Happy to report that my screenplay, INSIDER, has reached Manhattan Short Film Festival screenplay competition semi-finals.

The term “hikikomori” hit mainstream media at the end of the 20th century, when Japanese psychologist Saito Tamaki, who came to be the leading expert on the subject, published his book on the subject titled Hikikomori: Adolescence without End. According to his definition, hikikomori live with their parents, tend to be night owls and spend a great deal of their time in front of TV and computer screens in the darkness of their bedrooms. They stick to the basic minimum when it comes to human interaction, reducing their conversations to brief ones with people like convenience store clerks on their occasional outings. Though it might sound like an extreme lifestyle, hikikomori is, in fact, a condition that Saito categorizes under developmental disorders and the result of the failure to mature. 

The term has often been translated into English as “social withdrawal” or “social isolation.” These align well with the etymology of the word. Combining the verbs 引く (read hiku), which means to pull, and 篭る (read komoru), which means to shut oneself in a house or bedroom, for instance, the word hikikomori has become a well known idea in Japan.

(from Lisandra Moor’s article Japanese Words We Can’t Translate: Hikikomori and Why It’s More Than Just Being Introverted, ‘Tokyo Weekender’)