REUTERS/Issei Kato
Visitors look at the bourse at the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo March 3, 2014.
Japan is a sensual paradox: refined, yet sexually voracious. Westerners are largely aware of the kinkier aspects of Japanese culture, from festivals dedicated to man’s least intelligent organ, to shokushu goukan artworks of octopuses molesting women. Or else of the preponderance of love hotels, where lovers – amateur, or professional – can spend a night in each other’s arms for a flat fee (mini-bar not included). In fact, Japanese culture is so suffused with sex that we might be forgiven for thinking that it was as swinging as a Tory party conference.
Youngsters claim that they are happy with platonic friendships and are focusing on their careers, and they could be telling the truth. Maybe Japan is populated by clean-living kids who are justwaiting to meet the rightoctopus.
But there are other explanations. One is that Tokyo is now so overcrowded that the amorous can’t find any privacy – hence the popularity of love hotels. Another is the phenomenon of hikikomori, whereby an estimated 700,000, largely unemployed, young people have shut themselves off entirely from human contact in order to avoid interactions that could lead to loss of face. Such is the social pressure of being successful that those who feel they have failed would rather do nothing invisibly, than something they feel is beneath them publicly.
But I agree with Rupert that the celibacy syndrome is more probably a reaction to Japan’s historic sexual intensity. There is, for instance, the perennial obsession with modesty. When Minegishi Minami of the Japanese pop group AKB48 was caught allowing her boyfriend to spend the night, she was so ashamed that she shaved all her hair off and issued a tearful public apology – looking like a poor, plucked eaglet. This wasn’t just an act of prurience: it was a tacit acceptance that by sleeping with one boy she had sacrificed some of her sexual appeal for all the other boys. In Japan, modesty is not just a virtue. It is arousing.
Consider a visit to one of those love hotels. When a paying client enters such an establishment in Tokyo, he can choose his date by watching her doing “proper” things from behind glass. These include reading a book or sewing. If he wants to go further, the client will have to have a manicure before meeting his date out front for some fully clothed role-play. He will ask her the Japanese equivalent of: “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” She will reply, “I’m lonely.” Hewill then offer to buy her a kitten or puppy from one of the dozens of pet stores that operate next door to brothels – an affirmation of her pretence of innocence. Boy and girl spend the evening together; girl takes the animal home. So what does she do with all the puppies she collects? Why, she returns them to the pet store the next day and splits the refund.
While the Japanese obviously do make love, the process of getting to the bedroom is so complex and fraught with the potential for loss of face that many youngsters have stopped bothering. Sad for them, and liberal Westerners will denounce the Japanese attempt to dress filth up with good manners as hypocrisy. But I find the elegance irresistible. Japan is notunlikeits geisha ideal: defianttowards change, eerily beautiful and full of surprises.
Post time 4-5-2014 01:26 PM
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