As luck would have it, a troll would come by to chat one day and point out that 2chan was the hang-out for Japanese Hikikomoris and while some of you have told me that 2chan is just similar to 4chan, the seed was already planted that it couldn't hurt attempting to try and communicate with Japanese Hikikomoris even if it means the only 2chan channel I know of is /b/ and I'm going to use 4chan's interface to try and paste this English text into 2chan and hopefully someone there would know both languages and can share their opinion over here.

Later on I would learn about the AnonIB Hikikomori Board and my introduction post here seems to be well received enough plus it made me start trying to use imageboards again.

Further luck later on, Namaesukawanae would send me her survey and what I originally thought to be a basic questionnaire where I would just copy paste parts of my post from elsewhere in this forum turned into a longer yet more related to my views of Hikikomori version rather than a gray issue of trying to accomodate or ask all Hikikomoris like my threads above.

As if to confirm that this was at least a useful thing to do, Namae would tell me that she could translate the survey into Japanese (though she doesn't have time to translate my answers because of the length) so posting on 2chan seems to be worth a shot even though it might open Pandora's Box and increase more trolls coming here due to the nation of /b/ if 4chan's /b/ was a referencing point.

Anyways, here are my answers to Namae's survey:

How do you define "hikikomori"? Who do you consider to be a hikikomori?

Hikikomori for me in a summary, is (if a summary is possible) simply one who prioritizes their Honne over Tatemae but because the world often works around the balance of Tatemae/Honne even in mainstream civilizations where people are taught what honesty is but is raised in an environment where the unwritten rule is to never strive to be honest (but to praise people who do live a life of pure honesty) causes an imbalance which gets in the way with their communication of fellow beings. This communication problem though is very similar to mild autism or ADHD, in that it seems like they talk normal and could even be considered great at talking.

However I believe a true hikikomori would soon find out that when they try to actually communicate with something that is less orthodox to the other person. I.E. they try to take a friendship to the next level, there are certain mishaps that happen that they fail at delivering the message no matter how sincere or detailed they are. This goes back to the example in this link that shows that even when balanced, Honne can often cause trouble especially around people who do not trust you or are not really interested in your Honne self or simply are sound absorbers and the details of a Honne conversation makes it impossible for them to drown the Hikikomori out and thus they react negatively to the Hikikomori.

This causes the Hikikomori to keep receiving such negative feedbacks that they become introverted hermits especially in their mind. The thing that separates them from a mere introvert or a hermit though is both the modern progress of technology that culminated in the internet and the continued decay of society to the point that we are now noticing the effects at a much wider range that someone can now dub this as a "phenomena". But at the same time because the Japanese culture is more of a meccha of these factors, it got more noticeable in Japan first which coincided with the adaptation of the word "Hikikomori" there.

Unfortunately, as you probably noted in my post here if you've read it, Honne/Tatemae is simply not valued enough in mainstream society to discuss even among Hikikomoris so there's a good chance that eventually the growth of people living indoors will hijack the term into a more general more indoor-type NEET or even a fad or excuse for staying at home and even worse, an excuse for a person who just once stayed indoors but is now out or is out due to school or a job.

That's why it's a very volatile term and it's a very dangerous term and that's why in this reply I wrote to you, I was very elitist with the term. However at the same time, it's also why when someone in the chat room came and said we aren't hikis because we don't try to be anonymous in the internet or try to converse here so we're not shy, I also went against his elitist opinion of it because I'm not saying that a strict definition of hikikomori should be adopted. Simply that A definition of hikikomori should be adapted and we can't just willy nilly accept anyone who calls themselves hikikomoris especially if there's a strong indication that they might have just led an introverted lifestyle. I mean you don't call someone who vacationed for a month in the mountains a hermit, so why should we be so lax with who should be called a hikikomori especially if they can cause people to be desensitized towards the true and more painful yet subtle issues a true hikikomori has experienced and needs support or a discussion on? We can't afford people "graying" the issues of Hikikomori so much because we became a homogenized melting pot for anyone who wants to stay at home.

Based off of that, in your opinion, are you a hikikomori?
(if yes) How do you see this? (i.e., is it a problem or a lifestyle or maybe just a temporary status?)

I actually posted two related posts about this yesterday.

Here I addressed what kind of Hikikomori degree I had experienced according to that official chart as well as some criticism of the chart.

Here I addressed how long I've been a Hikikomori and alluded to the fact that I lived the life before I knew the term.

That's why my answer is mostly leaning yes but I believe in order to address the validity of one fitting a vague term, one must be able to address how he also fits the no category. In fact, it's why when you asked "Who do you consider to be a hikikomori?", I thought the better question was "Who do I consinder to NOT be a hikikomori?" because it's not only more falsifiable but it now puts the hikikomori to the task of matching who they are with their definition of hikikomoris. This way if they're faking it either deliberately or because they fooled themselves into thinking they were, at best, they would be forced to admit that their not really a hardcore hikikomori and hopefully if enough people admit to this, then casual people would start realizing that these people might not even be the average norm for a hikikomori.

As for why I could possibly be someone other than a hikikomori:

I usually don't focus on where I am as much as what I can do with the current place I am in. That's why I'm not really someone who doesn't want to go out, I'm just someone who because of my communication problems and the better resource of the internet combined with the subsidies my parent raised me in, simply found that the pro of staying in for now outweighs the battle of going out.

But that's also the problem of the hikikomori definition. It assumes we are "out" when we're not locked in our homes but as a society, we have slowly degraded into a people who wants "in". We want our children to be "IN" schools. We often sacrificed our dreams to get jobs that involve being "IN" a building. We often asked our federal governments to be our mommies and daddies (except by name) to take us "IN" their social welfare-ized states and countries.

To make things worse, we as a society in general, throw the baby out with the bathwater and accused people of wanting to be "free" to really just secretly want their paradise and not have any responsibility and to make things worse, many in society who has been weakened by the "pussified" society is raising us, really just think "free" is something rewarded as opposed to be earned so the end result is that we have an "IN" society that's not accomodating the "OUT" society but instead is metaphorically punishing these "OUT" minded people either verbally, physically, mentally or even beneficially.

This creates a problem where hikikomoris are only a subset of the problem but also become the scapegoat of the problem with the in-fighting by many Hikikomoris to be "OUT" when what they really are battling for and how they are really cured is by being conformed to be "IN" but the conformed mainstream society of "IN" as opposed to what their Honne identity really interprets as "IN". In essence, they don't really want to consider what their choices have been, they simply want to stop, be happy until they drop in this world and someone next time gets dealt with the same hand and then it's not their problem anymore. They just want to be "babied" but not babied enough that people perceive them to be a baby. (cont. below)

Are you interested in changing this or just learning how to live with it?

It's because of this problem which is why I choose to neither quit being a Hikikomori nor stay as a Hikikomori. I think anthropology has shown that many indigenous cultures are dying but it's only natural that before total globalization kills all independent identity, some new upstart culture arises in some corners of the world. Most of them internet related cultures so to me it's no surprise that Hikikomoris would be linked to indoors because many of our new cultures are based around the internet except Hikikomoris are one of the first that has also real world attributes along with the "Stay at home" culture and the "Homeschooling" culture and the "Startup Programmer that builds a site that generates millions" culture. We're just more socially related because our problem is often socially related.

But there's a reason many indigenous cultures are dying even if each has some specific wiser and better developed mindset in some concepts of our society (like some tribes not seeing a specific color). It's because they haven't adapted. It's just an extension of the Spanish Inquisition or World War 2 or colonies. Except now, it's shifted into different kinds of invasion due to both the globalizing effect of technology and the social decay of society and the new rules we made to accomodate justifying the existence of our over-popularized species without taking serious considerations of it on the casual mainstream level.

That's why even if I don't know the next level of Hikikomori progress, I won't and can't stay as Hikikomoris now nor would I be better off conforming even further and sacrificing my identity in favor of just becoming another less independent human being and sacrificing the future of not only hikikomoris but all independent-wanting people. In that sense, one can say I made it my lifestyle even though my environment made me adapt this lifestyle and I just happen to prioritize taking that into consideration as opposed to just ignoring why I became this way and using those knowledge to grow from that branch as opposed to returning to the decaying stem and cutting off the branch to be among the ones who caused me to become a Hikikomori in the first place.

There are a variety of hikikomori ranging from those who don't leave their room to those who just don't interact with people any mroe than they need to in person. To what extent are you a hikikomori?

As with one of the posts I linked above, apparently the most I have been a Hikikomori is to be rank A in degree according to the unnoficial test.

How do you feel around people?

I feel they are just like me. I need to find cues to better communicate with them and some would say be their friends but even though I'm not a sociopath, the recent "friend-addiction" of MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn pretty much revealled to me that in general most humans just want to "network" rather than be friends so I try to stick to the quote of "It's better to be friendly than to have friends." and just be that way.

I often am in a negative environment (to me) though and so what I do is I rust the bridges anytime there's a risk of having people know my parents because I live with them. Even my friends. So usually I'm a lonely person that people stay away from or else I'm forced to lose them or I already lost them before that once they know me better.

That's why I tend to not interact with people much but in general, I don't feel bad about them. In fact, I love listening and gaining perspectives from all living beings even though I'm neither an Aristotle who looks at all manners of species or a Socrates who talks and converses with an insane person in the streets.

Do you have any conditions that might have lead to your becoming a hikikomori or,if you answered no to the last overall qustion, becoming interested in hikikomori?

I've never been diagnosed with a personality disorder and an EEG said I was fine. I wouldn't rely on that though. Nowadays every person gets diagnosed with a social disorder plus I never went to regular check-ups and many people have admitted that I act abnormal and in fact when I lived with my cousins, they had to tell me what I was doing weird so that I can pick up on it and act more "conformed".

As for being interested, I just stick to who I am and it happens that I'm a hikikomori or possessed qualities like it so I just settle for that tag and use that to know more people that are like me as well as to verify how similar and how different those people are from me to make sure that I do indeed fit the profile.