ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what well-being means for youth in Japan by positing hikikomori as an issue that symbolizes youth ill-being, relying on Mathews and Izquierdo's four-dimensional model of well-being. It begins with an overview of the hikikomori issue as it is represented in media discourses. The chapter discusses the ways in which youth isolation is problematized in its physical dimension focusing in particular on the perceptive levels of pleasure and health experienced by the socially withdrawn youth. It also examines the interpersonal dimension of well-being highlighting how youth in withdrawal distance themselves from interpersonal relations and what they expect from interpersonal communication in the process of recovery. The chapter outlines the ways in which they make sense of and question the meaning of life in light of the existential dimension of happiness. It analyzes how problematization of hikikomori at the national level reflects structural changes at local, national, and global levels.
