both in interviews and in casual discussions about disparity in the number of male to female hikikomori at their facility: with nearly eight-to-one ratio of TG students being male, did this fact strike them as odd, especially with their previous statements that the occurrences of male and female hikikomori in Japanese society are pretty much equal. To explain why the student population at TG was mostly male, the TG staff commented that the parents of sons consistently seek outside help for their child; socially withdrawn females are viewed with less urgency by Japanese parents. Several of the staff stated that the reasoning for this is that most parents with daughters do no feel that girls staying in the home as a recluse is problematic:
"In Japan, boys go outside; girls (stay) in the house. Therefore, boys who don't go outside are a problem. Because girls who stay inside the home come outside for the purpose of marriage, the parents don't (see) a problem. So, a girl becomes a little withdrawn, a hikikomori. But, the parents don't yet understand this: "Ah, you are staying in the home, that's fine", they think." (Translation of TG Interview transcript # TG50104001, Dziesinski, 2004)

...The amae relationship has an influence even after the son leaves the nest, one form is the co-dependency of the sempai-kohai relationship in the workplace mirroring that of school and home life with the mother. Another aspect of amae might possibly be seen in the cultural currency of on/giri and ninjoh, social debt/repayment and human feeling, which undergoes continual trade amongst Japanese in every aspect of social relationships (Doi 1975). In addition, young men who have been pampered by their mothers tend to look for similar treatment in girlfriends and spouses, which lead to all types of dating problems in adulthood. In fact, the stress of these male expectations on women may be seeing a backlash in Japanese society, as recently, there is a phenomenon in Japan which appears to be a wholesale rejection of young men by the opposite sex in the form of Parasite Singles; young women who continue to live at home and refuse to give up the easy affluent lifestyle they currently enjoy only to marry young men and become the 'new mothers' and personal servants of their young husbands (Naito 2000, Tolbert 2000, Zielenziger 2002)).
In fact, the social structures and cultural expectations in Japan experts like Doi were commenting on three decades ago in relation to the problem of school refusal, tôkôkyohi, have echoes in the present day by Psychologist Saito Tamaki and other modern experts when discussing the causes and problems surrounding the current issue of hikikomori.
In what appears to be an agreement of Doi's older assessment in the 1970s of Japan's 'fatherless society', Saito asserts that in Post-War Japan, men are not a presence in the home as they dedicate themselves to work and that " . . . women (are) expected to stay home and dedicate themselves to their children's education" (Barr 2000). Saito's criticism with this social development in Japan is that " . . . mothers spoil their children and later on 'these families support grown-ups with no conditions.'" (Barr 2000). And that:
"In Japan, mothers and sons often have a symbiotic, co-dependent relationship. Mothers will care for their sons until they are 30 or 40 years old." (Rees 2002)
Of course, the kyohiku mama/amae relationship can backfire in the worst of ways if the son rebels from this 'smothering' treatment. The cultural mechanism of amae may serve as one of the catalysts for young males who want to rebel from this so-dependency with their mothers as noted in the 1970s by Doi (1971) with tôkôkyohi and now in the present day with Saito's hikikomori (Rees 2000). Rebelling, these young males shut themselves in their rooms and become hikikomori-however, the original problem doesn't go away as the young man continues to live under the same roof as their mother. Saito feels one of the primary problems with any rehabilitation as well as the long stretches of isolation by hikikomori youth can be blamed on the affluence of Japanese families today, and especially on Japanese mothers who smother their child and allow them to stay withdrawn in a nurturing environment of the home awash in amae (Rees 2002).

Q: "...At Takeyama Gakko, there are students who are female. So, why did the parents of those girls bring their children to this place for help? Currently, seven of your students are females. Why did they come?"
A: "_Although they are girls_ [Emphasis mine], their parents felt there was a problem so they brought them here (to TG)."
A: "The girls wouldn't take even one step to go outside, they couldn't make friends, it wasn't that they weren't obedient/docile girls, the girls were far TOO docile and quiet. [Emphasis mine], The parents for those girl's who are here at TG didn't think (the girls) wanted to work at a job like boys. What's more, though they are girls, (the parents) I think, wanted their daughters to become energetic and healthy." (Translation of TG Interview transcript # TG50104001, Dziesinski, 2004)

...During the course of my field research at Takeyama Gakko, conversations with the staff indicated the following common attitudes by Japanese families in terms of their children's behaviors: When young men refuse to go outside, be active, mingle with friends, or find a job, then Japanese parents become anxious and worried about their male child. In the longer term hikikomori cases, the fact that the young man doesn't seek gainful employment upon reaching eighteen years of age really alarms parents as the young man is obviously not fulfilling his culturally defined role in society. In contrast, interviews with the TG staff about the female hikikomori seem to indicate that parents with daughters are less likely to seek out intervention or aid for their hikikomori daughters as they may not see the behavior of a withdrawn girl as overly alarming. The crux of the problem for the recognition of social withdraw of young women in Japan appears to center around the different social expectations by parents for their sons and daughters.

...Parallels between hikikomori and parasite singles 'Parasite Single', a word coined in 1997 in the book, Parasaito Shinguru no Jidai, 'Era of the "Parasite" Singles', by Yamada Masahiro, became a watchword in the media about the same period as hikikomori in the year 2000. Yamada defines parasite singles as "young men and women who continue living with their parents even after they become adults, enjoying a carefree and well-to-do life as singles" (JEI 2000). Yamada, basing his estimates on 1995 census data in Japan, states that the total number of parasite singles of both genders is around 10 million individuals. The estimated numbers of parasite singles presented in the JEI article show a nearly even ratio of males-to-females aged 24-34, with 41.6 percent of the parasite single population in Japan being male and 39.4 percent being female (JEI 2000). However, what is interesting is that much of the media attention available on the topic of parasite singles appears focused upon those parasite singles of the female gender (Ashby 2000, Naito 2000, Tolbert 2000, Zielenziger 2002). This 'media bias' on female parasite singles is an interesting contrast with the laser beam focus on young Japanese males as the core of the 'hikikomori crisis' in much of the press on that topic over last few years. According to reports on the topic of parasite singles in the media, this group consists of young people, mostly women, who prefer the cozy nest of home and financial support by parents to marriage and child rearing: A choice which often results in a lower standard of living than remaining at home with mom and dad.
...From a simplistic perspective, one primary criticism for hikikomori males, it's that they don't work nor live on their own. For parasite single females, the social criticism is that they don't marry and raise families. In both cases, there also seems to be a trend of 'blame the victim' piled upon the members of these two groups by the Japanese media (Ashby 2000). Flip the gender in relation these two issues and there appears to be little or no public discourse on them: where is the outcry on male parasite singles, or to a larger extent, on female hikikomori? The reason for the relative silence would appear to be that these groups are not seen as so deviant from norms as their counterparts belonging to the opposite sex in each respective group.
... For parasite singles, amae-afflicted adult men are one of their stated reasons for delaying marriage and children. One woman, Yuriko Hirose aged 35, opines on the modern dating scene in Japan, "...single men seem so helpless; they are really parasites who depend on their mothers" (Naito 2000). On the other side of the coin is the statement by a 36 year old Japanese man who laments:
"When I come home from work in the evening, my room is dark, and in winter it's cold. At these times I always wish I had a wife waiting for me, with a hot meal...I'm thinking of joining an omiai (matchmaking) service." (Naito 2000)
Interesting that his concerns about his loneliness echo those maternal things that a mother could provide. Another overlapping concern for both hikikomori and parasite singles is the graying of Japanese society and what that means in the economic sector of the future. With thirteen years of economic malaise, unemployment for post-bubble economy adults has been less assured in comparison to their parent's generation with an unemployment rate of 10 percent for those under age thirty (Genda 2000). The fact is, the older graying generation of Japanese are not giving up their jobs of lifetime employment (Genda 2000), add to this the fact that young women are delaying marriage and child birth which in turn flattens the national birthrate to 1.3 children per mother in Japan (Zielenziger), as well as a large group of young people who either refuse to work full time jobs, freeta, or even work at all, hikikomori, and you have a future forecast for the Japanese workforce that is particularly grim for the economy of Japan. Where are the females in all of this? They appear to be only a concern in the media when they are not fulfilling the traditional roles of 'good wife, wise mother'."