January 3, 2020

"In Japan, this new generation of sexless men—and the Japanese sex recession is caused by men’s lack of interest, to the vocal dismay of young Japanese women... — are known as soushoku danshi, literally 'grass-eating men' — in a word, herbivores."

"The epithet was originally coined by a frustrated female columnist but, incredibly, the herbivores aren’t offended and most of them are happy to identify as such.... And what seems to define the herbivores is not just that they have no interest in sex, it’s that they don’t seem to be interested in much of anything at all.... Not that they’re opting out of productive society to focus on, say, art, or activism, or some other form of creativity or counter-culture. Apparently, one of the few hobbies that seem to be popular among herbivores is . . . going on walks. To be fair, walking is an important part of digestion for ruminants... Beyond sexuality, the herbivores seem strikingly like a generation of men suffering from hypofrontality, the neurological disease caused by porn addiction. It seems that their key problem is an inability to commit, whether to a career or a woman. Commitment requires abilities enabled by the prefrontal cortex, like self-mastery, correctly weighing risk and reward, and projecting oneself into the future.... [I]t’s impossible to prove scientifically that the herbivore phenomenon is caused by widespread porn addiction. But one thing is certainly very suggestive: there’s no explanation for why, if the herbivore trend is caused by some broader cultural or socioeconomic trends, it should be such an overwhelmingly male phenomenon.... Is Japan a harbinger of the future? Are we on the road to becoming a herbivore civilization?"

From "A Science-Based Case for Ending the Porn Epidemic/We know what porn does to the brain, because the medical science is solid. Because social science is much softer, we can’t know for certain what causal impacts porn has on society, if any. But once we realize that we have to be much more humble in this area, we can still make prudential judgments" (American Greatness).

111 comments:

mccullough said...

We killed their best men during the war. 70 years later, this is what happens.

rhhardin said...

Hello Kitty is to blame.

rhhardin said...

Less grass more bush.

mccullough said...

Japan should institute a program where the male descendants of Americans who fought in WW2 are invited over to impregnate their women.

Nonapod said...

This is nothing. Wait until there's sex robots that are indistinguishable from real women.

Michael K said...

I agree with mccullough. The same thing happened to Germany and Britain and Russia,.

The reason pheasants run in South Dakota.

rhhardin said...

Wait until there's sex robots that are indistinguishable from real women.

Bad moods and headaches.

rehajm said...

...to the vocal dismay of young Japanese women...

Got their numbers?

The female Japanese students in Boston reflect this. Sometimes you see a fetching couple out of a J-Dorama but mostly you see the girls walking arm in arm, dining out together at Shake Shack or Island Creek Oyster Bar, nary a lad to be found.

Laying off the oysters might help, ladies...

rhhardin said...

There's gf addiction that displaces porn. Maybe the gf's aren't what they used to be.

Gahrie said...

"The few secluded spaces housed a population Calhoun called, "the beautiful ones." Generally guarded by one male, the females—and few males—inside the space didn't breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young."

Overpopulation?

mccullough said...

Michael K,

I don’t think a lot of people realize just how many military men aged 18-44 were killed in WW2. Russia and Germany just slaughtered each other.

The US had about 500,000 killed with a population of 150 million. Germany had 5 million and Russia 8 million. Japan has about 2 million.

All of their populations were much smaller than the US.

gilbar said...

in a word: Veganism == BAD!
GOD put these tasty animals out here, for a purpose; and that purpose involves COOKING

rhhardin said...

It might be a mousetopia.

Lucid-Ideas said...

@Rhhardin

"There's gf addiction that displaces porn. Maybe the gf's aren't what they used to be."

As a man with a long long long line of exes, you can say that again.

Narr said...

When a "fellow" at some institute in Paris says "the science is settled," it's safe to ignore the rest.

Psychologists and shrinks are just about the last people in the world you want setting policy.
Their model(s) of reality are as useless as any other shaman's, and often more dangerous because it's SCIENCE.

Narr
So the Japs die off. If they don't care, I don't

chuck said...

How widespread *is* porn addiction and how does it affect addicted women?

Lucid-Ideas said...

There's a double-standard that I don't think anyone here would be unaware of

- Men have to have standards and carry the burden of performance.
- How dare you imply women have to have any standards at all, you misogynist!

Cue the crying of various 30+ American women screeching about a lack of potential mates.

Ladies. A word. There are other ladies in other countries which commercial jet travel makes easier and easier and cheaper with each passing year to reach. Your competition is global.

I just bought a round-trip ticket to Osaka. I'll be back before the paternity tests show +.


Ignorance is Bliss said...

I will await Laslo's analysis...

gilbar said...

vocal dismay of young Japanese women...

These Jpoppies won'y want to hear this; but there are, like 30 MILLION single Chinese guys,
sitting up at night; staring at their phones; going: WHY won't a beautiful Nipponese girl pick ME?

Temujin said...

I wish I was 35, single, with a ticket to Osaka.

Rusty said...

Being the generous person that I am. I stand ready to fill the gap, so to speak. At a moments notice.

Darkisland said...

in a word, herbovores."

Herbovores or herbivores?

Is this a typo or is it a thing?

John Henry

Sebastian said...

So, when feminists tell us women don't need men, that's good, but when men decide they don't need women, that's bad.

A corollary to the Althouse axiom that any news involving men and women must be presented to favor women.

Shouting Thomas said...

Porn certainly plays a role in this.

But, the overwhelming factor here is that Japan was defeated and humiliated in WWII. Like Germany, it is still struggling to remake itself and to come to terms with the catastrophe of WWII.

Tokyo was firebombed into ashes. The horror of the firebombing of Tokyo almost makes Nagasaki and Hiroshima seem bearable.

Japan is still recovering from trauma.

WWII was the dead end of machismo as a functional life.

Anonymous said...

herbivores

that is the goal of American Feminists in their quest to stamp out toxic masculinity

Lucid-Ideas said...

@Temujin

I am technically not single, I'm engaged. But that doesn't mean she and I can't add a desperate Japanese 'flower-girl' to our throuple now that we've mutually agreed to kick out Tulsi (nay Tulsi. nay).

As for Japanese girls? Overrated. Porn has done a lot of damage to them to. It's all fake and they do what you think you want instead of what you ACTUALLY want.

So don't fret.

SGT Ted said...

Typical female shaming language directed at a group of men who think bicycles don't need a fish.

Howard said...

Put me on the next flight to Tokyo

Drago said...

This was discussed some time back on Althouseblog and at the time I was spending a not insignificant amount of time in Japan working for an, obviously, Japanese client.

I was in direct contact with quite a few young (20's/30's) male engineers, designers, product managers, sales/marketing guys, etc and I broached this topic with them.

Their general response goes something like this: Why would I want to get bogged down with a wife and children and have to get involved in that rat race that killed our parents and their parents. There is no way to have a wife and kids and be able to live a fun life. And even dating Japanese women is too hard and they expect too much and its just not worth that hassle. It's much more fun to hang out with my friends and take fun trips to fun places.

BTW, the "fun" places they like to go are heavily centered around Thailand for obvious reasons.

The Japanese have created a society where the 20's/30's guys have to work 20 hours a day to get ahead if they have a family. If they don't, party time battalion style.

Michael said...

Japan should institute a program where the male descendants of Americans who fought in WW2 are invited over to impregnate their women.

With the rise of the American Soy Boy, I'm not convinced we can help the Japanese on this one.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

There are close to zero persons living in Japan that remember the war.

In the 70s and 80s Japan was an economic powerhouse.

So why would the almost forgotten memory of a loss be more powerful than a memory of greatness?

Is it the combination of the memories that is causing the ennui?

wild chicken said...

"As a man with a long long long line of exes, you can say that again."

How do you know he has a lot of exes?

Lol.

Howard said...

Yeah Lucid, Chinese women are better looking than Japanese women but it's not like they're all dogs in the Land of the rising sun.

lys said...

This reminds me of your saying re news articles being framed in favor of women. If women were using sex toys and pornography to be independent from men it would have been framed in a much more positive light. Instead, men are being shamed because the women are upset they aren't being chosen and are coming in second place to porn and walks in the woods.

Shouting Thomas said...

The firebombing of Tokyo was only 75 years ago.

Darrell said...

A total misrepresentation. They are interested in sex--how else can you explain the porn addiction? It's just that female normies don't act that way or let you do those things to them in the same way. But paid professionals do. And there is more than enough porn available in Japan to satisfy the sexual release aspect for those that don't wish to engage with a living breathing human being. In essence, they are saying "No thanks!" to the demands of female normies and the restrictions imposed on them.

Nichevo said...


Howard said...
Yeah Lucid, Chinese women are better looking than Japanese women


Really?

but it's not like they're all dogs in the Land of the rising sun.


Hardly, but the point is that China is skosh females, due to one-child and cultural male preference, so anybody with unfucked women will find a buyer's market.

The problem is, as I understand it, Chinese penises are even smaller than Japanese penises. I have no direct evidence on the penii, but Chinese pussy is incredibly tight, so it makes sense.

Shouting Thomas said...

My mother died a couple of months ago at age 93.

She struggled all her life to deal with the death of her brother in the Korean War. She never stopped grieving. Neither did her mother.

My entire family struggled for generations to overcome the trauma my grandfathers suffered in WWI.

If you want to understand the causes of family violence and alcoholism, look at the damage caused by war.

William said...

Remember the Way of the Bushido. Virile Japanese men used to conscript women from the occupied territories to serve as their comfort women. There are worse ways to act out your libido than with a porn addiction....Due to my advancing years, I don't spend as much time watching internet porn as I would like, but it does seem to be an inexpensive and relatively harmless hobby. A young man is seldom more harmlessly engaged than when he is watching porn... I suppose there are downsides for those young neurologists who spend every waking hour watching porn instead of doing further research on Parkinson's Disease, but these are not the average porn consumers..... Exclusive of teenagers, how much time can you spend watching porn? It's not like jogging where you can increase your mileage the more often you do it.....During my peak porn consumption years, the girls in Playboy were not even allowed to show pubic hair. I attribute my disastrous first marriage to the lack of good quality porn available back then.

SGT Ted said...

"So, when feminists tell us women don't need men, that's good, but when men decide they don't need women, that's bad."

Well, yea. Females are always entitled to the sexual attentions of men from which flows the financial resources of men to women.

Shouting Thomas said...

My late wife was Filipino.

Get to know some Filipinos who suffered thru Japanese occupation, and find out what that did to them.

Japanese men have to live with the knowledge that their fathers and grandfather committed those atrocities.

mockturtle said...

I'll be in Japan for three weeks later this year and will report on my findings. :-)

walter said...

Consensus and settled science.
Sounds familiar.

madAsHell said...

It's not watching porn!! It's preventative prostate cancer care!!

mockturtle said...

BTW, neither the Japanese nor the Chinese have ever been big meat eaters. The Mongol hordes were carnivores, however, by virtue of necessity [their land was not arable] and they were the more formidable force.

Yancey Ward said...

A young man not interested in sex is pretty much a unicorn. I don't doubt for a second that the ubiquitous nature of today's porn is drawing off a lot of the energy that, a 50 years ago, would have gone into nuturing and building sexual relationships with actual women, but I seriously doubt this theory that porn has rewired the pre-frontal cortex to the extent that men are no longer interested in marrying and mating.

In that article is buried the true reasons, if you know how to read between the lines- the goverments have grown to such an extent that you can't both support the raising of a family and the supporting of all the elderly through mandated government programs. Something had to give- and it is procreation that has been allowed to slip.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Take a look at this piece that was linked at Instapundit just a bit ago:

https://www.thecollegefix.com/appeals-court-orders-arizona-state-to-reinstate-male-student-expelled-for-having-a-threesome/

Now ask yourself (if you're a feminist), where is the strong-independent women in this story? Is she strong because she can get down with being spit-roasted by two dudes? Or is she in need of university and state protection because she can't consent to getting spit-roasted by two dudes? Ladies, what's the standard. Is regret-rate where you really want to go with this? Seriously?

The birthrate is at the lowest many people my age can remember (I think that's right...) and lots of dudes are quite literally on strike (I'm not...but she's not American). So it's really 'cake-and-eat-it-to' and nobody else gets nothing unless he's quite literally a Hollywood movie star and loaded with perfect abs?

I am going to make so damn much money selling single-serving wine and cat-brush hobby kits. I'm taking investors.

Skeptical Voter said...

You stamp out toxic masculinity; you flood the atmosphere with estrogen--and you get a bunch of grass eating steers. Unexpectedly!

walter said...

If his theory is correct, "addicted" dudes are gonna need an ever changing selection of sex dolls.

Ann Althouse said...

"Is this a typo or is it a thing?"

Typo. By me. Fixed. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

mock: I'll be in Japan for three weeks later this year and will report on my findings. :-)

Where in Japan, mock? Love to hear your reports (except any planned adventures in Japanese porn, lol.)

I'd love to visit (alas, my entire experience of the country is airport layovers). However, I don't relish the thought of those trans-Pacific flights. Could hardly tolerate 'em when I was younger and air travel was less unpleasant than it is now.

Fernandinande said...

Total Fertility Rate by Population 2019
Rank Country Rate
188 Taiwan 1.218
187 Moldova 1.23
186 Portugal 1.241
...
171 Germany 1.47
170 Malta 1.475
169 Japan 1.478
168 Italy 1.491
167 Austria 1.511
...
126 United States 1.886
125 North Korea 1.893
...
100 Mexico 2.136
...
3 Mali 5.922
2 Somalia 6.123
1 Niger 7.153

madAsHell said...

Wait a minute!!

A friend of mine tells me that all the Japanese produced porn has all the lady bits pixeled out. He also says that all the men parts are pixelated as well. I found this surprising because I've never noticed a man in a porno flick.

h said...

I think the point is "Men should not be happy." If my mate wants to have sex more frequently than I do, he is sex-addicted and needs to seek treatment. If my mate wants to have sex more frequently than I do, and seeks it with another partner, he is an adulterer and should be shunned, and if the other partner is a younger woman he is a pervert. If my mate wants to have sex more frequently than I do, and seeks relief by masturbation using porn, porn must be outlawed. If my mate wants to have sex less frequently than I do, he's some kind of weak not-really-a-man ("SOY?"). And if I can't find a mate because so many men have bailed out of dating entirely because of all the new crazy rules, it must be Trump and the patriarchy out to ruin my life.

Le Stain du Poop said...

Done the Japanese girlfriend thing and the Chinese wife thing. Take my word for it: stick to the Japanese if you are the least bit in to hygenie and not too in to chicken feet.

n.n said...

Toxic masculinity. Gender nullification. The moral of the story is never go vegan.

mockturtle said...

Angle: I'll be in Osaka, Okayama, Nagoya and Nagano. Though it's hard to avoid seeing porn in Japan, I certainly try. It seems so at-odds with the rest of the culture.

My focus will be on feudal history and original castles. I've done a lot of reading on the subject and want to experience the locations firsthand. My other visits--decades ago--were primarily business, though I took in the beauty of Kyoto as well as the bustling efficiency of Tokyo. As I'll be on my own this time, I get to call the shots. ;-) My flights and accommodations for September are already booked. But I'll be up north all summer and will fly from SeaTac, leaving my RV at my daughter's. Fun planning!

Todd said...

Mostly this In essence, they are saying "No thanks!" to the demands of female normies and the restrictions imposed on them.

Same thing in USA. Why buy the cow when the "actual" cost can be as high as half of your stuff, alimony, years of child support, and not getting to see/be with your kids when she decides to take a walk, reason be damned.

It is just guys reacting to the local intensives. Make the cost of a "normal" relationship too high and the "consumer" will find cheaper alternatives.

Feminists hardest hit! But look on the bright side, I don't think most apartments have a limit on the number of cats you can have.

Shouting Thomas said...

Men fucked up. That's what created the opening for feminism.

We men damned near blew up the planet with machismo and war.

It 's not hard to understand why the women got sick of that shit and decided to take over.

Down the road, women will commit their own version of total fuck up. That's coming.

Gahrie said...

A friend of mine tells me that all the Japanese produced porn has all the lady bits pixeled out. He also says that all the men parts are pixelated as well. I found this surprising because I've never noticed a man in a porno flick.

This is true for the live action stuff. That is one of the reasons that animated porn (Hentai) is so popular in Japan.

Balfegor said...

Re: gilbar:

These Jpoppies won'y want to hear this; but there are, like 30 MILLION single Chinese guys,
sitting up at night; staring at their phones; going: WHY won't a beautiful Nipponese girl pick ME?


I can't remember where I read it (or even whether it was in English or Japanese), but some years ago someone observed that male Chinese students studying abroad in Japan are a lot more aggressive about picking up women than their Japanese classmates. Not necessarily in a creepy way either. It's just that Japanese men in Japan are extremely concerned about not doing the wrong thing (except when they are "drunk," which gives them some degree of license) and are accordingly extremely reticent about approaching the opposite sex. Chinese are less inhibited, and all the moreso from being in a foreign country where they don't feel the same weight of social pressure.

Gahrie said...

Down the road, women will commit their own version of total fuck up. That's coming.

Ghostbusters, Charlie's Angels and Little Womenhave all already come out.

mockturtle said...

Mad as hell writes: A friend of mine tells me that all the Japanese produced porn has all the lady bits pixeled out. He also says that all the men parts are pixelated as well. I found this surprising because I've never noticed a man in a porno flick.

Things may have changed since I was there but there were closeup blow-job photos posted outside theaters and many other graphic displays. And, no, I wasn't in a 'bad part of town'.

mockturtle said...

Angle-Dyne: PS on my Japan visit. The cities listed are just my base camps. Using a JR pass I'll be out and about every day to various points of historic interest. I selected hotels based on their proximity to Shinkansen stations, precluding any need to use taxis which, though wonderful in Japan, are awfully expensive.

Balfegor said...

Re: Bill, Republic of Texas:

There are close to zero persons living in Japan that remember the war.

I mean, I'd guess maybe at least 70,000? When you expand to people in their 90's, some of whom also actually served in the war, the population is probably even larger. I think there's still a fair number of Korean and Taiwanese veterans who served in the Imperial Army still alive too -- Lee Teng-hui, for example. And people in their 80's lived through the war as children. I wouldn't be surprised if there's over a million people in Japan who remember the war.

Balfegor said...

re: mockturtle:

Things may have changed since I was there but there were closeup blow-job photos posted outside theaters and many other graphic displays. And, no, I wasn't in a 'bad part of town'.

There's really no "bad part of town" the way there is in the US -- crime is low pretty much everywhere. But if you're in Shinjuku in Tokyo, the Kabukicho red light district is literally right there, one street over from the main shopping area. In Ginza, there's fancy restaurants and expensive boutiques next door to or in the same buildings as hostess clubs. I think it may have closed in the last year or so, but there was a sex toy shop right next to Shinbashi station that I would walk past every time I walked from the station up to Ginza. I've actually never seen blow-job photos anywhere, but there's certainly a lot of racy adverts. There's also softcore (and maybe hardcore? I don't know) magazines in the all the convenience stores.

Balfegor said...

Re: Fernandistein:

I'm not sure about that table you link to -- it has South Korea at 1.3+, but they were at 1.05 in 2017, 0.98 in 2018, and cratered to 0.88 in Q3 2019. I don't think we have final 2019 numbers, but they're probably going to come in around 0.90~0.95.

Balfegor said...

Sorry, meant to link this article re South Korea's catastrophic decline in TFR.

Narr said...

Japan is about the only Asian country I have some interest in visiting, but it's unlikely to happen. (Although a tourism campaign featuring some beautiful Japanese women with a "We're Horny" theme could sway me.)

How do they keep the Japanese Self-Defense Forces manned? There seem to be so many opt-outers and jizz-spillers, what kind of young Japanese finds the military life appealing,
or even relevant?

As a student of history, I long since concluded that having infertile and gun-shy Germans and Japanese may not be a bad thing, in net.

Narr
I may not be able to define pornography, but I know it when I watch it

readering said...

Planing to visit Japan this year to attend wedding between Japanese man and ethnic Chinese woman (born and raised in Japan; very rare). Her male cousin did same thing. Just met cute toddler daughter on their visit to US. Japan's future?

Howard said...

Blogger Shouting Thomas said...
My mother died a couple of months ago at age 93.

She struggled all her life to deal with the death of her brother in the Korean War. She never stopped grieving. Neither did her mother.

My entire family struggled for generations to overcome the trauma my grandfathers suffered in WWI.

If you want to understand the causes of family violence and alcoholism, look at the damage caused by war.


Absolutely 100% agreement. Sorry about your Mom. You know I love giving you shit for not signing up in 68. However you may have given your mom an extra 20 years of life by not putting her through that hell. I don't think my mom ever got over her WWI gassed father's abandonment and the 14 months my brother was in Vietnam. She died from smoking and drinking too much at the age of 73. I still remember the look of horror and disappointment on her face when I told her I dropped out of college and enlisted in the Marine corps days after Ronald Reagan was voted in. I didn't help national security one bit.

Bilwick said...

I'm guessing those "prudential judgments" involve less, rather than more, individual liberty.

Drago said...

readering: "Planing to visit Japan this year to attend wedding between Japanese man and ethnic Chinese woman (born and raised in Japan; very rare)."

That is interesting. Looking forward to hearing how that goes.

Fernandinande said...

I think the author is suffering from moral panic #3.

whitney said...

I'm surprised only one person has brought up Mouse Utopia. It was rhhardin.
I'm not going to link anything but you can Google it if you're interested

Anonymous said...

mock: re Japan trip. You sound like my kind of travel nerd. We usually plan our trips around certain historical/arty themes, as it were. Choose some place we've always been interested in, limit the focus, choose base camp(s), and then go to town on more in-depth reading. Love planning those trips. (Serendipitously, we've had pretty much the same "always wanted to go there and see that" list since childhood. Two history/art&architecture nerds in a pod.)

Re taxis- no Uber in Japan? (Though I imagine Uber would probably be uber-expensive there too, like everything else.)

gilbar said...

my dad's '90 (he served in Korea), my mom 88; so neither one was anything like old enough to fight in WWII... But both TOTALLY remember it, from pearl harbor on

my mom (the younger of the two) was nearly 10 when pearl harbor was bombed, my dad was 12 and a half... Think about what y'all remember about being 10 years old?
So, my mom was 13 (and dad was 16) when Hiroshima was bombed....

There's LOTS of people in Japan that remember firebombings (of Other cities, at least)
Wiki doesn't break down to 80 year olds, but...
" 1 in 5 persons in Japan is 70 or older according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. 26.18 million people are 70 or older and accounted for 20.7 percent of the population. "

Marcus Bressler said...

Me?

I'm turning Japanese, I'm turning Japanese, I really think so.

THEOLDMAN

I had the hots for the Chinese woman who serviced Robert Kraft but she declined a house visit.

Anonymous said...

There are close to zero persons living in Japan that remember the war.

There are still quite a few people alive who have direct memories of WWII. Regardless, these are memories that are passed on and become cultural rather than just individual. They go deep. They're there amidst the bustle of modern life and apparent forgetfulness, and not always visible to the passing outsider. Tarry awhile and you will run into them everywhere - in SE Asia, on Pacific Islands, in Europe. Often unexpected (by the visitor), apparently out of the blue. But it's not out of the blue. Oh, you better believe they remember.

Balfegor said...

Re: Angle-Dyne:

Re taxis- no Uber in Japan? (Though I imagine Uber would probably be uber-expensive there too, like everything else.)

There's Uber there (and Didi Taxi), but not all that useful. Not much service, and I hear it is expensive (I've never actually called an Uber in Japan -- just popped open the app to see wait times). Out in the countryside, though, you really do need a car or a taxi. I took my sister to Aomori last year, and I ran up a huge taxi bill getting from place to place.

Osaka and Nagoya aren't like that though (they're big cities with decent transit networks, although train/bus frequency thins out as you get away from the city centre); Nagano and Okayama, not sure, as I've only been to Nagano once, and never been to Okayama. They're a little more rural.

mccullough said...

I think the US might have to undertake a humanitarian evacuation of the best-looking nubile Japanese women.

Anonymous said...

Balfegor: Yeah, in some countries Uber service is a bit theoretical.

What about ease/expense of car rental, and getting about on one's own?

walter said...

Le Stain du Poop said.stick to the Japanese if you are the least bit in to hygenie and not too in to chicken feet.
--
Oh c'mon..they don't all have chicken feet.

chuck said...

The war did leave a physical mark on the Japanese population. Back in the 60's a Japanese architect and I rented rooms in the same rent controlled apartment in NYC. One day he had some friends over and one was noticeably thinner and smaller than the others due to growing up in wartime Japan when there wasn't much food. There was a Japanese name for that cohort, but I forget what it was. Somewhat off topic, but I recall that when the architect's superiors were visiting from Japan he complained about having to find prostitutes for them.

readering said...

Seem to remember Mad Men, set in the world of Sixties New York business, had more than one prostitution plot point.

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mockturtle said...

Balfegor: I booked with JAL. Are they as good as they used to be?

jimbino said...

"It seems that their key problem is an inability to commit, whether to a career or a woman." I'm with the Uber driver who daily faces myriad job opportunities and eligible women, free from commitment.

Gojuplyr831@gmail.com said...

Japanese culture has been incredibly racist, especially towards other Asian ethnicities. That may have changed some, but marrying someone of a different ethnic group was seen as settling or not being good enough to marry a Japanese mate. This attitude was especially apparent towards Koreans.

bagoh20 said...

If I look at porn, I just want to fuck my girlfriend, and I mean right now. I get very committed to it, so this hypothesis does not match my empirical evidence.

I'm sure this works both ways, but when I see a lot of young men today, I can't imagine them having sex, or a woman wanting them to get busy with it. So many of them today seem, unromantic, sexless, and well,..... flaccid. I see no drive, no energy, no passion. Japanese men are just more so.

Oso Negro said...

Blogger Shouting Thomas said...
Men fucked up. That's what created the opening for feminism.

We men damned near blew up the planet with machismo and war.

It 's not hard to understand why the women got sick of that shit and decided to take over.

Down the road, women will commit their own version of total fuck up. That's coming.


Men? Men fucked up? Who are you? And what have you done with the REAL Shouting Thomas? The Real ST would correctly state this is the fault of Marxist-Feminism, which Althouse needs to confess AND repent!

I kid, I kid. But not really. Are you feeling OK? Or has a year playing with the organ pipes started to impact your manly vigor?

Again, I kid. You sure are right about the impact of war on families - my father's time in the trenches of the late stage of the Korean War affects my family to this day.

Balfegor said...

Re: mockturtle:

Sorry, I usually fly out of DC, so it's ANA or United for me. Last flew JAL longhaul maybe 6 or 7 years ago. It was better than United (haha), but that isn't saying all that much. I might have used them for the short hop to Seoul since, but the planes are configured differently, so not really comparable (and I can't clearly remember the experience anyhow).

Gospace said...

When I visited some shirttail relatives in SC in the early 1970s the older ladies talked about Sherman's march to the sea as if it had happened to them. The oldest of the group born 1890 or so. War memories can apparently survive generations. Also found out during that visit that "damnyankee" is one word, and Ya keep by itself isn't. And that USMA at West Point is The Citadel of the North. Family had multiple graduates of the institution.

Visited Japan once. Took a train to Tokyo. My buddy had a swivel neck as we walked around. Finally he asked me "How can you not be looking around at all these beautiful women?" I looked around and replied "All I see is a lot of Japanese." There seems to be a lot of men with an Asian fixation, bordering on fetish. I don't. At all. But I certainly wish the best for those men who want to travel there and search for these lonely women.

I preferred Korea. Japan is known for almost exaggerated politeness. The Koreans I met were genuinely friendly. I suspect the Japanese politeness hides some deep down national psych problem.

Narr said...

Hell, when I was growing up the older white ladies (there weren't so many old men) talked about the Woah a lot, and though their husbands/brothers/sons may have been overseas in the world wars, those were not the Woah.

Narr
My oldest aunts claimed they picked buck shot out of their elderly Confederate grandfather's back as late as the 1920s

chickelit said...

Is it the combination of the memories that is causing the ennui?

Penis ennui?

roesch/voltaire said...

I am in Japan now I visiting Japanese side of the family for New Years. They live across from Ueno Park Where we often walk and where I saw many families with young children. And we visited with friends, one-off fo whom has five children by his first wife.My impression is the Western press and its reader like these hyper exaggerated views of Japan society.

mockturtle said...

Penis ennui?

Excellent, chickelit!

Kirk Parker said...

R/V,

I don't quite follow--are you saying those published total fertility rates are *wrong*?

Balfegor said...

Re: roesch/voltaire:

新年明けましておめでとうございます!

Yeah, Japanese TFR was low in the 90's and 2000's, but it has recovered since, and now, it's not really any different from Western Europe. Below replacement, but they're in more of a slow decline mode, rather than approaching a sharp, immediate dropoff, and that's more manageable.

Tokyo also seems to have more children out and about than NYC or LA, although that's likely an artifact of US urban parenting keeping children more sequestered these days.

rumrot said...

Vacation time

project9701 said...

A couple of my friends that live in Japan have pretty much come to the following conclusions-

1)Cost. A lot of those complaining Japanese women? They want the Senior VP with the BMW at minimum, not the Department Manager with the Lexus. Anything less doesn't get them what they want.
2)Jobs. Worse than America-it used to be that Japanese companies promised lifetime employment at a decent rate. Now, unless you have a massive specialty, you're expendable to a degree that is scary, and your pay is just enough to survive.
3)Culture. If you want to keep that job? Be prepared to party on a regular basis with your coworkers, pretty much every other night. Lots of drinking and such. Then you have to go home(hopefully before the trains stop), wake up at 4 am, and do it all over again.
4)Society. If you somehow get past all those hurdles, be assured that if your marriage isn't happy, you are going to be very unhappy as a man.

Men turn to porn for the same reason why men "go gay" in long term all-male environments like prison or confined military groups. Anything that releases that stress will be taken, no matter how "appropriate" or lacking that is.

Alphaeus said...

World War II was over 75 years ago. Japan has had porn for millennia.

There can't be much doubt about the true main cause of the herbivorization of Japanese men: Western Feminism has ruined Japanese culture and they are not adjusting well to the new gynocentrism. It's like the MGTOW of the West on steroids.

Pulp Herb said...

Men choose lifestyle women don't approve of ergo the men must be forced to give up the lifestyle.

Bob Loblaw said...

But one thing is certainly very suggestive: there’s no explanation for why, if the herbivore trend is caused by some broader cultural or socioeconomic trends, it should be such an overwhelmingly male phenomenon...

I'd do the same thing if I were Japanese. Japanese men get a raw deal from society, and the risk/benefit ratio for them is so far out of whack for most men there's no reason to participate beyond what they need to survive.

Men in the West face some of the same problems, though not to the same degree.

The Hilltop View of Morris County said...

The japanese men who were soldiers in WW2 were also convinced dying instead of being captured was better destroying a lot of their best and brightest. Leaving only the culls to breed, just as happened in all of europe during WW1.

Unknown said...

Porn, perhaps. But also hypersexualized anime. Why have a real woman when you can have a fantasy-woman waifu you can obsess over in your imagination?

goodterling said...

When you're used to spankin' it to tentacle porn, the real thing just doesn't measure up.

Unknown said...

Project9701 nailed it. I teach in a university in Japan and most of the guys are just resigned...there are few real jobs here, only limited term contracts with no raises and no future in most companies. Just disposable customer service, sales or factory assembly work that automation is removing anyway.You can't get married and raise a family with no serious income....and women here are not expected to work past motherhood, so all the burden falls on the guy. The guys who are entrepreneurial or have been planning their careers since childhood are the only ones stable enough (and therefore attractive enough to women) to get married and have kids. I don't think feminism has all that much to do with it, except for women feeling they have a choice to stay single rather than get into a poverty-doomed marriage. Women here have even less chance at a reasonable salary and stable job than the guys. Companies here are awash in cash but seem to drop salaries every year...and then complain they can't find workers. The culture is still feudal, so no one complains...they just drop out. Japan is doomed.

FIDO said...

Juice.

Squeeze.

Cost Benefit analysis.

Weary G said...

Read this article last week. Was going to try and comment there, fisking it, calling it out on it's load of Malarkey as Biden would call it, but required me to sign up via Big Brother outlets. No Thanks.

There is plenty wrong and obnoxious with the article, but the upshot is this is a MALE problem in Japan, or so it claims. Japanese men are doing something WRONG which hurts their society and negatively affects WOMEN, and they should stop it or something must be done to make them DO THE RIGHT THING. Like take away their porn toys until they behave. Or something.

Various pathologies of men are explored to explain the problem, but as someone above points out, does a porn addiction really indicate a lack of interest in SEX? Or is it a lack of interest in actual WOMEN and relationships?

And there's the rub (pun intended).

The article, as I recall, NEVER even thinks to ask;

"Do Japanese women bear any responsibility for this 'crisis'?"

Nope. Not a word. It is just assumed what is wrong, why Japanese men are making certain choices, is part of some pathology of theirs and something must be done to make them make the RIGHT choices.

I don't claim to know very much about Japanese culture, but I do see the larger trend lines in the U.S., and the same thing is happening here. There is article fretting about the lack of marriage, and how much less sex young people are having, and porn addiction, and blah, blah.

From what I see HERE, and what I am guessing is going on over there, are very much the same thing, perhaps with some cultural nuances.

Men are increasingly viewing women as not worth the effort. Yes, even for actual sex.

Further, women are viewed as increasingly fraught with peril for a man to get involved with, nay, even attempt to get involved with, today.

Even further, even when involved, many women, even and sometimes especially married ones, don't really seem to appreciate what their men do and sacrifice for them, but make constant demands without listening or caring about their needs. The sex becomes staid, and infrequent, even while the demands on them to be responsible and keep the cash coming in and house maintained don't stop or increase.

Would the average man everywhere LIKE to have sex with an actual woman, and have a relationship with one?

Sure. Definitely.

But like rational human beings, men are viewing the risk/reward spreadsheet and deciding that porn, whatever its obvious drawbacks or shortcomings (cough), is a better, safer choice. I also don't think it's great for any society, mind you, but it is what it is because of more than simply men's 'issues' with growing up.

Finally, no one questions whether women are complaining that NO man will have sex with them, or that only the select group of men THEY want will have sex with them. Think about it.

Based on the male sex drive and the fact that these 'herbivores' still have enough interest in sex to be porn addicted, HOW difficult would it be for them to entice one of them into some actual, real life action?

Of course, that would require work and effort and risk of rejection and maybe even some reduction of expectation on the part of women, and Lord knows, we can't have that!

So, when fully life-like sex bots and VR come online...

Hoo-boy...

You think there are troubles now?

red 3215 said...

Coming to this late, my apologies, but
Mock, if you have not seen Nikko yet, you need to.

Narr, I've worked with the SDF, and they are in many ways like the post-WW1 Weimar German forces, limited by treaties but designed to grow into something else when needed. One face that looks ineffective, but the reality is they have plenty of hard cases and I would be happy to share a foxhole with them.

Finally, I think Japanese gals are some of the finest on Earth, and if the young men there can't get interested, you're making a mistake not heading over there. Just remember, they have their own list of expectations for you to meet. Cross cultural dating is Post-Graduate level relationship science.
T