Honmei choco11/3/2022 She was more than certain she would have forgotten it had Sachiko not mentioned it. Now that she thought about it, she'd come to notice that it is, in fact, about time for Valentine's day. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday."It's about time for Valentine's day, Nana-san.”- Sachiko said casually- “Have you made your chocolate yet?” If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, please head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. “People have started to rethink.”īryan Lufkin is BBC Capital's features writer. “With the gift-giving-back culture, it does add up,” Hidaka says. So can White Day survive if Japan’s Valentine’s Day continues its identity crisis? Perhaps both could be rebranded for younger generations – a holiday where you treat yourself, rather than getting trapped in an expensive cycle of gift-giving. Puratos’s Nagase says that both Valentine’s and White Day are becoming more casual and less rigidly defined by romance: “Chocolate lovers, not only women but men, spend a lot of money to buy premium chocolates for themselves.” Yamaguchi, meanwhile, thinks that the exotic, Western allure of Valentine’s Day is running dry for modern Japanese at this point, being replaced by more recent imported celebrations like Halloween. The invented tradition of females giving gifts on Valentine’s Day, followed by a month later by males reciprocating them on White Day, is just not holding in terms of sales figures, given the other economic and social shifts happening.” “Gender roles and gender identity are shifting in Japanese society, as elsewhere. After all, some estimates say that the average disposable income for a Japanese worker is the lowest it’s been in 30 years. Shigematsu thinks that people having less discretionary income has more to do with the holidays’ decline. Like White Day, the origin story behind Japanese Valentine’s Day is a bit fuzzy, but around 1970, department stores started encouraging girls to buy chocolates for boys, so they could show their interest without using words. “In a macho, male-dominated era, I guess that made sense,” she says. Hidaka says that it was designed to give women the chance to show their feelings. He says he doesn’t see any extra business or clients on White Day, as it’s less about going out to eat, and more about giving and receiving okaeshi. Mou Soejima is a chef and food coordinator based in Japan. Some people in Japan are sick of the burden and strange power dynamics at play with Valentine’s Day, especially in a context like the office. Might we be able to infer something about modern Japanese culture from all this? It's not a day on which you're supposed to do something extra for the sake of smooth relations at work.” Chocolatier Godiva took out an advert in 2018 that read: “Valentine's Day is supposed to be a day when you tell someone your pure feelings. “We sell a lot of chocolate and other ingredients to patisseries for making fresh cakes.”īut as the BBC reported last month, as robust as Japan’s chocolate sector is, the blowback against Valentine’s (and subsequently White Day) is apparent. White Day should be the third most important,” says Mayumi Nagase, a product manager for Puratos, a Tokyo-based chocolate and pastry company. “For us, the biggest impact event in business is Christmas – in Japan, a lot of people eat Christmas cake – followed by Valentine’s Day. Still, that’s over $1bn, and not small business. The same organisation estimates that Valentine’s Day spending in Japan dropped 3% last year. If there aren’t as many women giving out chocolates, there will be fewer men spending cash to thank them a month later. There’s a simple reason for the decline, the association says: Valentine’s Day spending in Japan is down, too. It’s expected to fall to 49 billion yen this year. Could it take White Day down with it?Īccording to the Japan Anniversary Association, an organisation that registers and studies the nation’s events and holidays, White Day spending last year fell about 10% from 2017, from 59bn yen (around $530m, £404m) to 53bn yen ($475m). The near-mandatory nature of Japanese Valentine’s Day has led to gift-giving burnout in recent years. People may be tired of the hassle that can come from this particular exchange of gifts, since it blurs the lines between romance and obligation.” “Obviously, the misunderstandings that can occur here through such exchanges are readily apparent.
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