‘Give me the democracy of touch, the resurrection of the body!’ Thus exclaims one of the characters in D. H. Lawrence’s (in)famous Lady Chatterley’s Lover, echoing the author’s stress on the importance of touch and his apology for a new relation with the body, which he envisaged as perforce physical. Direct human touch and its mysteries.
Speaking of which, here goes another mystery - and one which puzzles me perhaps even more than the prevalent ‘kokoro no semasa’ in this land of the setting sun: most people’s extreme reluctance to touch others, to kiss, to hug, to cuddle. If you are a tactile and affectionate person, then you are bound to feel utterly forlorn and inadequate amidst all the social ice. Not to mention that you have to constantly refrain your natural impulses, lest you scare the living daylights out of some poor guy with an impromptu social kiss or a slight hand touch. I, for one, feel so deprived of human touch among native folks that every time I return to Europe I have to hold back tears of happiness whenever I can unrestrainedly touch hands with or kiss another human being. What a joy, what a relief!
Little wonder, then, that Japan is considered ‘the world’s least sexy nation’. Or that a recent survey has revealed that more than 80 percent (!) of new recruits would choose to work if asked to do overtime rather than go out on a date. Or that most urban single young men are ‘not interested in dating girls [nor boys, I presume...], having relationships, or even having sex’, and that they are much more – or exclusively - interested in themselves, that is to say, in fashion & shopping and, of course, in wanking online. In Europe we call these narcissistic young fellows 'metrosexuals’ or ‘mirror men’; in Japan, they are soshokukei, ‘herbivorous’ or ‘herbivores’. Why say more?...
Hail, brave new world! Brave new world indeed.
Or, as one of Japan's leading feminist thinkers, Chizuko Ueno, has famously coined it, a transvestite patriarchy of seemingly soft, tender, kind, and 'effeminate' men - greatly assisted by an army of domineering mothers who spoil their little brats, esp. the males, beyond hope (and mothers can indeed be fatal to their sons. Fatal.) - that is in reality deeply sexist and misogynistic.
Good ladies, wake up!
4 comments:
These people are nuts!
Sex has been oppressed in Japan for a long time. We are taught not to show any emotion, that the way adults behave in Japan. So, more than 30,000 people suicide. Yet, the oppression seems to be rooted more in political aspects. During world wars, the solders could not date with girls in order to devote their lives for wars. Soshokukei kids have no desire for girls, because they are temporary employee and have no money to date with girls. They only have money enough to buy their clothes.
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