Alone In Japan A Journey To The Future – Tom Feiling

But now women have more power, so they can refuse, and gradually sex in married life is becoming less important. As more women get a higher education, enter the workforce and earn salaries that give them financial independence from men, they too are turning to the market for emotional (and sometimes sexual) gratification.

In recent years, female empowerment has spawned host clubs, where a woman can pay a good-looking young man for the pleasure of his company. I had seen ads for these clubs on illuminated hoardings while walking the backstreets of Kabukichō in Tokyo. They featured blow-ups of androgenous man-boys with doe eyes, bleached hair and mid-Pacific names like Kaz, Sho and Taka. Hosts are expected to have a variety of skills, be it magic tricks or the gift of the gab, and some clubs have a dedicated stage where they dance or do comedy routines.

‘It is often a girl’s dream to assume the role of taking care of a man and to be loved back,’ says Yoko Tajima of Hōsei University. ‘But because of the way the family works here, their dreams are frustrated. Their fantasy, however, becomes a reality, albeit temporarily, at the host clubs.’12 The rise of the host club suggests that, as the appeal of the nuclear family wanes, people are reverting to the more fluid norms that governed sex lives in the past.

But there are still obstacles; with an evening of non-sexual entertainment and banter with a host costing upwards of ¥80,000 (£400), the pleasures of the host club are out of bounds for most women. As Maki put it, ‘The wage gap between men and women is still big, so their roles are determined.’

* The following morning, before leaving Tokushima to start my tour of Shikoku, I went to the nearest konbini for a regulation-issue coffee and pastry.

Tom Feiling is a writer and journalist. His celebrated books include The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World, Short Walks from Bogotá: Journeys in the New Colombia and The Island that Disappeared: Old Providence and the Making of the Western World. 1kitap1.com/en Tom Feiling ALONE IN JAPAN A Journey to the Future 1kitap1.com/en Contents Introduction: Going Back to My Future THE CITY 1. Tokyo: The Life Cycle of a Post-Growth Megacity 2. Overwork: The Life of a Salariman 3.

The Working Women of Otemachi 4. A Wedding and Four Funerals: On Being Single in Matsudo 5. ‘I Want to Do It but I Can’t Be Bothered’ 6. Super Dry: The Sex Lives of Solitary Singletons THE COUNTRY 7. Tokushima: A Provincial City on the Wane 8. The Only Way Is Down: On the Narrow Road to the Deep South 9.

‘Quality over Quantity’: Three Farmers in Miyazaki 10. Mitarai: ‘The Wild Boar Have Eaten all My Oranges!’ 11. On Mountain Roads: Hiroshima to Masuda THE FUTURE 12. Osaka: Museum of Fecundity 13. Robots in the Showroom, Immigrants in the Back Room 14. Mount Fear: A Last Trip to Aomori and Akita Conclusion: No Sex, No Kids, No Future Acknowledgements Notes Index 1kitap1.com/en Introduction: Going Back to My Future I’m not sure what it was that inspired me to go back to Japan.

Perhaps the idea came while I was looking through a box of old photos. Three in particular jumped out at me – I’m looking at them again now. They were taken in a photo booth in an amusement arcade in Kabukichō, the biggest night life district in Tokyo, in 1993. The first is a head shot of me, a 25- year-old English teacher coming to the end of a three-year, post-university stint in Japan, an expression of optimism and youthfulness on my face.

It is a real photo, but the other two are not. The second one shows what my face might look like if it were combined with that of a baboon. It’s an early example of digital photographic manipulation – not a very sophisticated one, admittedly, but funny all the same.

The third photo is marginally more convincing; it shows me as the software program imagined I would look as an old man. Looking at it 32 years later, it’s interesting how far off the mark it was.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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