Summer Lessons: A course in Cultural Understanding Part 2

So, imagine you are a young guy in his 20s in this setting. You find the dream that was promised to you as a child, the dream that you worked towards your whole life, turn out to be a lie. Nobody will tell you the truths about life when you are young, certainly not truths like these, they sell you lies and fiction. Lies and fiction convince and motivate you to do exactly what they think you need to do. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t make facing reality any easier. There will be no romance, no children, nothing to build your future on or around. Much of what you worked towards had turned out to be unattainable. What do you do? You go through the stages of grief until you hit acceptance. When you get there, you are free. Free to do whatever you want because you have lost your hope and expectations for the future. I’m surprised that country hasn’t turned into one giant fight club. It’s no wonder that at times we see some very disinhibited attitudes amongst this group.

There are no future mates to discover your past transgressions. These are no future children to have to explain things to. You can do whatever you want really. With all those rapeplay games you heard about as well as public fondling stories and with these depressing cicumstances, you may begin to wonder what the statistics are on that sort of thing. I sure did. Well, Japan has a rate of 1 per 1000 persons for rape. The United States has a rate that is 28 times that. Bear in mind though, that such stats are fraught with bias. The willingness to report such crimes are dependent on local culture and support systems. It’s not something that a lot of Japanese women would want to confess. Police in Japan are indelicate when dealing with such crimes to say the least. Still, those are the “facts” as we currently know it. If it’s true or even close to true, it’s quite impressive really, though a rate of zero is always what we should aspire to.
So while rapeplay games are distasteful, I’m gonna go out on a limb and declare ACTUAL RAPE to be a lot worse. Yeah, the fascination with these games is unsettling. We are told that rape is not about sex. Rape is about power, and I can assure you that what these men face would give anyone a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness. Stranger things have happened when men have faced similar circumstances of isolation and despair. Think prison. Think all those stories about farmers with sheep. The urge to reproduce is the basis of what drives every animal on this planet. Empires have fallen to these urges as well as the desire to find love. It is truly unique for such a large group of people to be forced to deal with suppressing these urges. If they can vent their frustrations in a virtual world instead of the real world, then I can quite frankly turn a blind eye to it. So far, that what the stats tell me. And no, I’m not suggesting that we localize those games to get the US stats down. The worry is that as time goes on, will these virtual world habits increasingly enter the real world?

It should come as no surprise that many are turning prostitution, casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. They are replacing love and sex with technology and other urban pastimes. One example we saw recently was a title developed by Tekken team entitled “Summer Lessons”. What most people would object to is the school girl attire and what it implies. It’s no secret that the Japanese are youth obsessed. Even in the tamest JRPGs, the protagonist is rarely an individual over the age of 20.

A lot of theories have been put forth to explain the school girl obsessions. Many point to pornography laws that prohibited the display of pubic hair. I don’t really buy that as the main cause. I haven’t seen pubes in years – in fact the pubic louse is now endangered thanks to rampant “landscaping “efforts. This hasn’t caused any similar obsession thus far. Others point to the past and the geisha culture that saw grown men bid for the virginity of 13-year old girls openly. This could be a contributing fator, but that was eons ago, and many cultures have moved on from a similar past. Elvis once dated a 14 year old (Priscilla Priestly) and so did many others in his time. Jerry Lewis married a 13 year old and Jimmy Page dated a 14 year old. No star can pull off that shit today.

Remember earlier what I said about salaryman culture. After years of sacrifice and study (itself an isolating pursuit), these guys were adopted into a soul-crushing existence right out of university, with no time for interests outside of work. In fact, I would consider it to be an ongoing traumatic experience. The isolation and stress is akin to a slow torture. Many who complain about stress and depression were simply told by employers to take anti-depressants and move on. They were told that this is what everyone else does. This was the corporate culture there with very little variation. There were few other alternatives for one seeking a comfortable living. It’s no wonder then that Japan has always had high suicide rates and even today, ranks between 5th and 7th in suicide rates worldwide - 4 times higher than the US. 71% of suicides in Japan were male, and it is the leading cause of death in men aged 20–44. I have to point out though that culturally, suicide does not have the stigma attached to it that is present here in the west. It also saw the start of a phenomena in 1969 known as Karōshi which can be translated literally from Japanese as "death from overwork”. In 1987, as public concern increased, the Japanese Ministry of Labour began to publish statistics on karōshi. Apart from suicide and Karōshi, that oppressive culture led to other ill-effects.

Regression involves taking the position of a child in some problematic situation. This is usually in response to stressful situations, with greater levels of stress potentially leading to more overt regressive acts. Regression is a form of retreat, going back to a time when the person felt safer and where the stresses in question were not known. Faced with a bleak and monotonous future, it is no surprise to find Japanese people idolizing their childhood and youth itself, seeing it as a time of hope, adventure and happiness. There certainly isn’t much of that in adulthood. Take that soul crushing work culture, mix in the sexual repression and frustration going on, and you will find some very disturbing results in the games and anime consumed in this region – lolicon and hentai come to mind (be careful about searching for that online – some of it is illegal in some states). It’s generally pornographic depictions (drawings) of underage girls.

But these interests are not limited to the virtual world. Enjo kyosai (aka “compensated dating”) is a practice where high school-aged girls are paid by older men to “date” them. Sexual favors are expected. The age of consent is either 13 or 18 depending on interpretation and many predatorial / desperate men have found these girls willing participants in an effort to increase their spending income. It’s also worth noting that in the prostitution laws, only intercourse between men and women is prohibited. Same sex relations and other sex acts are not.

My point in all this is that many of the disturbing things that we see coming out of Japan are borne out of highly unusual circumstances. Circumstances that would unravel the minds of even the strongest among us. Personally, I can’t say how I would cope or respond in this setting. I can certainly empathize even though I still can’t fully understand. Quite frankly, I’m impressed by the ability of these people to hold it together. While I find many of these date sims and rapeplay games to be disturbing, I find the cultural and political influences that contributed to it to be equally saddening. My hope is that some rapid cultural and political change takes place before things deteriorate further. There have been efforts by the government to improve the “work-life balance” of their citizens, and hopefully it sees some improvement in the lives of its populace and a pathway away from some of these peculiar tastes.