The rise of Japan’s 'girlie man' generation
Forget the salarymen, Japan's new 'herbivore' generation of males believe that life is far more important than work
Yasuo Takeuchi makes an improbable radical. Skinny, wearing jeans, a striped sports shirt and a baby blue cardigan, he is fidgety and talks in a near whisper. He is 33, works for a major publisher in Tokyo and inspired a label now applied to a new generation of Japanese men. He is the archetypal soshokukei danshi, “herbivorous male” or Ojo-man “girlie man”.
Herbivores are shy and quiet. They seek the friendship of women and spurn aggressive dating. They are thrifty and abhor consumerism. They like quiet evenings in with friends rather than drinking till they vomit in the izakaya bars of Tokyo. They are the antithesis of the macho Japanese salarymen, on whose long-suffering shoulders modern Japan was built.
Early, non-Japanese descriptions of the herbivore put them in the category of freaky Japanese cultural sideshows. From the folks who brought you robot dogs and huge-bosomed manga heroines came a large group of men in their mid-twenties to early thirties who rejected the “carnivorous” ways of older Japanese men. Bravo Japan. Challenged by a low birth rate, rising suicide numbers and an economy shrinking at the fastest rate in 60 years it had produced a generation of neutered geeks.
But go deeper and you find that these “girlie men” represent something different: a quiet, social revolution for which many in Japan have been clamouring for years.
Change in Japan is glacial. But the recent general election swept away the dominant Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled Japan almost without interruption since the Second World War, and put in power the more liberal Democratic Party of Japan. The conservatism of the country, both political and social, is under threat. And the herbivores, reckoned to make up 30 to 40 per cent of men aged between 21 and 34, are staging a social revolt in which the sexes become more equal, the workplace less spiritually crushing and broken family ties are remade.
Two years ago, Megumi Ushikubo, the head of a market research firm in Tokyo, began receiving calls from panic-strickenclients in the beer and car industries. They were struggling to sell cars and beers to men in their twenties and thirties. It had once been so easy. Pitch them as a means to social status and the bars and showrooms were overrun. Not any more.
“In the 1980s, boys had to buy a car, otherwise girls would not look up to them,” says Ushikubo. “We were leaders in consumption. Suddenly companies were asking why are guys no longer interested in cars? And why are girls telling us they aren’t interested in boys who waste their money on cars?” The trauma of Japan’s bursting economic bubble, Ushikubo found, had created a generation suspicious of the cavalier spending habits of those a few years older. They were also less willing to endure the humiliations an older generation had tolerated both at work and in relationships.
“In my generation, we had a show called 101st Proposal, in which a man proposed to 100 women and was eventually accepted the 101st time,” says Ushikubo, who was born in 1962. “The important thing was that you tried and tried and showed endurance. Guys these days don’t want to go through that rejection. Instead they want to be acknowledged as people by girls. Being popular is a much lower priority.”
Yasuo Takeuchi epitomised the phenomenon. He grew up in Chiba, a dormitory town just outside Tokyo. All the fathers in town were salarymen, who took the train into Tokyo early in the morning and came home late. But his father never pressured his son to do as he did. “All the fathers in town were quite radical like this. They let the children do what they wanted with their lives. In fact, they encouraged it.” Takeuchi went to Tokyo University to study physics, where he found friends who, like him, did not accept that their fate was to suffer silently in Japan’s vast corporations and bureaucracies. They envisioned work occupying a discreet rather than overwhelming place in their lives. And they believed that family friends mattered far more than shopping or travel.
It was a change from the generations that preceded them. The Japanese who survived the Second World War were stoic in turning their bombed-out country into the second greatest economic power in the world. Next were the baby boomers and then the “bubble generation”, who came of age in the 1980s, when it seemed the Japanese were poised to take over the world. It was a time when the Japanese thronged Bond Street and bought the Rockefeller Centre and Van Gogh’s Irises for mind-blowing sums. There followed the lost decade when Japan entered a long slump and global attention shifted to growth economies such as China and India.
Takeuchi would hear constantly from older people how great Japan had been and how deprived he was to grow up in such austere times. The factors once seen as crucial to Japan’s success were now seen as failures: a rigid educational system that had produced generations of highly intelligent employees was now thwarting the individuality and creativity needed to rebuild the country; big corporations that had propelled Japanese industry to the top of the world were now ugly bureaucracies that suffocated their employees and stifled entrepreneurship; an ethnically homogenous people who had worked with a common purpose and set of values to build modern Japan were now insular and xenophobic.
“But I never bought that,” Takeuchi says. “I never felt deprived.” Nor did he feel any obligation to be a corporate samurai, battling for Japan’s economic supremacy. At work he refused to dress or behave like older employees. He was considered sloppy, and his bosses thought he did not care for work. “I just believed that at work and in life, doing OK is OK. There’s no need to show everyone how much effort you’re making.” He had no veneration for conventional models of success. “All we want to feel is that our work has a sense of purpose.”
To hear Takeuchi talk is to hear echoes of what Westerners call Generation Y, a generation in their twenties and thirties who mystify older managers. They do not believe companies will look after them. They do not respect job titles or hierarchies, only those who control resources and produce obvious outputs. They abhor office politics and do not respond to traditional motivational tools such as promotion, pay rises and the promise of job security.
The herbivores’ revolution may be one of shrugs and quiet refusals, but to take on Japan’s managerial hierarchy takes chutzpah. “People often tell me, ‘oh, you must be really confident to behave this way’,” Takeuchi says. “But I never think of myself that way. Making a big effort to be something I’m not just isn’t me. I want to be natural, just to be myself.”
This desire to be individual may seem unremarkable in San Francisco or London but was novel enough in Japan to catch the eye of Maki Fukasawa, a marketing writer who shared an office with Takeuchi. When she talked about him with friends and older managers, she found that they were horrified, that here was the future of Japan.
The herbivores, managers complained, did not regard work as the centre of their lives. When it came to the drinking sessions essential to Japanese corporate culture, the herbivores passed. They refused to debase themselves to please a boss.
“Once I recognised the phenomenon, I noticed it everywhere,” says Fukasawa. “Looking at the IT CEOS in Japan, I realised that they didn’t seem competitive in the same way as an older generation of Japanese CEOs. They didn’t need some trophy wife standing beside them or the expensive car or watch. They weren’t desperate to spend time in New York, London or Paris. Instead they wanted to be at home. They had lived their entire lives in an era when Japan was an established economic power, despite its troubles. They felt completely confident being Japanese.”
Fukasawa dubbed this new generation “herbivores”, a term she says has been poorly understood in the West. “I keep being asked if they are like the the nerdy computer game fans, or the men who buy girls’ high school costumes. They’re not. We are Buddhists and the idea of being ‘grass eating’ is that you’re more spiritual. It’s not just the opposite of carnivorous. It means they aren’t so interested in physical things or physical relationships.”
“The more you study them, the more you think that they’re actually the ones who are consistent with traditional, pre-war Japan,” says Fukasawa. “It was the generation of the rising economy who were ultra-competitive who were maybe the strange ones.”
In every Japanese convenience store are special sections devoted to men’s cosmetics, eyebrow shapers, packets of disposable wipes for dealing with sweat and body odor, skin whitener. The herbivores may not buy beer and cars but they spend on keeping themselves odourless, hairless and pale. Their clothes come from cheap, fashionable chains such as Uniqlo. This week, Shinya Yamaguchi, 23, a fashion designer, launches his latest collection of skirts and lacy tops - all aimed at men. Many of Japan’s younger male celebrities, bands such as Arashi and actors like Eita, Teppei Koike and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, project an effeminate, herbivorous look.
“It’s non-man, non-woman at the same time,” says Fukasawa. “Sexually neutral.” This neutrality, both Fukasawa and Ushikubo believe, is a response to the changing nature of Japanese marriage. During the 30 years up to 2005, the percentage of unmarried men between 30 and 34 rose from 14 per cent to 47 per cent and the number of unmarried women from 8 to 32 per cent.
Financial insecurity among men and the social expectations imposed on married women, to have children and forego work, have made marriage less attractive. Traditional matchmaking by families and employers has also dwindled. The hunt for partners became less aggressive on both sides, to the point where businesses saw an opportunity in organising “konkatsu” or marriage activity, social activities designed to bring singles together.
When herbivores do marry, it is with little hoopla and low expectations. Yasuo Takeuchi recently married in a small, private ceremony, and he is saving for a honeymoon in the future.
The herbivores’ views, style and choices can be seen as a very positive story, about a generation of young Japanese discovering their individuality. But they also say a lot about the tensions within Japan.
“After the Second World War, we were all told that Western education was best and that Asian culture and philosophy was bad,” says Fukasawa. “The herbivores are finding their own solution to the problem of resolving Western and Confucian values. They are a function of their time. They are dealing with the change in the economy and I think they are closer to the original Japanese character of being non-competitive, of not trying to win other people over. And as a silent majority, they have the power to change the culture.”
Long article is long.
Source: Times Online
Here's another article from Japan Times for your reading pleasure :)
Blurring the boundaries
As the future facing Japan's young people changes fast, so too are traditional gender identities
Every society has its own terminology for a young generation regarded as odd or unfathomable, and marketers are quick to give them catchy labels. It's no exception in Japan, which is now abuzz with talk of men with a soft spot who are becoming known as soshokukei, meaning "herbivorous" or "herbivores."
The word soshokukei, coined by a writer named Maki Fukasawa in 2007, has been widely picked up in the media in the last six months or so, owing in part to Megumi Ushikubo, president of the Tokyo market-research firm Infinity, and author of "Soshokukei Danshi Ojo-man Ga Nippon wo Kaeru (The Herbivorous Ladylike Men Are Changing Japan)," which was published in November 2008. Through interviews with around 100 men in their mid 20s and early 30s in Tokyo and other major cities, Ushikubo concluded that the soshokukei boys have a combination of the following characteristics:
• They are not as competitively minded about their jobs as men in older generations.
• They are fashion conscious and eat sparingly so they can stay thin and fit into skintight clothes.
• They are chummy with their moms and often go shopping together.
• They are not interested in dating girls, having relationships, or even having sex (choosing from a plethora of "self-help" toys instead).
• They are very tight with their money and often carry several retailers' "point cards" around, declaring that those who don't pinch pennies are stupid.
Ushikubo has even gone so far as giving these types a new label: ojo-man (ladylike men).
"Many of the boys I've met told me they cannot go out of their house if their hair doesn't look perfect," she said. "They have also told me that their self-esteem goes up when their nails look nice."
Ushikubo estimates that 60 percent of today's men aged 20-34 fall somewhat into the soshokukei category. Sounds exaggerated? Of the 500 single men in their 20s and 30s surveyed in March by Lifenet Seimei Life Insurance Co., 378 - or 75.6 percent - replied that they regarded themselves more as herbivores than nikushokukei (carnivores).
But why are they suddenly popping everywhere? Ushikubo cites a number of factors. First, the younger generation today has grown up never knowing what it is like to live in good economic times. The generation just above them - now aged 35 and older - had its heyday during the asset-bubble economy of the late 1980s, when cash was abundant, jobs were easy to find and people couldn't be more optimistic about their future. In contrast, the economy the ojo-man generation knows has been in constant decline, with only occasional upturns, which have not directly affected their everyday lives.
They have also seen the income gap between seishain (permanent employees) and groups such as haken (contract workers) widen, with many of them belonging to the latter group. In fact, the average annual pay of men in their 20s now stands at ¥3.25 million, the marketer says, citing National Tax Agency figures, noting that those aged 25-34 making more than ¥6 million constitute only 3.5 percent of those in that age bracket.
This, Ushikubo suggests, explains their cool, resigned view toward work - and their growing fashion-consciousness, which is the only ego-booster left for them. Further damaging their outlook was the rise and fall of IT wunderkind and Livedoor founder Takafumi Horie, who was arrested and indicted in 2006 for irregular business practices.
The case of Horiemon, as the young entrepreneur was popularly called, has served as a reminder that, if they are too assertive or aggressive at work, they might suffer the same harsh consequences as him.
Now, indeed, 64 percent of new workers display a conservative view of their careers, saying they would like to stay with their first employer until retirement, according to a Mitsubishi-UFJ Research and Consulting survey of 1,264 new graduate hires released last month. However, 51 percent of the respondents also said they'd rather work fixed hours than do overtime.
What is most troubling to a growing legion of young women, however, is that soshokukei men are also extremely noncommittal in their relationships with the opposite sex. Many are not interested in the act of koku-ru (confessing their love to girls), out of fear that doing so would make them psychologically disadvantaged, Ushikubo says. Furthermore, being cynical about the generation above them, in which nearly half of marriages are shotgun weddings, young people - and young men in particular - are very wary of making lifelong commitments "by accident," according to Ushikubo.
Likewise, they tend to have little interest in reproducing, often even being too physically tired to have sex, let alone start a family, according to Ushikubo. The young men's tendency not to have real sex - apparently counterbalanced by their growing reliance on Internet porn sites and "do-it-yourself" gadgets - is a big headache for the nation's condom makers, whose shipments have been falling since 1999, the very year that marks the beginning of the Internet revolution.
Meanwhile, a few other phenomena are underscoring the trend for some men to defy their sexual stereotypes. A 2007 survey by a major toilet-seat maker found that half of Japanese men sit on the toilet to urinate, while bras designed for men have been selling briskly since they hit the market last November.
But are women becoming like men as well? Are they more manly than they used to be?
So far, not really, experts say. While a few vernacular magazines have called some women nikushokukei, Ushikubo says the young women she has interviewed are not carnivorous compared to many bubble-era women in their 20s and 30s, who were much more sexually exploitative. But some women do find themselves carnivorous for a limited time only - when they get ready for marriage and starting a family, she claims.
Why do we see, then, a one-way street of men becoming like women, rather than both sexes blurring their boundaries?
At the root of all these changes in the male species is the fact that men in Japan have been freed from pressures to "be manly," argues Masahiro Morioka, professor of philosophy at Osaka Prefecture University and author of "Soshokukei Danshi no Ren-ai Gaku (The How-to Guide to Relationships for Soshokukei Boys)," published in July 2008.
He attributes the soshokukei trend to the postwar peace Japan has enjoyed for the last six decades.
"The most 'manly' men, I think, are soldiers on the battlefields," Morioka said. "But the pressures for men to act manly have gradually faded over the last six decades. As a result, the (per capita) rate of murders committed by men in their 20s in Japan is now the lowest in the world.
"Behind all this is the fading of social values that have driven men into violent acts. Men don't have to be violent any more, and that's why they can be herbivorous."
Japan's uniqueness stands out, he went on, when compared to the United States, which has waged several wars since 1945 and has a steady supply of war veterans. Similarly, in such Asian neighbors as South Korea - unlike Japan - young men are conscripted for military service.
Morioka, however, denied a link between the herbivores and homosexual men, saying most Japanese men are "searching for heterosexual love while turning unisex."
The erosion of the sexual boundaries, in fact, is by no means a new phenomenon, Morioka further argued, saying that Japan had a group of herbivorous men during the Edo Period (1603-1867), when peace under the Tokugawa Shognate lasted for 260 years.
"Japan has long had a tradition of men acting like women in public places, such as in kabuki," he said. "And during the Edo Period, some boys are known to have been raised as girls, dressed up in girls' kimono (apparently due to a widely held belief that doing so would lead to their healthy development). And in shunga (pornographic illustrations from the Edo Period), men are depicted as if they were women, dressed up in beautiful kimono and doing their hair up like women's. They are impossible to tell from women - apart from their genitals."
All in all, though, Morioka sees the soshokukei phenomenon in a positive light, saying that it is a sign of society becoming more tolerant of individual differences among men.
"Men should diversify," he said. "It's good for both men and the society if more men are freed from fixed values."