Hikikomori, condition in which a person is socially avoidant to the point of staying isolated at home for at least six months without social interaction.
The term hikikomori can also refer to a person who is experiencing this prolonged socially avoidant condition. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
It’s 4 in the afternoon.
The Tourist had woken at 4 in the morning, jet-lagged and unable to fall back asleep. After lying in bed for what seemed like hours (it was in fact only twenty minutes) she had got up and gone to the konbini for coffee and breakfast. Seriously, if she lived here, she would buy everything at the konbini – one or two on every street, open 24 hours and packed full of delicious food and decent coffee. It was like stepping inside a treasure trove – rows of freshly-made snacks, meals, sandwiches and packets of every shape and size which the Tourist had to photograph with google translate to discover what it contained. Wasabi peanuts, sesame sticks, dried squid, pickled eggs and instant ramen in every variety. It took her a while to figure out the coffee – when you pay for it at the till, you’re given a cup which you place in one of the several machines, then press a button to select the type of coffee. It’s actually pretty good for something entirely machine-based. She’s glad of it, for even though she’s wide awake her head is numb, confused and sleep-deprived.
This is her first time in Japan and she’s enamored with everything. The tight lines, the quiet respect with which everyone allows everyone else their personal space. She comes from a city of loud and messy crowds – a place where everything is displayed on the outside, from the cries of joy to the shouts of despair. This place is so clean, and not only the streets. The people, dressed uniformly, hair immaculate, toes tapping tidily along the sidewalks, heads tipping politely should they come within a meter of anyone else. There’s a precise order that she likes. It makes her feel safe.
She should be a fish out of water, and yet she feels quite at home here. It’s easy to comply with the mask-wearing and the no-eating-on-the streets rule. She knows exactly what’s expected of her and she’s happy to drift along in the sea of compliance.
The city moves to its own distinct soundtrack. The mechanical bird tweets of the road crossing and the Eki Mori of the trains (every train stop on every subway line has a different music-box-jingle to signal the trains departure) are strangely calming, despite their saccharine twee-ness. The elevator-style jingles, lite in the extreme, are unashamedly corny to the Western ear. Apparently people travel around Tokyo recording the melodies at each station – a kind of aural trainspotting. The trains, of course, run perfectly on time. She read somewhere that it’s such an unusual occurrence for a train to be delayed, that tickets are handed out to all the passengers so that they can prove to their workplace the reason for their lateness. The Tourist is thirsty for a new perspective on her drab and ordinary life back home. That’s why we travel, she thinks, so that we can return home with a different perspective on our own lives, like looking at ourselves from an angle we’ve never seen in a mirror before. Her life here is uncluttered, it’s contained in one suitcase – the bare necessities – and it’s a good feeling to know that she has everything she needs. For once, she can stop trying to acquire things in order to feel ok about herself. She’s full of the distractions of a whole new world.
She’s collecting data – images, snippets of every day people, every day life, the sounds, the smells, the sights. She wants to experience Japan, see the place as a Japanese person might, but of course she can only ever see it as a tourist.
She’s been working her way through her highlighted guide book. She spent weeks researching. She would only be there for a limited amount of time, so she needed to make a plan in order to see everything she wanted to see. She’s sat in a cafe overlooking Shibuya crossing, explored the dazzling stores of Ginza and got lost in the labyrinth of Tokyo station. Now that it’s 4 in the afternoon, she’s feeling tired, but determined to push through she takes a train to Shimokitizawa. The guide book described it as a bohemian district, full of thrift stores and vintage record shops.
It’s winter and the light is already fading. Ideally she would have just gone back to the hotel and gone to sleep, but she’s not going to let herself, that would be a waste of half the day and if she gives into the jet lag at all, she’ll be fighting a losing battle.
Once out of the station she’s met by a whole new world. Women on bikes (children on the back, front, strapped to their chests) pedal home for dinner. This feels more like the kind of place that real people live than the other neighborhoods she’s been to so far. Cafes, thrift stores, record stores, everything the guidebook promised. Is it too late in the afternoon for a coffee? She’s bookmarked a thrift store in which everything costs 800 yen or under. She likes the sound of that, no confusion over the prices. She taps it into google maps (no need for paper maps these days) and follows the instructions on screen. It’s up a staircase, the large red sign in the window advertises 800 yen and she knows she’s at the right place. It’s packed. This is the type of commotion she’s used to back home, people squeezed into the aisles moving this way and that, pulling clothes off the rails, studying them hard, putting them back again. There’s an urgency. There’s only one of everything and if someone else gets to it first….
There’s a whole rack of sweatshirts. They all have something American printed on them. It doesn’t matter what. It could be Yale University tennis team or it could be Crochet Club of Wisconsin. Then there’s a rack of knitted sweaters. These are all clothes that could be worn by anyone’s granny. Tweed pants. Pleated Skirts. The fashions here are uniform and none of this is anything the Tourist would be seen dead in.
She decides to skip coffee for dinner. It’s the right time. She’d seen a place along the street advertising curry. There were pictures with the kanji, making it easier to identify. She finds it easily. She pauses at the door, it’s a tiny place – a counter with four seats. Every seat is taken. She should find somewhere else, but before she’s had a chance to turn round, the man behind the counter is talking to her. She doesn’t know what he’s saying, but she puts up one finger. “For one” she says. He nods, looks around, says something again. She says she’ll wait. She moves to the side, but there’s no space, she’s almost brushing shoulders with the man at the end of the counter. It’s all men in here wearing suits, probably on their way home from work. They’re locals at least, it must be good.
The owner who is also the cook wears a head scarf and works small saucepans on a tiny stove behind the counter. – just two hobs. The rice is in a cooker. He uses the same sauce and mixes with the protein of choice. Half of the plate is covered with rice, carefully pushed to one side to form a half-moon. The curry fills the rest of the plate. He sprinkles something on top – some green, some flakes (bonito?). He makes casual conversation with the men at the counter. He smiles at the girl who brings water to the tables and clears the plates. Hard to imagine that this is his life, thinks the Tourist, day after day.
She orders chicken. She eats fast, wondering if they’re talking about her, speculating about where she’s from and what she’s doing there. The curry’s good, she wishes she could take more time over it, but she’s eager to be done and doesn’t want them staring at her any longer than necessary.
As the Tourist steps out and turns towards the station she catches sight of something colorful fluttering in the window of the house next door. She turns to look at it again, but the shutter is down, leaving her to question whether she had seen it or imagined it.
#
The origami butterfly flutters in the breeze. The window is open just a crack, but enough to give flight. Pale pink, deep blue, dashes of yellow.
Himiko sits and stares. Her hands flit back and forth, round and round, the knitting needles spinning the yarn into something other than itself. She doesn’t know what it will be yet. A golden band of light hits the side of her face, throwing a soft yellow glow onto her high cheekbones. The echoes of this morning’s argument with her mother are still in her head, still pulling at her heart. The bamboo needles click pulling the orange strings into a whole. She marvels at it and remembers how as a tiny child her grandmother had taught her and she had been mesmerized by the impossible transformation just by intertwining the strands in a predetermined pattern. The food her mother had given her on a tray for lunch lay untouched beside her. She couldn’t bear to eat it, but she couldn’t give back the full tray either, the weight of it pulled at her every time she sensed it out of the corner of her eye. That’s why she preferred to look up towards the window.
She no longer cares what her father thinks. She’s been dead to him for months now, maybe even longer. Somewhere in the middle of the endless lockdown hemade it clear that unless she changed her attitude he would have nothing more to do with her.
Her mother treads a fine line. To go against her father would be too much of a transgression for her to bear, but at the same time, she cannot give up on her daughter. Her only daughter.
Himiko had always wished for a brother or sister. As a child she had wanted a playmate, but nowadays it was more about having an ally.
Her mother has tried to talk to her gently. She reminds her everyday that it has been more than six months now since lockdown ended. Himiko tells her that she’s not ready. She doesn’t see any need to go out. She spends the days drawing the black and white figures – warrior girls – that are posted all over the walls down one side of her room. She’s been drawing them for years. She has an idea of how they will come together in a story. She spends the evenings knitting. She tells her mother she has friends who she talks to online. It’s better than going out, she tells her mother. The truth is she hasn’t seen anyone online for months, but her mother doesn’t need to know that.
Anyhow, she’s fat and she doesn’t want to go out until her face looks less round, until her ankles and wrists look less chubby. For more than a year, she wasn’t allowed to leave the house. What has changed? Why is it ok now all of a sudden? She had fought it at the beginning, missed her old life. But then something changed, she started to like it, and now she doesn’t want to go back to the old days. What does it matter to anyone else anyway?
She keeps her brain on task. She doesn’t let her mind go to the dark places. She saves that for the drawings. Satsuki, the girl she has been drawing the longest, is the defender of light against dark. That’s why Himiko needs to draw fast. Her hero has to keep up with the evils in the world around her.
Fantastical nonsense. That’s what her father calls it.
Her mother at the stove, stirring the pot. She’s always in the kitchen, scrubbing, peeling, cleaning, chopping, stirring. Her father at his computer typing, tapping, tutting. Satsuki flying, soaring, far away from all of them.
The orange river runs faster longer, down her knee, over the hills and far away. It’s not easy for Himiko to keep up with it. Tomorrow perhaps she’ll go out. Yes, she promises herself that tomorrow will be the day. The butterfly bows in agreement. Satsuki agrees too. They will hold her accountable, they will be her witnesses.
The light is fading fast. Himiko stands at the window watching a woman walk past. She’s not from here. She’s visiting. She closes the shutter, shuts out the day, sits at her desk, opens her sketch book and prepares for her travels to begin.