Rise of the Japanese metrosexuals « Gyrovague's Raves

Rise of the Japanese metrosexuals

Posted by gyrovague on October 27, 2010 · Leave a Comment

By Joshua Keating

Chico Harlan’s long Washington Post trend piece on Japan’s "herbivores" — young men who prefer shopping and hanging out with friends to working 14 hour days before getting blackout drunk — is the latest entry in the increasingly popular genre of Japanese decline-watch stories in the U.S. media:

To hear the analysts who study them tell it, Japanese men ages 20 to 34 are staging the most curious of rebellions, rejecting the 70-hour workweeks and purchase-for-status ethos that typified the 1980s economic boom. As the latest class of college graduates struggles to find jobs, a growing number of experts are detecting a problem even broader than unemployment: They see a generation of men who don’t know what they want.

Japan earned its fortune a generation ago through the power of office warriors, the so-called salarymen who devoted their careers to one company. They wore dark suits; they joined for rowdy after-hours booze fests with co-workers; they often saw little of their families. These are the fathers of Japan’s young men.

But among business leaders and officials, there is a growing understanding that the earlier work-for-fulfillment pattern has broken down. The economy’s roar turned into a yawn. Concern about Japan’s future replaced giddy national pride. As a result, this generation has lost "the willingness to sacrifice for the company," said Jeff Kingston, author of the recently published book "Contemporary Japan."

Kingston added: "And now as Japan begins to unravel in a sense, young people realize that the previous paradigm doesn’t work. But they aren’t sure what comes next. They’ve seen what amounts to a betrayal in Japan."

Rise of the Japanese metrosexuals « Gyrovague's Raves