Towards an urban political ecology of emancipatory metabolism
Urban Studies Foundation, Urban Urgencies Grant (USF-URU-260705) · October 2026 – March 2028
Image: Nabe no Kai (hot-pot gathering) at the communal space, Hesodecha. Drawing by Kumiko.
Overview
Social withdrawal — known as hikikomori in Japan and eundun in Korea — is usually treated as an individual psychological problem to be fixed. This project starts from a different premise: withdrawal is an urban question. Drawing on urban political ecology and a metabolic reading of the city, it approaches withdrawal as a bodily response to the overloaded rhythms of urban life, and asks what the city looks and feels like from the position of those who step back from it.
The project compares Osaka and Seoul: how withdrawal emerged as a social issue in each city, how state institutions have responded, and what peer-led practices people have built for themselves. Rather than interviewing withdrawing people as research subjects, it works with them as co-researchers and knowledge producers. Using accessible, asynchronous methods (written reflection, journaling, online exchange) and participatory experiential mapping that includes online life, participants make the pressures and pleasures of urban life sensible in their own terms.
The project builds on more than a decade of dialogue with New Start Kansai in Osaka and peer support communities in Seoul. Planned outputs include two peer-reviewed articles, practice guidelines for welfare professionals and policymakers in Japan and Korea, a bilingual Korean–Japanese zine, and public events in both cities.
More on the Urban Studies Foundation website.
Team
Principal Investigator: Didi Kyoung-ae Han (Saitama University)
Co-Investigator: Atsutoshi Takahashi (New Start Kansai)
with co-researchers in Osaka, Tokyo and Seoul
Updates
- 2026.10 — Project launched; research ethics approval obtained at Saitama University
- 2026.09 — Project blog “Withdrawing from the city: Co-researching social withdrawal in Osaka and Seoul” published by the Urban Studies Foundation
