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Experience Design for Understanding Social Withdrawal: Employing a Live-Action Role-Play (LARP) to Learn About and Empathize with Hikikomori in Japan

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Neo-Simulation and Gaming Toward Active Learning

Part of the book series: Translational Systems Sciences ((TSS,volume 18))

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Abstract

“Performance ethnography” seeks to give people a voice by staging events, plays, and exhibitions together with those under study. Still, the audience of such events remains just that and gains experience only second-hand. Contrastingly, live-action role-plays (larps) provide first-hand experience. Building on performance ethnography and taking the limits of “experimental anthropology” into account (i.e. to offer only glimpses of another reality), this paper showcases a larp that was designed together with former hikikomori (people in long-term, social withdrawal) from Japan to make their life worlds experienceable to others. The co-designed larp, “Village, Shelter, Comfort”, seeks to go against the stereotype of laziness by raising awareness of the dilemmas some hikikomori are confronted with. The larp is part of an ongoing research project on learning effects of larping and an evaluation method for such effects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The number of hikikomori is hard to assess because people in withdrawal rarely answer surveys. Based on surveys conducted at health institutions, however, “guesstimates” range from 200,000 to 640,000 [2, 5]. The ministry stopped counting people above 35 years of age as hikikomori, which distorts the picture.

  2. 2.

    A related phenomenon has been named “parasite singles” [20]. While hikikomori are usually a matter of concern vis-à-vis a bread-winner masculinity ideal, parasite singles refer to women who stay at home and are dependent on the parents.

  3. 3.

    This “pureness”, however, is very much contested in current studies on hikikomori and comorbidity, the presence of multiple disorders [5, 12].

  4. 4.

    Originally an abbreviation, LARP, the term has become a word in its own in many languages and simultaneously became more inclusive concerning which practices are referred to. Thus, it is written in lower case, larp, throughout this chapter.

  5. 5.

    In 2018, the larp was also run at a high school in Tokyo, independent from us.

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Foundation for the Fusion of Science and Technology (FOST). I thank FOST, my informants and all larp participants, for making this study possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    B.-O. Kamm

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  1. B.-O. Kamm
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Correspondence to B.-O. Kamm .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Japan National Institute of Technology Asahikawa College, Hokkaido, Japan

    Ryoju Hamada

  2. Faculty of Liberal Arts, Mahidol University, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

    Songsri Soranastaporn

  3. College of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University, Osaka, Japan

    Hidehiko Kanegae

  4. Faculty of Science, Chulalongkong University, Bangkok, Thailand

    Pongchai Dumrongrojwatthana

  5. School of Information Technology, SPUC, Bangkok, Thailand

    Settachai Chaisanit

  6. Architecture, Design & Urban Planning, University of Sassari, DADU, Alghero, Italy

    Paola Rizzi

  7. MANTIS, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Vinod Dumblekar

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Kamm, BO. (2019). Experience Design for Understanding Social Withdrawal: Employing a Live-Action Role-Play (LARP) to Learn About and Empathize with Hikikomori in Japan. In: Hamada, R., et al. Neo-Simulation and Gaming Toward Active Learning. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 18. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8039-6_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8039-6_36

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