A. Hikikomori. The National youth Agency's (NYA) development officer Harry Wade explains the term and the background to his recent visit to bring the standards framework for the participation of children and young people to the Japanese.
In Unicef's Innocenti Report Card 7 (Unicef, 2007) on child wellbeing, the authors wondered if they had lost some data in translation when the figures threw up a striking 30 per cent of Japanese young people who agreed with the statement "I feel lonely". Iceland was a distant second place on 11 per cent.
Eighteen per cent of Japanese youth also said they "feel awkward and out of place". There are 120 million people living in Japan as a whole, 32 million - about a quarter of the total population - being in the 0- to 24-year-old category. Of the total population, about 15 per cent is under 18.
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