Un article intéressant qui récapitule assez bien l'évolution des couples au Japon. Beaucoup délaissent le sexe, le mariage et les naissances sont en déclin... Beaucoup de femmes préfèrent rester célubataires : soit parce qu'elles ont un bon emploi et se suffisent à elles-memes, soit parce qu'elles préfèrent une vie confortable à rester chez Papa-Maman indéfiniment...
__________________
Japanese men, women shunning sex
Paul Wiseman
USA Today
Jun. 3, 2004 02:36 PM
TOKYO - Junko Sakai was nervously looking forward to a romantic getaway with the man she'd been seeing. But when they arrived at a seaside hotel last fall, her beau requested separate rooms.
Stunned, Sakai nonetheless anticipated a late-night knock on the door. It never came. "Nothing happened," the Tokyo writer says.
Nothing is happening with depressing regularity between Japanese men and women these days. Marriages, births and hanky panky are all spiraling lower with troubling implications for the nation's future: A sagging birthrate means that fewer working-age people will be around to support a growing population of elderly; a social crisis looms.
Only in Japan would a popular weekly newsmagazine feel it necessary to exhort the nation's youth to abstain from sexual abstinence: "Young people, don't hate sex," AERA magazine pleaded last month in a report detailing a precarious drop in sales of condoms and in business at Japan's rent-by-the-hour love hotels.
More and more Japanese men and women are finding relationships too messy, tiring and potentially humiliating to bother with anymore. "They don't want a complicated life," says Sakai, who has written a controversial bestseller, "Cry of the Losing Dogs," on the plight of unmarried Japanese thirtysomething women like herself.
And so, to an astonishing degree, men and women go their separate ways - the women to designer boutiques and chic restaurants with their girlfriends or moms, the men to karaoke clubs with their colleagues from work or the solitude of their computer screens to romance hassle-free virtual women.
"Men don't want to spend time with their girlfriends, especially shopping," says Takayuki Mori, 40, a single man who works for a Tokyo advertising agency. He says he isn't dating.
Better educated, more widely traveled and raised in more affluence than their mothers, young women no longer feel bound by the Japanese tradition that says a woman unmarried after age 25 is like a Christmas cake on Dec. 26 - stale. Men, meanwhile, seem intimidated and bewildered by assertive young women who are nothing like their moms.
As a result of the disconnect between genders, Japan, just emerging from a long economic slump, is experiencing a social recession in:
- Marriage. Japanese are postponing marriage or avoiding it altogether. Weddings dropped last year for the second straight year. Fifty-four percent of Japanese women in their late 20s are single, up from 30.6 percent in 1985. About half of single Japanese women ages 35 to 54 have no intention to marry, according to a survey in January by the Japan Institute of Life Insurance.
- Births. Just 1.1 million babies were born in Japan last year, the third straight decline. The average Japanese couple now produces just 1.32 children, well below the minimum 2.08 needed to compensate for deaths. As a result of plummeting birth rates, Japan's population is expected to peak in 2006, and then decline rapidly.
-Sex. In a 2001 survey, condom maker Durex found that Japan ranked dead last among 28 countries in the frequency of sex: The average Japanese had sex just 36 times a year. Hong Kong was next to last with 63.(Americans ranked No. 1 at 124 times a year.)
"AERA" reports that condom shipments are down 40 percent since 1993 (probably in part because Japan finally legalized birth-control pills in 1999) and love-hotel check-ins are off at least 20 percent over the past five years. What's more, an increasing number of those visiting love hotels aren't there for romance, "AERA" says; they've found that love hotels offer the cheapest access to karaoke machines and video games.
I won't get married!
Over tea in the sunlit lobby of the Akasaka Prince Hotel near the Imperial Palace in downtown Tokyo and later over soba noodles and chicken yakatori at a nearby restaurant, Japanese writer and television personality Yoko Haruka describes the shortcomings of love and marriage Japanese-style. The husband works long hours and carouses into the night with his pals from work. The wife is expected to stay home, clean house and take care of kids. If the children behave badly, she's a bad mother. If her husband has an affair, she's a bad wife.
The author of "Kekkon Shimasen" (I Won't Get Married!), Haruka abandoned her own plans for marriage a decade ago when she realized her fiance wanted her to give up her career and lead the traditional life of a Japanese housewife. She says Japanese men sometimes propose to women with lines like: "I want you to cook miso soup for me the rest of my life." Not surprisingly, Japan's increasingly educated and well-traveled young women are not impressed.
"I'm not expecting men will change," Haruka says.
Her assistant, Miho Higuchi, who has kept silent throughout the conversation, suddenly blurts out: "Never again!" A mother of three, she divorced her husband because he refused to do anything to help her clean house and take care of the kids.
In fact, Japan's divorce rate rose steadily to 2.3 divorces for every 1,000 people in 2002 from 1.28 in 1990; it appears to have dropped a bit last year, partly because fewer people have been getting married. (The divorce rate in the USA was 4 per 1,000 people in 2002.)
As for men, they seem bewildered by the rising assertiveness of Japanese women.
"Men are getting weaker," says Takayuki Tokiwa, 23, a student at a Tokyo vocational college. "Women don't have to rely on men anymore. They can live on their own."
Masahito Wakauchi, 24, would seem to be a good catch. He has fashionably wavy hair and a good job with an advertising agency in Tokyo. Is he dating? Wakauchi shakes his head sadly.
"It's very, very difficult" to meet women these days, he says.
Rather than risk rejection or summon the energy to maintain a modern relationship, many Japanese men simply pay for affection in the country's ubiquitous hostess bars and brothels.
Others prefer virtual women online to the real kind. "They seem to find the relationship cumbersome. ... You have to be attentive to your partner," says Kunio Kitamura, president of the Japan Family Planning Association's Family Planning Clinic. "A quick way to get satisfaction is so-called cybersex."
In fact, as many as a million young men - mostly teenagers, but increasingly older men as well - suffer from what is known here as "hikikomori." It's a condition in which they seclude themselves in their rooms for weeks at a time (though the causes seem to go well beyond fear of women to traumatic experiences from the past such as being bullied at school).
But most young Japanese seem to enjoy the single life. In 1973, a Japanese government survey found that the happiest people in the country were those over age 60. A similar survey 24 years later found that the happiest people were in their 20s, and twentysomething women were the happiest of all: 77.7 percent said they were content with their lives. Maybe Gloria Steinem was right: Women need men like fish need bicycles.
Many young Japanese women live carefree lives, staying at home with their parents, paying little if any rent, letting their mothers cook their meals, clean their rooms and do their laundry. Many work dead-end jobs that don't pay much but don't cause much stress and give them enough spending money to buy designer handbags, shoes, clothes and jewelry and enough time to take overseas holidays with their girlfriends.
Emerging from the Louis Vuitton shop on Namikibashi street in the heart of the Ginza shopping district, Tokyo secretary Yukiko Matsumoto, 38, says she's happily single and living at home with her parents.
"I don't want to change my rhythms," she says. "Men expect women to stay home and take care of them." Not likely: Matsumoto travels abroad twice a year with her best friend and shopping companion Terumi Yanagibashi, 38. They've already been to Hawaii together three times.
'Parasite singles'
A few years ago, Tokyo Gakugei University sociologist Masahiro Yamada coined the phrase "parasite singles" to describe young people who sponge off their parents and use their rent-free incomes to splurge on designer goodies, expensive dinners and trips abroad. It came from the 1997 Japanese horror movie "Parasite Eve" and applies to young, live-at-home men and women alike, though Yamada says the most carefree of the parasite singles tend to be women; the men are more serious about establishing careers and moving out on their own one day.
The phrase caught on. Some single women even printed up business cards defiantly describing themselves as "parasite singles."
In the past, it made sense for young people to leave home early. In the 1940s and 1950s, Japanese families were large. Staying at home meant sharing a room with brothers or sisters. But after decades of prosperity and falling birthrates, many young adults are pampered only children. Leaving home to marry means the drudgery of housework (especially for women) and the poverty of having to pay your own bills.
Sociologist Yamada says the single life in Japan isn't as blissful as it seems. For one thing, many young women still want to marry: They keep waiting for the perfect man - a rich handsome guy who either helps with the housework or can afford to hire help. But Prince Charming never quite arrives. "They hold on to the illusion they will find a man with a high income," Yamada says.
"The good men are all married," writer Junko Sakai says. "Those left behind are all nerds or without jobs or violent or not nice looking."
And what happens to the parasite singles when their parents become infirm or die? Yamada says their future is grim. He cites one case study that he fears will be a model for the future. A woman lived with her parents until they died, inherited the family home but found that her job didn't pay enough now that her parents weren't around to foot the bill for groceries and other necessities. She ended up bankrupt after borrowing heavily in a futile effort to maintain her lifestyle.
The phenomenon of parasite singles also is creating a demographic nightmare. Japan now has about four working-age people to contribute to pension plans to support one of today's retirees. By the middle of the century, there will be just two workers for each retiree, which will create huge financial problems for the country.
Sociologist Yamada says young men and women need to get more realistic. Men need to start helping with the housework and supporting their wives' careers. Women need to stop waiting for the flawless man who's never going to show up. "They've got to compromise," he says.
But it's going to take a lot of convincing to get Japanese women to give up their independence. Writer Sakai says Japanese society still thinks there's something wrong with unmarried women over the age of, say, 30. She calls spinsters like herself "losing dogs." But fewer and fewer women care about tradition. "I know I'm a losing dog," Sakai says, "but I'm quite satisfied with my life."
Bon, il y aurait beaucoup de choses à dire sur cet article qui soulève de nombreux problèmes à la fois (même un peu trop). Je suis en tout cas on ne peu plus d'accord sur un point: le retour de bâton va être terrible lorsque ces "parasites" ne pourront plus compter sur le salaire de papa/maman, parce que devoir commencer une "vraie" vie professionnelle à 40 ou 50 balais, bonjour le choc !
Ceci étant dit, je n'aimerai pas seulement jetter la pierre aux jeunes japonais mais aussi parents qui portent, à mon avis, leure part de responsabilité dans cette situation. En effet, c'est aussi à eux d'agire pour pousser leurs enfants à quitter le domicile familial et à se prendre en main. Certainement qu'ils verraient la vie autrement qu'au travers des sac Vuittons et des voyages à l'étrangers s'ils devaient payer leurs factures et se faire à manger ! Il évident que lorsque que tu peux claquer tout ton fric pour t'amuser, ça va pas te motiver pour fonder une famille avec tous les soucis qui vont avec...
La réaction des parents est il me semble toujours la même: "on y peut rien, c'est comme ça". Ils se disent que les temps sont durs, l'emploi pas stable, autant garder ses rejettons sous la protection familiale. Mais ainsi, ils ne rendent service ni à la jeune génération pour laquelle le réveil sera rude, ni à eux-même car ils risquent de ne pas voir une relêve suffisante sur le marché du travail pour payer leur retraite. _________________ I'm so gifted at findin' what I don't like the most
So I think it's time for us to have a toast
A mon sens, l'interet principal de l'article c'est de mettre en lien divers elements : le recul des mariages, des "dates", de l'age de depart du foyer parental (a.k.a. la tombee du nid ), les free-timers... On se dit que le Japon est en pleine phase d'hedonisme (pas nouveau?) individualiste et que le trait est plutot entrain de se forcer.
C'etait deja interessant, le Japon, mais ca devient passionant quand ca change!! Et pis, ca nous donne l'occasion de nous perdre en conjectures....
On pourrait donc se dire que le changement des attentes des demoiselles ouvre la voix a davantage de mariages mixtes (en tous cas, mes copines ne revent que de ca). Si on ajoute a ca, un lourd probleme demographique, peut-etre que le verrou legal sur l'immigration non-qualifiee (hors-nikkei) va sauter... Quelles consequences sur le statut du gaijin-suspect au Japon?
La separation des sexes, j'en ai pour ma part fait l'experience la plus saisissante en entrant dans le shokudo de la fac de Hamamatsu, tres recemment : le hall etait parfaitement divise avec les filles d'un cote, les garcons de l'autre, 3/4, 1/4 (bah oui, c'est une fac d'arts, hehe), mixite zero. Volontairement, bien entendu. Il parait que c'est pareil au college et au lycee. Quand a savoir pourquoi, je crois que c'est out of our league...
Bref, que du fascinant.
R.
PS : quelqu'un connaitrait-il la reference exacte du (des) bouquin(s) de Yamada?
C'est vrai. Meme chez les filles qui ont des amis garçons j'ai l'impression que leurs relations sont beaucoup moins proches que celles des Francais pour moi...
"La separation des sexes, j'en ai pour ma part fait l'experience la plus saisissante en entrant dans le shokudo de la fac de Hamamatsu, tres recemment : le hall etait parfaitement divise avec les filles d'un cote, les garcons de l'autre, 3/4, 1/4 (bah oui, c'est une fac d'arts, hehe), mixite zero. Volontairement, bien entendu. Il parait que c'est pareil au college et au lycee. Quand a savoir pourquoi, je crois que c'est out of our league... ""
ah tient c'est la premiere fois qu'un intervenant parle de cet etat de fait, tres interessant en effet.
peut on avoir d'autre confirmation ? flo par exemple ?
Addendum :
moi j'ai l'impression que c'est variable selon les generations. Je ne trouve pas mes amis de 25-35 ans particulierement segreges et ils ne l'etaient pas davantage il y a 5 ans...
C'est peut-etre une specificite d'Hamamatsu. J'ai fait la remarque au prof qui etait avec moi, et il m'a confirme "qu'a son epoque" (hum ) ca n'etait pas comme ca.
Alors, l'etrange phenomene a-t-il ete apercu en dehors de Hamamatsu? Parce qu'apres tout c'est peut-etre la chappelle pseudo-gothique 100% kitsch qui est en face de la fac qui decourage les rapports inter-sexes
Ca me rappelle un article que j'ai lu il y a quelques mois sur Singapour, ou les jeunes surtout diplomes ont peu de relations sexuelles et se marient peu; pour encourager les mariages des classes superieures (et donc faire prosperer son troupeau d'ingenieurs ), le gouvernement a autorise Sex in the City et cree une agence gouvernementale!
Donc c'est un phenomene plus large que le Japon. Peut-etre que les obligations sociales, les regles de politesse, ou les pressions familiales etant plus fortes dans ces pays, certains jeunes ont envie d'un peu de solitude pour respirer. Ou alors, c'est une forme de reaction contre l'hedonisme des annees 90? _________________ Petit Ecolier
Inscrit le: 07 Juin 2004 Pays, Ville: Saint Tropez
Ce message n'a pas encore été noté.
Bien que le sujet soit très préoccupant pour le Japon en effet, il n'y a pas que là bas que l'on peut voir un phénomène de ce type.
Même en France il arrive de plus en plus que, durée des études et confort de la vie parentale, des jeunes adultes restent chez leurs parents pour profiter des revenus qu'ils possèdent. Voir Tanguy pour plus de détails (faut le voir au deuxième degré pour comprendre le problème de société soulevé).
Par contre ce qui est vrai c'est que ce phénomène est d'autant plus accentué au Japon qu'en Occident car les Japonais n'ont pas la même facon d'aborder la vie de couple. D'une part car l'émancipation de la femme se fait aujourd'hui, donc un peu de retard par rapport à chez nous, d'autre part car, depuis longtemps, les japonais ont eu une sérieuse tendance à passer par des agences spécialisées pour rencontrer leur époux(se), et donc moins de contacts "vivants".
L'article souligne d'ailleurs le fait que de nombreux hommes ont tout simplement peur des femmes, et ont du coup du mal à les aborder. A cela s'ajoute l'effet de groupe décrit comme cette séparation des sexes même (et surtout ?) dans les établissements scolaires et - pire encore à mon avis - dans les loisirs. Du coup l'incompréhension s'installe entre les deux sexes, et de cette incompréhension nait la peur (même système que pour le racisme...).
Heureusement tous (et toutes) ne sont pas comme ca, mais c'est leur nombre croissant qui inquiète.
En ce qui concerne, du coup, la politique d'immigration du pays, même si elle devient plus ouverte, je ne pense pas que cela modifie vraiment le regard des japonais sur les Gaijins (Voir en France le regard sur les immigrés qui sont pourtant venus à la demande du gouvernement pour reconstruire un pays en ruine...).
Enfin, et je terminerais sur cette petite note personnelle, Rebma pour les mariages mixtes moi je suis partant, célibataire, j'arrive à Tokyo en Novembre et je compte monter une société là bas... Si tes copines sont intéressées je t'envoie une photo
Bon ca va ca va je sors _________________ Il ne faut jamais menacer si l'on n'est pas capable de frapper. N. De Machiavel
Vous ne pouvez pas poster de nouveaux sujets dans ce forum Vous ne pouvez pas répondre aux sujets dans ce forum Vous ne pouvez pas éditer vos messages dans ce forum Vous ne pouvez pas supprimer vos messages dans ce forum Vous ne pouvez pas voter dans les sondages de ce forum
), les free-timers... On se dit que le Japon est en pleine phase d'hedonisme (pas nouveau?) individualiste et que le trait est plutot entrain de se forcer.
Et pis, ca nous donne l'occasion de nous perdre en conjectures....
) ca n'etait pas comme ca.
), le gouvernement a autorise Sex in the City 
et cree une 