This post is for Shannon.

It’s my first update on Xanga for over seven months, but please don’t take this subject matter as being representative of my whole experience in Japan. It just needed to be said, right now, because I can’t hold it any longer. I really wanted to post this on my blogspot blog, but then I realized that it would probably be offensive to a lot of people who read that blog, so it’s ended up here. I will not be allowing comments on this one because I'm sure the subject matter will piss a lot of people off -

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have a really low opinion of Japanese men.

Of course it’s not fair of me to general about an entire country of males and a lot of things I’m about to say are going to seem ignorant and cruel and unfounded and judgmental and wrong (I admit to being all of these things, and MAYBE I am really wrong with my assessment from my limited experience of a mere seven months), but for simplicity’s sake, I am going to generalize in this post. Just let me vent. Hate me if you want. But I don’t think my opinion here is some wayward abnormal opinion for a Western woman living in Japan.

To start with, let me share an recent experience that basically speaks for my opinion of Japanese men. Over the weekend I was in the restroom at the Shinkansen station in Okayama. There was a long line of women, and I was washing my hands and getting ready to leave. Just as I was turning around, a middle-aged Japanese businessMAN walked in and unzipped his pants and started peeing in the little urinal that’s in women’s restrooms for women that come in with their small sons (yet more evidence of how much women get stuck watching the kids). Yes, this man fully exposed himself in front of at least a dozen women and didn’t give it a second thought!! At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought, ok, maybe there’s a long line out of the men’s. I mean, I’ve peed in men’s restrooms in absolute emergencies. But as soon as I left the women’s restroom, I looked into the men’s, and what did I see? Yeah, no line whatsoever!! This dude wasn’t lost (how could he be, there were clearly WOMEN all around him) - He just felt the need to relieve himself in front of women, paying no heed to their privacy and space. Wow. ARIGATOU!

When I first got to Japan, the first thing my Kyoto Sensei (VP) warned me about was Japanese men. He said, simply, “Don’t talk to them.“ Whether I meant to or not, I kind of followed that advice. So, it’s not that I’ve had a particularly negative first-hand experience with a particular male. My judgment stems more form my observations of Japanese males and their interactions and relationships with women and finally, from things I’ve read.

First of all, I think the main stereotype of Japanese men is that they cling to the “samurai” mentality. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but I think it implies that Japanese men are demanding, cold and withdrawn characters in their relationships with women and in their families. I don’t think this is an entirely true depiction of Japanese men. It’s probably even inaccurate. Because to me, Japanese men seem to be babies, pampered by their mothers and then pampered by their girlfriends and wives. They seem to not respect women in the way that I think a woman, and WOMEN in general, should be respected. They seem to have little or no social responsibility to their families, and to me, this way of life is completely unacceptable.

* GIVING BIRTH & FAMILY ROLES:

I was thinking about this particular trouble recently because the daughter of one of the women in my English Club is giving birth soon. In Japan, in about the 7-9 month of pregnancy, many women will MOVE HOME and carry out their pregnancy there. This may mean that the husband is not available to offer emotional support for his wife and it may even mean that he will not be present at the birth or for the months after the birth. In the case of this girl I know, both factors are present. Her husband continues to live and work in Nagano (about 5-7 hours away), while she lives here with her mom in Shiga. The husband comes to visit every two weeks. He can offer no daily physical or emotional support for his wife, and she herself said that he probably won’t be able to make it to HIS FIRST CHILD’S BIRTH. Simply because of this arrangement and his unwillingness or inability to get off from work. Who in their right mind would find this acceptable?!?! If my husband just bailed on me in the 2 months before I gave birth and the 2 months after I gave birth, I would be absolutely PISSED! And yet this is completely normal and acceptable behavior in Japan. Even after giving birth, it seems that it’s entirely up to the woman to do the child-rearing. On weekends, I always see mothers with their children, struggling to handle 2 or 3 of them on the train. I always see mothers taking their children to the park, to the mall, grocery shopping, etc. It’s always ONLY the mothers who show up at our school events. I rarely ever see fathers taking a direct part in their children’s lives. You COULD say this isn’t that much different than America, but to me, it seems much more disproportionate.

* PORNOGRAPHY, PROSTITUTION AND PERVERTS

As most of you know, pornography and prostitution and sex in general are a big part of life in Japan. It’s not that easy to see if you’re not looking. It seems like sex is suppressed here, and it kind of is - but on the other hand, if you open your eyes and look around you’ll see it morphing into other arenas. It results in some pretty strange phenomenon. For example, Japanese law says that in porn the woman’s pubic hair cannot be shown, so usually it is blotted out or just not drawn in in the case of manga. Therefore the porn is somehow acceptable!! Porn seems to be much more accepted and prolific here. In my head, when I picture a typical Japanese male, I see him at the convenience store looking at manga porn… and this scene is so typical because I see it literally EVERY TIME I see a magazine rack - men lined up looking at animated porn! It’s gross. Child porn is also prolific in Japan. I haven’t seen it personally, but judging by the attitude towards porn here in general, I believe it. Also, although I have no solid proof of this, I have also heard rumors that it is not UNCOMMON for male teachers to engage in affairs with their students, at the high school level and sometimes at the junior high school level. Some of my friends say they think this is happening at their schools. Uhhh, gross? Related to this, one of my friends also recently watched a Japanese TV drama in which a male teacher slept with every girl in his school in order to find his “soul mate” (she had died many years before). He believed had been reincarnated into one of his students, so he started seducing them and sleeping with them in order to find her. Uhhhh, disturbing? Disgusting???!! How does that even get on TV??

I also just finished a book about prostitution in Asia, and that also helped to shape my view of the Japanese man. According to this book, which was written after compiling thousands of interviews with Asian prostitutes, Japanese men are by far the worst clientele. First of all, many of them are extremely racist. The prices for a prostitute vary based solely on her race, the highest bids going to white and Japanese women and the lowest bids going to women from SE Asia, like Filipinos and Cambodians. Secondly, they just aren’t very nice to the women, looking at sex like it’s some animalistic ritual for their own enjoyment and not even sharing about the woman in front of them, prostitute or not. Some of the women said Japanese men were cruel to them (like burning their breasts with cigarettes). While I’m not sure about the cruelty factor, I definitely get the feeling that Japanese man (especially a salary man) would care little about satisfying the woman’s needs above his own. I say this because of their attitude towards porn and towards women. My friend Ross recently went on a business trip to America with the leading townspeople from his town (mayor, city councilman, etc.), and one night the City Councilman asked Ross to come to his hotel room to help him with “a movie.” Well, the “movie” was actually a porn flick. Ross came to his door, and the man was standing there with no pants, demanding that Ross show him how to order the show because in America they don‘t “block out the good stuff“!! I mean, I guess this isn’t that singular an incident (I mean, think about like, President Clinton), but it’s still gross. Extramarital affairs are also not terribly uncommon, as in the US. Hence the presence of “love hotels” everywhere you look. And let’s not forget the infamous “sex tours” that took place in the early 90s. Japanese companies treated their employees to “vacations” that were actually “sex tours” through Korea, China and Thailand. In other words, companies advertised and openly indulged their employees in sexual escapades with prostitutes through developing countries in Asia. It’s heinous. This was well-known. And then finally some women’s groups complained, and the tours finally stopped. Or at least that’s what I’d like to think. The truth is that they probably still exist.

Then there’s the perverts. Some of you received the article I sent out about girls in Shiga (my prefecture) having the shortest school skirts in Japan. For those of you who didn’t, basically Shiga’s girls were recently voted by Playboy magazine as having the shortest skirts in Japan. Apparently this is a well known fact among Japanese males, so some men come to Shiga just to watch girls getting out of school and try to look up their skirts. DISGUSTING!! (Maybe the most disgusting thing is that people know about this kind of behavior, and no one does anything about it). Of course, you all probably ALSO know about the other woman-defiling trends recently in Japan. There are/were the Japanese men openly groping women on public transportation, so much to the point that separate WOMEN’S ONLY train cars had to be created so that women can avoid harassment. To this day, these cars exist and there are also signs in the other cars instructing women to take action if they are in fact harassed. Then for awhile there were the brilliant Japanese men who were taking pictures of women while they were peeing in public restrooms and snapping pictures up women’s skirts with their cell phone cameras. The brilliant remedy for this problem was making the law so that cell phone cameras make a very loud noise before they take a picture. Uhh, way to go, Japan. I’m telling you, the things that are accepted here in Japan simply astound me.

I’ve never seen a society that represses sexuality and yet outright condones its most heinous effects at the same time.

* ATTITUDES TOWARDS WOMEN & WOMEN’S RECEPTION OF THAT TREATMENT

I won’t say too much about this one, because I don’t know too much about it. But to me, it seems that women have very little say in their political rights and perhaps other areas of life (although you can argue that since women “run the house“, they actually have a lot of power). In my view, though, it seems like women’s frustration is suppressed here, and they accept it. I sense women’s oppression here by the fact that there seem to be few women in leadership roles (for example, there isn‘t a single female principal in JHS or HS in Shiga), and from a recent book I read outlining the 100 Greatest People in Japanese History - yeah, only 2 were women!! Out of 100!! WTF. I guess at women’s acceptance of this situation by the fact that they just seem to grin and bear it. Recently a prominent politician (the health minister) from the LDP called women “child-bearing machines” and said that Japanese women have no right to demand social welfare rights (health care, etc.) if they do not produce a child. In other words, women are completely worthless unless they give birth. Biologically speaking, this may be true (men -biologically, they can get away with just dumping their sperm everywhere…). In reality, however, should a woman be denied the same rights as a man simply because she chose to not have a child or cannot have a child? Japan has a major problem with its declining birth rate, but is the answer telling women that they’re worthless unless they shoot out a kid? I don’t blame these women for not wanting to have kids, if these are the kind of men that will comprise the society they’re born into. It’s ridiculous. This dude went on the PUBLIC RECORD saying these things!! And sadly, in the long run, I doubt his party (the LDP) will suffer any kind of long-term effect for his statement. Apparently other members of the LDP have come out saying the same kind of derogatory statements, and they have received no ill effect. Apparently, rural and suburban women continue to support their roles as solely mothers and nothing else. So, I have to watch what I say about women’s roles in Japanese society, because I definitely live in the boonies and the women I interact with on a daily basis probably accept these views. It’s so different from what I think.

* SPOILED ROTTEN

And then of course, there’s the idea that Japanese men are spoiled rotten. One small example of this is the fact that the 20something year old teachers at my school still get their lunches made BY THEIR MOMS!! Now there is a “major problem” (several people have told me about this, but I have yet to read any kind of hard study on it) with these men (and women in some cases) who refuse to work and basically stay at home to freeload off of their aging old parents.  They're called "NEET" - for some reason, it's in EIGO - Not in Education, Employment or Training. These dudes, from 20-50 years old, still live at home and beg off their parents. Uhhhh, where is that okay?? Not in my mind anyway.  I could comment more on this, but right now I'm feeling too lazy to. 

Reflecting on everything I have seen here, I have decided that I could never marry a Japanese-Japanese (not JA) man, unless he was an absolute exception to every rule here, which is in fact MURI (impossible). In fact I do think some of the problems I have faced with my boyfriend here were cross-cultural issues, and had I not been living in Japan to understand how this society is based, I totally would have had zero tolerance for his actions. But now I see that he’s part of this entire society that operates in this way. I’m not saying it’s the Japanese men’s FAULT, because they were born and raised into this mentality and way of life and probably don’t think anything of it (as do most women). Also, Japanese women don’t seem to have a problem with how things are here either. But me, coming from a Western perspective of women’s roles and family responsibility, do not find any of this acceptable. It especially pains me to think that the little KAWAII otokonoko I have at shougakkou and chugakkou (and trust me, they are SOOOO CUTE) are going to turn out to be these chauvinistic monsters. Where does it all go wrong…

Anytime a Japanese man talks to me, I am a little horrified. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have had SEVERAL old Japanese men tell me I’m “beautiful” and “pretty,“ and it FREAKS ME OUT. Especially when one time I was told this while the men were pointing at a picture of a naked woman on the wall, and another time when it was a complete stranger who just came up to me and said it. Because of these experiences, I second-guess and look down upon all the seemingly benign Japanese males I know - for example, the teachers at my school. It’s wrong of me to do, I know, especially since it’s not their fault individually… but I can’t help it. How can any woman deal with Japanese men?

If I should ever complain in the future about (American) men, can someone please just tell me, “At least you’re not a Japanese woman that has to date a Japanese man.” I will promptly shut up.