Introduction

This introduction presents the scope of the book Mental Health and Social Withdrawal in Contemporary Japan––Beyond the Hikikomori Spectrum. Definitions of hikikomori and methods used are provided. Some aspects of the path that have led me to Japan and the approach I developed are detailed, especially when I argue why anthropology matters for clinicians. Specifically, in the Japanese field, no psychoanalysis is possible without anthropology, and simultaneously, psychoanalytic discourse is not the one that the anthropologist joins (in the Lacanian sense). Then follows an overview of how reclusion was exposed since the end of the 1990s and an overview of the seven chapters.