It's hard to tell if this is an interesting correlation of several different sociological trends, or just sloppy journalism. This whole thing reminds me of the "metrosexual" thing in the US, but it's interesting that they also tied in vegetarianism and living at home with their parents.
Reading the American media, I haven't seen any connection between this trend and vegetarianism except the name, similar stereotypes of "herbivores" and vegetarians (that they're weak, effete, and unmasculine,) and a comment on that page that says there's currently a fad for vegetarianism in Japan. I read a different and more likely-sounding explanation for the name, which is that in Japanese a sexual relationship can be called a "friendship of the flesh."
"Her company claims that roughly two-thirds of all Japanese men aged 20-34 are now partial or total grass-eaters..."
A very imprecisely defined term, so how do we know that it accurately describes two thirds of men in that age range, roughly or not?
It is hard to tell whether this article is hyperbole or not. There is very little in the way of quantitative data to say. Although this bit of quantitative data caught my eye:
"About one third of the Japanese workforce is now casual or part-time"
That seems a huge number to me, and could account for some of the claimed changes in the culture.
I also found interesting the inclusion of "has a liking for deserts and foreign travel." These are indeed traits considered feminine in Japan, but not so much in the rest of the world (I learned to curb my enthusiasm for sweets when I lived in Japan).
Well, this is common in economies where the fallout from the end of "job for life" is being artificially contained, either by rigid tradition or by government legislation. In France, for example, once you have a permanent job, you're set for life, but the flipside is these jobs are hard to come by (it's a big risk for a company to hire someone it can never fire) so people who haven't got one and do want to work (rather than live on the dole) have no choice but temping and short-term contracts.
In the UK and US economies, it's easier to get fired, but it's also easier to get hired, so this phenomenon is less pronounced. People temp and contract here as a lifestyle choice, not because that's all on offer.
The other one-third must be very busy running the country. What are the odds that this indifference to career, sex, and marriage, if real, will result in women become more independent, demanding better pay and more opportunities, and raising a generation of Japanese men with a totally different perception of women and totally different sexual tastes?
Having semi-worked in the nightlife industry for a little while, I can assure you that the same phenomenon is very present here in the US. A night out in ATL is chock full of guys with spiky hair and fauxhawks wearing Affliction / Ed Hardy / whatever the new craze is and sporting more accessories than the girls that they're hitting on. Google "peacocking" and you'll see what I'm talking about.
This just seems like more of westernized / American culture making its way to Japan, more specifically "local celebrity" / "rockstar" culture. The critics are even using similar terminology; hip-hop has been calling guys like this herbs for over a decade now. From Urban Dictionary: Herb - Someone who tries too hard to be cool. An overzealous poseur.
Peacocking is more due to over-reading Neil Street's The Game than anything else. If you're going to base your ideal of masculinity on a book then Fight Club is a better choice...
It's Neil Strauss, but yeah. The first thing I thought of when I saw the OP was Mystery and the whole PUA craze. The main difference being that pick up artists here are at least still trying to get laid.
Japan has always struck me as very strange, at turns brutally rigid, bullying, and at the same time very faddish. The article paints this behavior as a reaction to the salaryman excesses of the post war environment, where the people in their 20s and 30s are withdrawing from commitments and becoming virtual hermits.
The comments are fascinating with some likening them to Well's Eloi and others commenting on parallel behavior in Britain.
Yes, in the sense that it is 10% genuine social change and 90% desire for a snappy title to sell books/journalism.
(Pro-tip for foreign consumers of Japanese journalism: NHK is the BBC, the 3 big national dailies are the NYT, Nikkei is the WSJ, and every other news outlet in the country will happily just make things up. 85% of 35 year olds below the poverty line!? For pity's sake.)
I have lived for a year in Kyoto around the poverty level they were talking about (2 millions and an half yens/year) and I was definitely not hurting for money....
Now it's true that with such a salary I don't think it would be easy to follow the traditional japanese lifestyle of supporting a house-wife plus family but anyway since salaries over there are partly determined by age + the employee's family situation...
According to the World Association of Newspapers [1], they are Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun; also, those are the largest newspapers in the world. In terms of political leanings, Yomiuri is conservative, Asahi is liberal, and Mainichi is somewhere in-between.
I guess my post is too old to edit, but you guys do realize that...there actually is estrogen in the water supply, and many industrial chemicals reduce testosterone levels, yes?
