People who are mentally unfit in Japan to end up isolating themselves and never go out of their homes. Such people are called 'hikikomori'
The Japanese hikikomori phenomenon: Acute social withdrawal among young people (May 2008 Paper)
Abstract
Although rare in the west, in Japan and in some other advanced countries on the Asian-Pacific rim, there is a popular perception that there has been a significant increase in the numbers of young people who withdraw socially for protracted periods of time (referred to by the Japanese term ‘hikikomori’). This paper describes the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan, considers evidence relating to its prevalence and examines views about the causes. I argue that the tendency to think of hikikomori as a homogeneous group characterised by psychological malaise is misleading and that withdrawal and disengagement can also be linked to changing opportunity structures. The collapse of the primary labour market for young people and the growing prevalence of a precarious secondary sector has led to a situation in which traditional and deep-rooted norms are undermined and young people forced to find new ways of navigating transitions within a highly pressured and rigid system. Under these circumstances, acute withdrawal often represents an anomic response to a situation where tradition no longer provides adequate clues to appropriate behaviour rather than as a malaise reducible to individual psychologies.
Abstract
There is an increasing number of youth in Japan who are dropping out of society and isolating themselves in their bedrooms from years to decades at a time. These so-called hikikomori or social isolates have been described by Japanese clinicians as suffering most commonly from an autism spectrum disorder. However, such claims come out of examining biased samples of hikikomori who have already been referred to mental health professionals. Alternatively, we argue that the tendency for hikikomori represents an increasing marginalization of Japanese youth who are consciously rejecting dominant cultural values of harmony-seeking and consequently deviating in their motivation to conform to others' behaviors. The current study tests for this alternative argument for hikikomori tendencies. One hundred ninety-five participants were recruited from Japanese universities and divided into high risk vs. low risk of becoming hikikomori according to an instrument that measures such risks. As expected, high risk students shared similar social perceptions about pervasive values in their society as low risk students, thereby ruling out deficits in social perception as being associated with hikiko-mori risk. Instead, high risk students were not motivated to conform to others' behaviors relative to low risk students and this difference was fully mediated by differences in preferred levels of harmony-seeking. Furthermore, high risk students scored lower on both local identity and global identity relative to low risk students, thereby reifying their marginalized identity in Japanese society.
Young Japanese Adults Leave Home Less Frequently Than Seniors: Survey (Oct 2017 News)
Japanese people in their twenties leave their homes less frequently than those in their seventies, a recent mobility survey has shown.
The survey, conducted by East Japan Marketing & Communications Inc., also showed that over 60% of respondents in their twenties admit having a tendency to isolate themselves from society.
“They can now do shopping and many other things at home thanks to the spread of the Internet and smartphones,” an official of the company said about the findings on young people.
A total of 2,200 people aged 20 to 79, excluding students, responded to the survey, which was conducted in March through the Internet.
The frequency of leaving the home was calculated by the number of times they go out for work, shopping, eating out, beauty care, exercise, recreation, education, hospital visits and 10 other purposes per month.
oh and suicide rates are insane and Japanese culture values 'politeness' and 'honour' (not fitting into the norm of Japan usually means you are treated negatively) so highly and oppressively it hurts?
Why does Japan have such a high suicide rate? (July 2015 Article)
Last year in Japan, more than 25,000 people took their own lives.
That's 70 every day. The vast majority were men.
Those figures do not make Japan's the highest suicide rate in the world in a developed nation.
That dubious title belongs to South Korea. But it is still far, far higher than virtually all other wealthy countries.
It is three times the suicide rate in the United Kingdom.
The categories which they list are factors which drive the rate of suicide in japan:
historical practices (think seppuku done by samurai and kamikaze pilots of 1945),
financial pressure (family pressures those in financial strain to kill themselves to provide support for the family which is seen as the most loving action that can be done when things are dire as life insurance pays well),
Isolating technology (should be self-explanatory but think online shopping and socialisation (ebay/amazon/facebook/etc))
and in Japan to speak of mental illnesses is taboo. You do not speak of it less you want to be considered a pariah over there.
It is not as nice as it may appear to be to an outsider I'm afraid.