Japan's "herbivore" men shun corporate life, sex

Japan's "herbivore" men shun corporate life, sex

By Yumi Otagaki

TOKYO - Hotel worker Roshinante has no interest in actively pursuing women, is nonchalant about a career and finds cars a bore -- and he is not alone in opting for a quiet, uncompetitive lifestyle.

Roshinante, 31, who prefers the anonymity of his online handle, is one of a growing group of men dubbed "herbivorous boys" by the media, who are rejecting traditional masculinity when it comes to romance, jobs and consumption in an apparent reaction to the tougher economy.

Forget being a workaholic, corporate salary-man. These men, raised as the economic bubble burst, are turning their backs on Japan's stereotypical male roles in what is seen as a symptom of growing disillusionment in their country's troubled economy.

"Since I was a child, I hated people telling me, 'Behave like a man'," said Roshinante, who runs a forum on popular Japanese social network site Mixi for frank discussion about herbivores.

For decades, Japanese men were expected to work full-time after graduating from high school or college, marry and support their wife and children.

Roshinante, a university graduate, has no plans to follow that path.

"I don't think my parents' way of life is for me," he said in a telephone interview. "I still struggle between the traditional notion of how men should be and how I am."

Almost half of 1,000 men aged 20-34 surveyed by market research firm M1 F1 Soken identified themselves as "herbivorous," defined literally as grass-eating but in this context as not being interested in flesh or passive about pursuing women.

The media hype has sent marketing experts scurrying to see if there is money to be made from herbivores, many of whom are spending more time and money on their appearance.

"We cannot ignore herbivorous boys because they are almost a majority," said Shigeru Sakai, a researcher at M1 F1 Soken.

Most herbivorous boys lack self-confidence, like to spend time alone, and use the Internet a lot, the survey showed.

The mindset appears to be a reaction to the end of Japan's late 1980s "bubble economy" of soaring asset prices, when everything looked rosy, and a subsequent economic slump.

"Herbivorous men always existed," said columnist Maki Fukasawa, who is credited with coining the term. "But the bursting of the bubble and the collapse of lifetime employment contributed to their increase."

Experiencing tough times has given this new breed of men different attitudes about consumption.

"In the bubble era, whatever led to consumption was good and people measured their worth by money," Fukasawa said. "But herbivorous men don't buy things to show off."

Partly, at least, that's because they can't afford to.

Their generation joined the work force after deregulation measures helped to swell the ranks of contract and other non-regular employees to about one-third of all workers.

Roshinante worked part-time until two years ago, when he took a full-time post at a hotel chain. But he's still anxious about the future.

"At my previous workplace, a whole bunch of managers in their 40s and 50s were laid off," Roshinante said.

Marriage isn't on his agenda at the moment, but he couldn't afford it even if it were.

"I think there are many part-time workers who cannot get a full-time job and cannot plan their life and marriage. That is also the case of romantic relationships. While they don't want to follow the traditional model, they don't know what to do," he said.

-Reuters




Sunday, May 10, 2009

Blurring the boundaries
As the future facing Japan's young people changes fast, so too are traditional gender identities

By TOMOKO OTAKE
Staff writer

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."


"They are young, earn little and spend little, and take a keen interest in fashion and personal appearance — meet the “herbivore men” of Japan. Author and pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa coined the term in 2006 in a series of articles on marketing to a younger generation of Japanese men. She used it to describe some men who she said were changing the country’s ideas about just what is — and isn’t — masculine. “In Japan, sex is translated as ‘relationship in flesh,’” she said, “so I named those boys ‘herbivorous boys’ since they are not interested in flesh.” Typically, “herbivore men” are in their 20s and 30s, and believe that friendship without sex can exist between men and women, Fukasawa said." – from CNN




- wong chee tat :)