Mental Health and Social Withdrawal in Contemporary Japan

Beyond the Hikikomori Spectrum

Nicolas Tajan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351260787
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the phenomenon of social withdrawal in Japan, which ranges from school non-attendance to extreme forms of isolation and confinement, known as hikikomori. Based on extensive original research including interview research with a range of practitioners involved in dealing with the phenomenon, the book outlines how hikikomori expresses itself, how it is treated and dealt with and how it has been perceived and regarded in Japan over time. The author, a clinical psychologist with extensive experience of practice, argues that the phenomenon although socially unacceptable is not homogenous, and can be viewed not as a mental disorder, but as an idiom of distress, a passive and effective way of resisting the many great pressures of Japanese schooling and of Japanese society more widely.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351260800, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CCBY-NC-ND) licence.

1School nonattendance created the need for clinical psychologists

Introduction

When I read the special issue of Japanese Psychological Research on the “History of Psychology in Japan” (Satō et al. 2005), I was very surprised to find no mention of clinical psychology. I have been trained in French national universities (Bordeaux, Toulouse) where clinical psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology, inside psychology departments. I was expecting to find psychology departments (shinrigakubu) in Japanese national universities, but I had to come to a very simple and clear conclusion: psychology departments did not exist in the shape or form of which I was familiar.

In this chapter, I will explain some aspects of the history of Japanese psychology which remain widely unknown (note: for a full understanding of Japanese history of psychology before 1950, see McVeigh 2017). Then, I will underline that in Japan, psychology is never autonomous and often subordinated to educational science. Third, “Although the practice of clinical psychology seems to have a long history, clinical psychology is a new and confused academic area in Japan.” (Satō 2007: 133). Fourth, it was the need to reduce school nonattendance (considered a problem to solve) that created the demand for clinical psychologists’ services.

From scientific to clinical psychology

Birth of scientific psychology (1867–1927)

After a long period of closure, Japan’s entry into modernity was marked by the Meiji era and a wide diffusion of Western knowledge. Between 1867 and 1888, the psychology that interested Japanese scholars and institutions was primarily a philosophy of education (Satō and Satō 2005: 53). It was a mental philosophy, as indicated by the title of one of the first foreign works translated – Joseph Haven’s (1816–74) Mental Philosophy Including Intellect Sensibilities and Will, published in 1857. This book was translated in 1875 by Nishi Amane, a renowned intellectual of the time. He was one of the first to be sent abroad by the Edo Shogunate and was trained between 1862 and 1865 by Professor S. Vissering (1818–88) at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. When he translated the work of Joseph Haven, Nishi Amane chose to simplify the title by keeping only two words, “Mental Philosophy,” translated to shinrigaku 心理學 which stands as the current translation of “psychology” today.

In his 1874 Hyakuichi shinron, Nishi Amane had used seirigaku (性理学) to refer to psychology (Macé 2013: 186). In Hyakuichi shinron, shinri 心理 (mental) is distinguished from butsuri 物理 (physical) with “psychology” or seirigaku included in the category of shinri (grouping the intellectual sciences such as logic, politics, anthropology, etc.). When he translates the title of Joseph Haven’s work as shinrigaku 心理學, he means a broader category than psychology – that is, mental philosophy – within which psychology (seirigaku 性理学) is included. However, the term seirigaku was quickly abandoned, and the exact reasons that led to the transition from seirigaku to shinrigaku, which corresponds to the current meaning of “psychology” 心理学 (shinrigaku), are not known. In 1875, the Ministry of Education sent some of its best students to the United States, to learn from the American system in order to build the Japanese system of Education. The first course of psychology was offered in 1873 at Tokyo University, and in 1877 was provided by the philosopher and sociologist Toyama Masakazu.

Motora Yūjirō can be considered the founder of psychology in Japan. In his career, a 5-year study trip to the United States played a crucial role. After arriving in Boston in 1883, he obtained a doctorate entitled “Exchange, Considered as the principle of social life” (Motora 1888) under the direction of Stanley Hall at Johns Hopkins, where he continued his training from 1885 to 1888. Upon his return to Japan, he first taught at Aoyama Gakuin University, then at the Imperial University of Tokyo between 1888 and 1890, where he was awarded the first chair of psychology (Satō and Satō 2005: 53–55). His interests were in psychophysics, philosophical theories of the mind, clinical psychology, and educational psychology. The text of his conference at the Fifth International Congress of Psychology in Rome in 1905 was published that same year in English: the conference was entitled “The Idea of the Ego in Oriental Philosophy,” and the text, “An Essay on Eastern Philosophy.” This was commented upon favorably in the journal Revue de philosophie by Ribot (1905: 642–645), and unfavorably in the Revue neo-scolastique by Théophile Gollier (1906: 346–348). Motora Yūjirō’s lecture in Rome focused on his week-long experience in a Zen temple. He said that through the practices of Zen, one could reach a “pure” state of the ego, where no idea or sensory representation occurs. After being elected in 1902 as the first president of the Children’s Studies Association, Motora conducted research with schoolchildren with learning difficulties and focused on the clinical and educational aspects of psychology (maintenance of concentration, attention, and learning to write). For him, children failing at school was not a situation of mental retardation, but one in which a method of concentration and a method for focusing their attention was lacking (Satō and Satō 2005: 56). He was the first Japanese person to conduct research in the clinical psychology of children, published in 1911 in Germany a year before his death.

Motora’s most notable student is Matsumoto Matatarō. After attending classes between 1890 and 1896, he moved to the United States to study experimental psychology with G. W. Scripture at Yale University. He became an assistant professor but was transferred by the Japanese government to Germany in 1897. He studied at Leipzig University with Wundt (but did not obtain a doctoral thesis) and visited some European laboratories. He returned to Japan and became professor of psychology at the Tōkyō Higher Normal School in 1900. Together, Motora Yūjirō and Matsumoto Matatarō opened the first laboratory of experimental psychology in 1903 at Tokyo Imperial University. A large wooden building, donated by the Department of Medical Pathology, was reformed into 12 rooms to allow for the conducting of experiments. In 1904, the first course in psychology began, which produced the first seven graduates the following year. Matsumoto Matatarō then went on to found the psychology department of Kyoto University, which he headed from 1906 to 1913, after which he left Kyōto to succeed Motora Yūjirō as the chair of psychology at Tokyo University. In 1927, the Japanese Psychological Association (JPA) was created with Matsumoto Matatarō as the first elected president.

If the beginnings of psychology can be embodied by Motora Yūjirō and Matsumoto Matatarō, another character is important to our understanding of psychology, Fukurai Tomokichi. The first student of Motora Yūjirō, Fukurai graduated in 1898 and quickly became interested in William James, translating several of his works. As a practitioner of hypnosis, he published Psychology of Hypnotism in 1906, and in 1908, he was appointed the Professor of Abnormal Psychology (hentai shinrigaku 変態心理学) at Tokyo University. Hentai shinrigaku is not the translation for psychopathology (seishin byōrigaku) and, therefore, describing him as the first Japanese to hold a psychopathology teaching position would not be accurate. The best translation for hentai shinrigaku is “abnormal psychology” because the discipline named at that time, hentai shinrigaku, developed from Abnormal Psychology, “Abnormal Psychology” being the title of a journal edited by Morton Prince (1854–1929). Japanese Abnormal Psychology includes the study of pathologies and spiritual phenomena, hentai being wider than ijō 異常 (abnormal). Fukurai Tomokichi was drawn to parapsychology and made experiments with two women, as early as 1910: one of them had, according to him, the ability to project the contents of her thoughts on a paper, or a photographic film (without using a camera). He named this phenomenon nengraphy. The problem is that the researchers, scholars, teachers, and intellectuals of the time who attended his experiments suspected a trick and their interest gradually declined. Even Motora Yūjirō urged him to stop his research in parapsychology. However, after the death of Motora Yūjirō in 1912, Fukurai (1913) persisted and published “Clairvoyance and Thought Writing,” translated into English in 1931. Criticized by the lack of procedures for scientific verification, Fukurai Tomokichi was marginalized in the intellectual community and forced to resign. After his departure, no one took over the chair of hentai shinrigaku, and Matsumoto Matatarō encouraged psychologists to return to the study of normal phenomena in order to regain credibility. The discipline named hentai shinrigaku was withdrawn from programs, and psychopathology, like clinical psychology, was “nipped in the bud” until the early 1950s. Here Fukurai’s little history of developing parapsychology instead of clinical psychopathology meets wider historical processes: industrialization, militarism, and nationalism.

Psychology at University (1947–2000) and the invention of clinical psychology

The period following World War II was marked by scarcity and the American influence. Japanese intellectuals went to the United States with Fulbright scholarships in psychology, where they received training in the Jungian approach (Jung and Hisamatsu 1968), as well as client-centered therapy – Carl Rogers’ “non-directivity.” At the Institute for Education Leaders (IFEL), A.T. Jersild introduced Carl Rogers’ texts, though his theories were already known in 1947 by Tomoda Fujio, who had learned from one of Carl Rogers’ former students R.J. Fox, who had been head of the Student Advisory Service at Tokyo University of Letters and Science. In 1950, Fox obtained a position at the Christian University of Ibaraki and held the first workshop on non-directive therapy with Tomoda Fujio. At that time, it became the central place for training Japanese psychologists in Rogerian therapy. Carl Rogers, whose selected works were published in seven volumes in 1955 (Kitanaka 2003: 241), was invited to Japan in 1961 (Satō 2007: 139).

The period of reconstruction was followed by a baby boom, a standardization of education, and the creation of new schools and universities (Fumino 2005: 146). In this context, psychology had its first phase of expansion. Developmental psychology and educational psychology were made compulsory in the training of schoolteachers. Since the number of people who could provide this teaching was low, non-psychologists were enlisted to teach psychology as part of the curriculum in faculties of education (Fumino 2005: 148). After an initial period with educational psychology in the majority, the 1990s and 2000s saw its decline in favor of the emergence of clinical psychology. However, clinical psychology often still remained nestled in educational departments.

The rise of clinical psychology in Japan is inseparable from the formulation of “Japanese psychology,” in both senses of the term: a Japanese mentality – or more exactly, discussions of “a Japanese heart,” “the heart of the Japanese” (Nihonjin no kokoro), and various other nihonjinron (Befu 2001) – and a psychological discipline that is “authentically” Japanese. Clinical psychology has been able to develop in Japan only under the seal of the Association of Japanese Clinical Psychology (AJCP). A Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology (Nihon rinshō shinri gakkai) had already been attempted in 1964 but failed five years later in 1969 in intractable debates over the establishment of a national certification system for psychologists (Kitanaka 2003: 241). The Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology (Nihon rinshō shinri gakkai) still exists and is much smaller than the Association of Japanese Clinical Psychology (Nihon shinri rinshō gakkai). Table 1.1 summarizes information on the three main psychological associations.

Table 1.1Three associations of psychology (JPA, JAEP, AJCP)

	Psychology (1927–)	Educational psychology (1959–)	Clinical psychology (1982–)
Japanese	日本心理学会 Nihon shinri gakkai	日本教育心理学会 Nihon kyōiku shinri gakkai	日本心理臨床学会 Nihon shinri rinshō gakkai
English	Japanese Psychological Association (JPA)	The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology (JAEP)	Association of Japanese Clinical Psychology (AJCP)
Members	7411 (2012)	6851 (2012)	25,545 (2013)
Journals	心理学研究 Shinrigaku kenkyū The International Journal of Psychology In Japanese (1926–) Japanese Psychological Research In English (1954–) 心理学ワールド Shinrigaku wārudo Psychology World In Japanese (1998–)	教育心理学研究 Kyōiku shinrigaku kenkyū The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology In Japanese (1953–)	心理臨床学研究 Shinri rinshō gaku kenkyū Journal of Japanese Clinical Psychology In Japanese (1983–)
Certification	Psychologist (since 1990)	School Psychologist (since 1997)	Clinical Psychologist (since 1988)

Before focusing on clinical psychology, let us mention as an example how the Japanese Psychological Association explains a certification system that was created in 1990 and its purpose: to increase the level of expertise and sense of identity of psychology specialists. Qualified individuals must (1) possess a bachelor’s degree or above; (2) have lived in Japan for 2 or more years since they were 16 years old; and (3) earned academic credits designated by the JPA certification committee (JPA website consulted March 5, 2020). Other associations have developed selection criteria similar to these.

If we focus on psychology, and especially clinical psychology at the university level, by taking the example of Kyōto, Tōkyō, and Osaka universities, one notices that clinical psychology is systematically linked to education. For example, at Kyoto University, clinical psychology is officially present in the faculty of education, which is composed of three divisions, including one of educational psychology: clinical psychology is alongside psychotherapy within the division of educational psychology, while “experimental” psychology is at the faculty of Letters. At Tokyo University, clinical psychology is also present in the faculty of Education, but it has a division of its own, among 10 others, including educational psychology. At Osaka University, we must look in the Graduate School of Human Sciences composed of nine “majors,” among which are “psychology” and “clinical studies in education.” In the psychology major, one finds fundamental psychology, social, applied, applied cognitive, environmental, and gerontology. It is in “clinical studies in education” that we find clinical psychology, alongside educational psychology, anthropology of education, and so on. Unlike most English-speaking and European countries, we do not find the common situation where clinical psychology exists as an autonomous field within psychology departments that are themselves independent of other disciplines. With this overview of psychological associations and the place of clinical psychology in Japanese nation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Step aside, intersections, minor roads
• 1 School nonattendance created the need for clinical psychologists
• 2 The resistance to students’ psychological care
• 3 Is social withdrawal a mental disorder?
• 4 Mental health surveys on hikikomori
• 5 NPO support toward hikikomori youths
• 6 Hikikomori subjects’ narratives
• 7 Beyond the hikikomori spectrum
• 8 Conclusions: Social isolation, biopower, and the end of the clinic
• Index