Hikikomori

In 2009, a group of Japanese investors put forth money to purchase an abandoned apartment block in the Philippines. The building, which had been scheduled for demolition, was quietly sold off. The Japanese investors wished to make a new generation of entertainment, the first of what they hoped would be the future of Japanese game shows. Notably, they wished to make it as cheaply as possible and off of Japanese soil.

Thirty single-room apartments fitted with cameras, microphones and an airlock elevator. Thirty contestants from all around the world. The contestants would seal themselves away within the apartments and stay there.

There would be no human contact.

Their task was to wait out the minutes, hours and days with all necessities provided, except socialisation. They would not see or hear another human being for the entirety of their time in isolation. They could request entertainment, delivered with food via the airlock, but no media containing images or sounds of humans. Nothing with a picture of another human on it. No mirrors or reflective surfaces. Once inside their room, each contestant would be entirely isolated in their humanity. Whoever could remain the longest would win 10million Yen (approximately $90,000). Even in Japan, when the cruelty and humiliation of game shows is a well known phenomenon, it would be hard to sell. However, there was an additional twist, a twist that made the entire exercise all the more antagonising. None of the contestants would know how many competitors were left at any given time. The show was called Hikikomori and it was broadcast on the deep web.

The hikikomori problem in Japan is not an entirely new phenomenon, but reached national attention in the early 2000s where a combination of an ageing population, generational culture-clash and dwindling job market led to an increase in the number of school refusers. In previous years, these futoko as they are known in Japan, were expected to emerge at the end of their teenage years and join the manual labour force. However, a trend of extended isolation was being noted by Japanese families, media and government. Men and women of all social and economic classes, the vast majority of whom had no prior history of mental illness, were sealing themselves away for increasingly long periods of time within single rooms. They would avoid all face-to-face social interaction and withdrew into a state of isolation. The phenomenon is now deep within its second decade and there are numerous reports of forty year old men and women who have spent up to 20 years in recluse. As their parents enter into their sixties and seventies, questions are rising about what is to be done with these 'first generation'. Despite considerable public attention and a number of school and media based programs to address the issue, the problem seems to be becoming more of a pandemic over time.

When Irish backpacker Logan finally snapped and begged to be released, he was amazed that he had not won. He could not comprehend that anyone else had managed to stay longer than he had. When asked how long he thought he had been inside, his response was chilling.

“Two weeks? No no wait, three weeks!”

He had been inside his room for five days. The video is still available as 'hot content' on the website. Logan splutters, laughs and looks at the hosts in disbelief. The commentary on the show draws attention to the visible dilation of his pupils.

One of the hosts asks Logan how many people he thinks are still inside. He stammer for a while, then manages a shrug.

“Five?”

At the time, there were 22 people still locked within their rooms. The popular opinion on internet forums at the time was that the show would likely last another week before a winner emerged.

In June 2016, the Japanese government began an investigation into Hikikomori amidst pressure from family groups that the show was providing encouragement to an already vulnerable nation of young people. The investigation was hampered from the start by a range of factors – governments are not well versed in the specifics of the internet, let alone the deep web. Though the show was undoubtedly a Japanese product, its location in the Philippines, as well as its dubiously legal nature (at no point had any production company claimed responsibility for the show, nor were they seemingly paying tax in either country) made finding those responsible very difficult. There was discussion of trying to limit access to the show within Japan, but the deep web made that inherently difficult. There were also rumours of heavy Yakuza influence within the show, bribing and threatening officials until the investigation was quietly closed and the Japanese media began to focus on a different issue.

On January 23rd 2017, eight years after the first episode, the favourite of both fans and deep web bookies alike, Brazilian classical pianist Lukas, withdrew from the competition. He had been steely-faced and resolute since the beginning. He had asked for a piano in his room at the start of the competition. He had been given an electric keyboard. For hours and hours a day he had played to himself. After several years of this, he began composing his own material. His music is erratic and haunting – closer to jazz than the classical music he continued to insist it was. Long periods of soft, nearly silent tinkling driven into abrupt crescendos of violently hammered keys. The piles of musical score he clutched to his chest as he asked to leave the room were like a religious text. One could only imagine how he would feel looking at them in the cold light of a world of others. Lukas's last words before he left the room had been in Portuguese, though he had spoken Japanese to himself throughout most of the competition.

“Mother, forgive me, let them be done.”

When the hosts of the show explained there were still three people locked away in their hotel rooms, there were visible security guards nearby. They were anticipating some kind of incident – it can be seen in the eyes of the presenters. Instead, Lukas merely shrugged and gave a genuine but exhausted smile.

“Good luck to them. Now please let me just go home.”

Lukas had no idea that the apartment block where he had been living had been torn down after a fire in which his sister had died. There is a supermarket there now.

Emika sat reading all day, every day. For seven months she barely moved from the chair in the corner of the room. She slowly and methodically made her way through book after book, turning the pages with a grim and determined predictability that was often the only indication that the video feed was still operating. She had stopped dressing in 2017, stopped closing the privacy curtain that shielded her toilet and shower from the cameras in 2018. In March of this year, she died in her chair. It was only the turning of the pages that alerted anyone to the fact there was anything wrong. The feed to her room cut out and did not return. Later that day, an announcement was made on the website explaining Emika had suffered an aneurysm and was no longer a contestant on the show. A hastily made memorandum video was uploaded the following day, but with very little to show other than her reading, the emotional music placed over the footage does a lot of the work.

Michael paced. Day after day, he walked the short distance of his room, muttering to himself. Even with the microphones positioned all around the room and on his collar, it was impossible to make out what he was saying. The words rolled into one another with such slurred frequency that his voice became a babbling brook that did not pause. He too had stopped dressing himself or using the privacy curtain. The carpet of his room became a frayed, bleached mess as it was worn down to nothing by the constant pacing. He asked for chalk which he began using to draw on the walls – windows to outside, a clock on the wall, doorway after doorway. He drew a rectangle and stared into it for twenty minutes before he laughed.

“I want to quit,” he said. His voice was a dry rasp. “I want to quit and go home. This was a mirror but I can't even remember what people look like any more.”

In his post exit interview, Michael shielded his eyes against the light and complained of the noise and the taste of the air. He refused to answer any questions. The hosts try to engage him, but he constantly smacks his lips and rubs his tongue with the back of his hand.

When he asks to return to the room, he is whisked away by security, but as the hosts try to laugh it off, he can be heard screaming to be allowed back in.

Sofia coped in her own way. She constantly talked to the camera and made requests. It began only months ago, but has continued most days since then. The prevailing fan theory is that she is trying to force the makers of the show into conversation.

“Sofia wants to hear a voice,” one user on the Hikikomori fan forum wrote. “She thinks that if she keeps asking, they will have to question it. But they won't. She's stupid if she thinks she can make them talk to her.”

Sofia's room is now full – a cocoon of odd and unusual items passed down through the air-lock. Piles of magazines and books have spilled over to form a carpet on the floor, dozens of layers deep. Above this are piles of cutlery, pots and pans, exercise equipment including a bicycle and a rowing machine. Lengths of rope, wire, clothing, fishing equipment, beanbags. She has stopped disposing of her food waste and it fills the available space, sliding down between the bigger items. Fruit flies form a permanent cloud on each surface and rats can be seen scurrying through the piles. The space Sofia now inhabits is approximately only three times larger than her body. She perches in the top corner of the room atop her kingdom of miscellaneous trash, barking requests. The door of her airlock is wedged open with the kayak she asked for three months ago. Slowly, more and more garbage pours through the doorway, forming a rising tide that will entomb Sofia until she cannot scramble around, cannot move, cannot twitch, cannot breathe, cannot blink.

She is still unaware that she won Hikikomori fourteen months ago.