A Bleak Table

This doesn’t surprise me. Japan has identified every aspect of romantic and sexual desire and recreated it artificially in a lab, superstimulated and sealed in plastic wrap for individual consumption. Of course, everywhere has porn, prostitution and so on, but the scale and variety almost makes it something entirely different. Compensated dating with high schoolers, idol groups as Cocomelon for adults, blocks of prime real estate devoted entirely to pinsaro (blowjob parlors), love hotels and “information” booths. Certain streets at certain times of day lined with tachinbo (free-agent street walkers), many of them working off debt they got into at predatory host clubs, caught in a self-perpetuating sex services ouroboros.

Marriages often happen to fulfil a personal development milestone or as a mutually beneficial exchange (status for stability). It’s common for Japanese couples to sleep separately and to be sexually inactive (at least with each other). It of course depends on whom you ask, but cheating itself is generally not seen as immoral, rather it’s doing it right under your spouse’s nose or allowing them to find out about it that’s considered disrespectful. It’s common, perhaps even normal, to engage in one night stands or patronise the local sex trade while on a business trip, where it’s unlikely your actions will make it back to your spouse or tarnish their reputation. My biggest Japan culture shock was meeting a few married Japanese acquaintances in Singapore who nonchalantly made time in their schedule to visit a Geylang brothel together.

The far tail of this gets deeply insane. It’s definitely not common to buy high schoolers’ used panties out of a vending machine, but it is possible. I don’t know of anywhere else where it is.

I love Japan. Many criticisms of it are overblown. The work culture, for example, is not nearly as brutal today as its lingering reputation from 20 years ago would have you believe. The really weird parts are way more niche than “weird Japan” YouTube documentaries suggest. But: it has a really fucked up, transactional relationship with sex and romance. Looking back at some of my old tweets and group chat messages, I can see readily how this place has sunk its venom into my romantic mind, just as Singapore’s status anxiety did to me when I was living there. It’s a bad environment to be a kinda neurotic, single romantic like me. A cultural virus I have no prior immunity to.

I’ve heard too many stories from foreigners, men and women both, marrying a Japanese without realising they were of this mindset, ending up trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage of economic and sociopolitical convenience. If you end up courting a Japanese lover, I advise you to make sure you’re on the same page with them about this.