Nippon.com offers an informed view of Japanese recluses by a psychiatrist working directly with hikikomori, offering definitions, descriptions, and communication and work issues.
Joseph Plummer, New Hampshire hermit
The life and story of a 18th-century New Hampshire (US) hermit is recreated in a new book by Amani Willetts titled The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer. The book uses narrative, photography, and archival material to recreate the mystery.
“Before he left society for a life in the woods he [Plummer] was basically anonymous,” Willett said. “It was his act of leaving that turned him into a myth. Paradoxically, his desire to become invisible has only fueled people’s interest in his life.”
URL: https://hyperallergic.com/400898/amani-willett-photo-portrait-joseph-plummer/
Japan hikikomori job aid
According to the Japan Times, The Labor Ministry is extending job help to hikikomori, specifically older adults:
The government has decided to expand the scope of its job support program for socially withdrawn people, which is limited to those 39 or younger, to include people in their early 40s.
Many people aged 40 to 44 have been living as hikikomori (recluses) who shut themselves in at home, or NEETs, an acronym for “not in education, employment or training,” because of the hardships they suffered during Japan’s “employment ice age,” the officials said.
Agafya update
Familiar to these blog pages is the Siberian hermit Agafya Lykova, now 73, a life-long hermit and last of her familiar of Old Believers, who fled to Siberia in 1936. Several media sources now report that the regional Russian governor has banned helicopter flights of food, supplies, and potential evacuation for medical treatment for Agafya in an effort to force her to return to civilization.
HTML: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russias-bid-force-hermit-living-11536159; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5092301/Remarkable-hermit-forced-live-civilisation.html; http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/governor-seeks-to-force-worlds-most-famous-hermit-to-abandon-taiga-home-100-km-from-civilisation/
Joe Root, Pennsylvania hermit
An article in the Ellwood City Ledger, Pennsylvania, presents a representative local history item on a local hermit named Joe Root: “Joe Root a late 1800s to 1915 woodland hermit of sort lived in may wooden shacks on Presque Isle.” The article offers an anecdotal account plus a few photos.
URL: http://www.ellwoodcityledger.com/news/20171117/introduction-to-joe-root