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Interesting news about the trend of young men in Japan. Hahahahaha, check it out!



Japan's young men seek a new path: "By Chico Harlan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, October 24, 2010; 10:35 PM

TOKYO - Something is happening to Japan's young men. Compared with the generation that came before, they are less optimistic, less ambitious and less willing to take risks."

They are less likely to own a car, want a car, or drive fast if they get a car. They are less likely to pursue sex on the first date - or the third. They are, in general, less likely to spend money. They are more likely to spend money on cosmetics.

Japan's young men mystify their girlfriends and their bosses. They confound the advertisers who aim products at them. They've been scrutinized and categorized by social commentators, marketing consultants and the government. And they unnerve just about everybody who makes long-term projections about Japan's flagging birthrate and fading economy. Japan will grow or falter, economists and sociologists say, upon the shoulders of these mild, frugal, sweet-mannered men.

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."