An upcoming press event in Tokyo…
My friend Yuichi Hattori will be giving a press conference in Tokyo before our joint appearance in Los Angeles next Friday.
Here’s the announcement from the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Tokyo :
Urgent Press Conference - `Hikikomori` And The Decline Of Japanese Society`
November 6, 2006, 3PM, Foreign Correspondents Club
Yurakucho Denki Bulding, Yurakucho, Tokyo
`Hikkikomori` is the phonenomon in which children and even adults retreat into themselves and do not leave a room or home for months, sometimes years at a time.
`Hikkikomori` experts Yoshito Ishihara and Yuichi Hattori will speak on the topic and their upcoming presentation to the 23rd conference of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation.
They will be holding an urgent Press Conference on the eve of their presentation to the conference in Los Angeles. [at the ISSD forum at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Los Angeles]
Hikikomori is a uniquely Japanese phenomenon and understanding this disorder helps explain the decline of Japan today. More than one million young adults shut themselves in their rooms for years at a time.
These socially withdrawn people, known as “Hikikomori,” are surprisingly common among young Japanese. Presenters have all written on Hikikomori. In his book “Hikikomori and Family Trauma,” Yuichi Hattori states that Hikikomori is a dissociative disorder involving dual dissociative identities. Michael Zielenziger, the author of “Shutting Out The Sun: How Japan created its own lost generation,” focuses on Hikikomori, cultural hostility to individual autonomy, low birth rate, and Japan’s shrinking population.
Yoshito Ishihara, writes about Hikikomori, co-dependence in parent-child relationships and dysfunctional Japanese families in his book “Healing Your Mind.”
Using videotapes of clients, Hattori will show that Hikikomori is a culture-bound DDNOS caused by attachment trauma at early ages.