Translational Studies for Inclusive SocietyDefining Something as a Social Problem – “The Problem of Seeing Something as a Problem”
Social pathology/social problem phenomena are a sort of struggle or conflict, and thus the task in resolving them becomes one of improving or restoring relationships. But things are not so simple, because the question of what is a “problem” and what is a “solution” is a difficult. For example, it cannot be unequivocally stated that refusing to attend school is a “problem” and returning to school is a “solution.” I do not think that illegal drug use is a “problem” and legal responses (punishment) are the “solution.” It is possible to define addiction or dependence as a “problem,” but if we do so the “solution” becomes not punishment but recovery. We cannot necessarily define hikikomori [refusing to go out one’s room or house] as in some sense a problem and going outside as the “solution.” And in some cases the “problem” is turned upside down. For example, one of the graduate students of this research unit has been conducting surveys at a free school attended by students who refuse to attend regular school. He wanted to investigate why they did not (or could not) attend school. But instead the students asked him, “Why did you go (were you able to go) to school?” The premises behind the survey’s “questions” were called into doubt -“Who are you to see refusing to attend school as problematic?” They “asked back” and questioned the positionality of the interviewer.
When social pathologies/social problems are being addressed, research, practice and policy are all undermined whenever there is a lack of awareness of the definition of this “problem” and “solution” and the existence of this “asking back.” For example, the film home, made as a film school graduation project, demonstrates an awareness of this. Its subject is the filmmaker’s older brother, who is a hikikomori [agoraphobe or shut-in]. The older brother describes his fear of stepping on the ground or entering the outside world as the “world above 3cm”, and presents the record of his seven years of staying inside as a diary. The diary is garrulous. It offers a fresh, real voice in the midst of what is being portrayed rather than a reflective attribution of meaning after the fact. He is called a “hikikomori,” but his time is not spent in idleness. His life is depicted as being rich and full.
A lasting impression is left by the large number of videotapes in the older brother’s room shown in the film. The fact that he loves movies feels like one of the core elements of this “home”. We screened the movie at Ritsumeikan University and invited the younger brother who made the film and the older hikikomori brother to come and speak about it. The older brother complained to the students. It was a complaint aimed at audiences who feel relieved when he finally leaves his house at the end of the movie. “The hikikomori protagonist leaves home in a car. But this protagonist does not give a big sigh of relief or anything like that, and it irritates me when viewers see this as a happy ending. …I want them to watch more carefully. That empty garage – that is my anxiety and fear that still exists now and will continue to exist in the future. There is a disheartening gap in awareness between the hikikomori themselves and the people around them. This discrepancy in awareness must be presented in all sorts of situations.” In the pamphlet for home (issued by the distributer), the older brother says of the camera wielded by his younger brother, “It describes the reality of a hikikomori. His technique is admirable. I love movies, so there was an opening on my side if he made a good film. If it were a typical student film of pre-established harmony I would have completely rejected it.” For the sake of making the film, a reality in which he looked and spoke into the camera was constructed, and the script written by his younger brother who wanted to do something about his hikikomori state whether he himself wanted to or not was realized.
The protagonist nature of the older brother is brought out in the manner of a “movie within a movie.” The older brother speaks about a “desire for expression,” saying, “I had aspirations regarding movies.” In order to complete this movie it was necessary for this protagonist to leave his house. He went all the way in his portrayal of the protagonist in this “movie within a movie.” That is the power of the camera. It was possible because the filmmaker had a good understanding of his older brother’s desires.
It might be a document or record, but as a movie it possesses a fictionality. Pushing off from his older brother’s desire for expression, the younger brother finds good conditions (of course not the pre-established harmony) in which to depict the curve of transformation toward the reordering of family relationships. But the older brother is imposing. In the discussion he uses the phrase “relationship of complicity” to question the positionality of the viewer: you who feel relieved and see the hikikomori older brother leaving his house as a happy ending are precisely the ones who drive people to become hikikomori, so this is something tinged with emotional complicity. The way people have this feeling itself must be changed.
A documentary’s power
I am reminded of Hara Kazuo’s “documentary theory.” It involves a discussion of the meaning of documentary films as an invasion of privacy. “Privacy is spoken of like a value or feeling of individual people, but when we look carefully at the feelings or ways of having feelings of these individuals, it seems as though in a self-contradictory manner many things related to social systems or policies are included within them. So when we try to capture these social elements with a camera, the target inevitably turns toward the world of personal feelings,” and thus “as a result, out of necessity we cannot help but step into the territory of privacy,” “there seem to me to be a great deal of the sorts of contradiction-like things we are addressing included within what is said to be private,” “I do indeed want to find them within flesh and blood human beings and drag them out,” “it may be thought that when we step inside another person carrying our cameras, things emerge that even the person being filmed did not expect, and things piled up inside them that they had lived with peacefully until now coming crashing down. But unfortunately they do not come down so easily. …that’s how strong these piled up things are.”(Hara Kazuo, Fumikoeru kyamera – waga hōhō, akushondokyumentarii –―; The camera that steps beyond – our method, action documentary -], Film Art, Inc.)
Here I think about human services. Clinical work steps into the domain of the private or intimate reality. Those who ask are doing this. They have a very similar function to a documentary or a camera. Privacy, what is private, what you want to keep secret, what you don’t want to talk about, distress, pain and ways of suffering – society enters into all of these things. When they are opened up things that you don’t want to see come into view. Those who ask have a responsibility, and the way of looking of those who watch is also called into question. This is the case because what is private conceals deep within itself a triggering quality. Most art expresses these things within a certain frame. Clinical work and support services also extract them in a similar manner. The responsibility of those who ask appears when they conduct interviews or surveys. The individuality of clinical work and support services is crucial. Through it clinicians have a responsibility to get answers about issues facing society. This is a duty of a different dimension to the duty of confidentiality. I thus believe that together they form the subject of “human services and democracy.” To make something psychological or make it individual is to simply close it off.
Responding to “asking back”
Regarding the meaning of attending school, the graduate student who was “asked back” reconsidered the validity of the term “futōkō [refusal to attend school; lit. ‘not attend school’].” What I told him is that we must ask what “kō [school]”is, what it is from which refusing to attend school comes, differentiate [different kinds of] refusing to go to school, and break down the state of affairs that is conceptualized and labeled in this way. The concept of refusing to attend school has been expanded too far, and our relying on it too heavily means there are unseen things that must be investigated. Children who refuse to go to school themselves may be steeped in ready-made narratives possessed by society. If so they may depict a recovery that conforms to the narratives of independence of the world at large. They will blame themselves. Their self-respect will decline. If they don’t make use of their experience of refusing to attend school it may come to be described as nothing more than a “negative experience.” It will be taken up within existing narratives.
The student who engaged in this “asking back” was already not a student who refused to attend school. But he had neither returned to school nor made only this his goal. What was important was that he be made to continue learning. His existence as a learner. Only the shape and place of learning were different. If there is other work he can do as a hikikomori, then there is nothing wrong with him doing it as his “home work” and gradually becoming able to go outside in his daily life. We must continue to question from what to what the transformation of ceasing to refuse to attend school or to be a hikikomori is. In the study of social problems there are many cases in which the connotation and denotation of these things is not clear. I have suggested that the hidden theme of research of the graduate student mentioned above is “goodbye the word of “futōkō !” More than the examination of their content itself, the task that must be taken up in an era and society in which interest is concentrated on clinical work and support services is joint research that focuses on the “definition of problems” and the “meaning of solutions,” and we are engaging in this work while attempting to come up with practical approaches and system/policy proposals.
