BBC on “The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex”
It must be the season. Just as Tokyo is getting pounded by typhoons on a weekly basis, so is the foreign media taking an interest in reporting about “nerdy” Japan.
First we had the respected newspaper the Guardian cherry-pick some statistics to produce the dubious conclusion that young people aren’t having sex anymore.
Now the BBC has an article about “the Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex”. Well, my first response was — you’ve just found out about this now?!
Secondly, of course, it tars us Japanese guys with the same brush as the otaku. Much as we love otaku culture, it is a subculture for a reason.
Kunio Kitamara, of the Japan Family Planning Association, describes many young Japanese men as “herbivores” – passive and lacking carnal desire.
It seems they no longer have the ambition of the post-war alpha males who made Japan such an economic powerhouse and no interest in joining a company and becoming a salary man.
They have taken on a mole-like existence and, worryingly, withdrawn from relationships with the opposite sex.
A survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2010 found 36% of Japanese males aged 16 to 19 had no interest in sex — a figure that had doubled in the space of two years.
Ah, more stats!
What is this report actually about? Love Plus, of course. (Yes, the virtual dating SIM game that came out years ago.)
Nurikan and Yuge take their girlfriends, Rinko and Ne-ne, on actual dates to the park, and buy them cakes to celebrate their birthdays.
“It’s the kind of relationship we wish we’d had at high school,” says Nurikan.
In the game he is a 15-year-old, though in reality he is 38.
“I think twice about going out with a 3D woman,” says one of the. Good! That’s a normal thing to do!
The BBC report includes a comment or two from Roland Kelts, the ubiquitous “pop culture professor” who seems to get interviewed for all these articles (including the Guardian one).
The article ends by putting the Love Plus “trend” into “context”, i.e. falling income and standards of wealth, and unease about the future. Yes, two guys are symbolic of a whole generation’s problems.
So, conclusion: The country is doomed, no one is getting married or having sex — and it’s all epitomized by a couple of otaku. Oh, hang on a second…
5 Comments
The Guardian and the BBC are the two preeminent promoters of English racism. So tell me, in what way do these articles surprise you?
Whenever I see cluless gaijins reporting anything Asian it’s like I’m watching the animal planet. These people always treat Asians like some sort of wild animals that needs to be studied. Unless they drop the pompous douchebaggery they have no right bragging about how “open-minded” and “post-racial” they are. No, gaijins, simply kissing black people’s asses does not make you a non-racist. It just makes you a coward and a hypocrite.
@mik
Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!
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