If it does not feel as if there is much love in the air in Tokyo today, blame a group of men who are set to take to the streets to protest against the “passion-based capitalism” of Valentine’s Day.
Members of Kakuhido, known in English as the Revolutionary Alliance of Men whom Women Find Unattractive, are set to march through busy Shibuya District to decry couples who prefer to spend the day in a more romantic fashion, according to the Tokyo Reporter.
Many people would probably disagree with the group’s claim that “public flirtation is terrorism,” but there will be sympathy for its critique of the day’s brazen commercialism.
Photo: AFP
Valentine’s Day in Japan is not so much an opportunity to make declarations of love as a payday for the country’s chocolate industry. Women are traditionally expected to buy giri choko, (“obligation chocolates”), for male colleagues and the men closest to their hearts.
Men are supposed to reciprocate a month later on White Day, an event dreamed up by confectioners in the early 1980s.
That said, the age of romance is not entirely dead. Tokyo restaurants expect to be packed with couples this evening, as do the capital’s ubiquitous love hotels.
All the more reason, members of Kakuhido say, to banish Valentine’s Day from the cultural calendar.
Amid charges of misogyny — during previous demonstrations, its members railed against “housewives who decide Japan’s future” while their hapless husbands go out to work — the group mixes Marxist rhetoric with disdain for anything resembling romance.
“The blood-soaked conspiracy of Valentine’s Day, driven by the oppressive chocolate capitalists, has arrived once again,” it said on its Web site.
Kakuhido was founded in 2006 by Katsuhiro Furusawa, who turned to The Communist Manifesto for solace after being dumped by his girlfriend, according to the Spoon and Tamago Web site.
Furusawa — who appears in public in sunglasses and a mask — and his small band of supporters have since taken aim at events traditionally associated with romance in Japan, including Christmas Eve, when they demand that couples “self-criticize.”
Mark Schreiber, a media commentator who writes about social trends in Japan, said many Kakuhido are normal in every area of their lives except for their relationships with women.
“To a large extent it’s sour grapes,” Schreiber said. “They are self-admitted unattractive men who have tried, been found wanting and have given up. They are frustrated and left feeling excluded from holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day.”
Its members are far from representative of Japanese men, but Kakuhido reflects growing angst in Japan about the parlous state of carnal relations between the sexes. In a recent survey by Japan’s family planning association, 49.3 percent of the 3,000 respondents said they had not had sex in the previous month.
The apparent loss of interest in sex among married couples has frustrated government attempts to raise the birthrate amid predictions of sustained population decline in the coming decades.
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