On March 21, TV Asahi's long-running variety show "TV Tackle" ran a special feature on hikikomori — people who have withdrawn from society. Hikikomori first came to the attention of the general public in 1999 when a Niigata man was arrested for keeping a teenage girl prisoner for nine years in his room. Though the case was atypical, it ended up representing many people's image of hikikomori as being dangerous sociopaths.

The feature on "TV Tackle"' was about middle-aged hikikomori who, in most cases, still live with their parents. In one segment, a father, desperate to do something about a 47-year-old son who never opens his door, seeks help from a private "school" whose specialty is disciplining difficult children. The headmaster comes to the shut-in's room and loudly demands that he come out. When there is no response, the headmaster breaks down the door and forces the man to emerge.

The segment sparked a heated debate on the Internet, since the headmaster's actions implied that violence is an effective countermeasure for hikikomori, an implication reinforced by another segment that showed the same man going to a garbage-strewn house where a 41-year-old lived alone after his father entered a nursing home expressly to get away from his son. The headmaster did not have to break anything this time, but he did persuade the man to come back to his school, where he interacted with other residents and, it was suggested, became more socialized.