Japan is one of the countries that I have known perhaps the one that has seemed more fascinating as a traveler, And here I convert the traveler into the being who doubts the environment. There is a Japan that goes out and there is a different Japan when it returns home and closes the door. The loneliness, understood, wraps the life of the Japanese. As if they still felt the shame that that mysterious civilization that no one colonized, Full of candidity and social precepts today, The world was shown teaching wild cruelty during the first half of the twentieth century. I don't know if that made them think that they couldn't get out of there or made them think that they can't let anyone between. “The Japanese do not know how to live with guilt. That is why they try to forget”, The journalist David Jiménez explains in his book "The Opium Diaries" that a Japanese friend tells him. Guilt and shame, in any case, They are two loneliness condiments.
In the country of rising sun everything is so mixed and hidden between overlapping tulle veils that everything you contemplate discover that it has another slight fabric to remove again to remove. Japanese society is the most educated and cordial I have met. As if all those millions of people had the physical inability to perform any act that could bother others. And then, When you are convinced of that, While you expect an orderly row in an impoluta Tokyo Metro station, You see the convoy arrive and you observe that There are exclusive cars for women's use. Then another veil falls and reaffirms that the absolute does not exist, Even in Japan, where thank you when they tell you no. Because those compartments only for females serve to avoid those called ‘chikan’, term that defines stalkers who use public transport when it is crowded to hand and scrub the body of ladies and ladies.
They're called ‘chikan’, term that defines stalkers who use public transport when it is crowded to hand and scrub the body of ladies and ladies
The "culture" of sex in Japan is centenary. His religion, Shintoism, He lacks pejorative or guilty precepts about his practice. Therefore, Sexuality has been part of Japanese society for centuries without the inconveniences of taboos. But, The Japanese live sex after a privacy curtain, which generates a lot of strange paraphilias that are performed in intimacy. Sex has begun to become for many a matter of one more than two. “Many Japanese are no longer interested in having sex with their partners. Especially in marriages happens that after having a child the couple stops sleeping together. They prefer to masturbate consuming porn or, The men, They go to the karaokes that many are brothels ", They told us in October 2024 A couple of friends in Tokyo. She Japanese, He Italian. Two worlds that, We understood, They had their own balances.
“When I was face to face with a female member, it was not uncommon for my feelings to turn eighty degrees and, instead of feeling attracted to her, I will notice that I was invaded by a strange repulsion ", writes Natsume S?Seki in his novel “Kokoro”. There is a very fun documentary in Netflix that I've seen in Bangkok, “Risque Business Japan”, where Koreans go to Japan to discover how their neighbors live sexuality. Koreans hallucinate with the nebula that surrounds the passions of Japanese society.
The data confirms in any case that perception. A study published at the beginning of 2024 of the company based on Tokio Raison to be, in which they participated 4000 Japanese married people, He concluded that the 44% of the married do not have any sexual relationship. Figures that contrasted with a 50% Of those same respondents who described their marriages as good or very good. For a good part of the Japanese it seems that sex and love are two diverse spheres of marriage. Japanese seems to find a certain relief in solitude.
The 44% of the married do not have any sexual relationship. Figures that contrasted with a 50% Of those same respondents who described their marriages as good or very good
In March of 2018, Our first morning in Tokyo we entered a supermarket to buy some water for what we knew it would be a long day to kick its streets. We were surprised to look at the shelves and refrigerators that There were many plasticized packages with a banana, An apple, A chicken thigh ... They were products that were already sold by units. We had never seen something similar.
"Why do we all stay so alone? I. What need is there? There are so many people in this world who expect, each and every one of them, Something of others, and that, however, The others are isolated so much. What? Is the planet of the loneliness of human beings nourish to continue rotating?”, Writes Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in his work “Sputnik, my love".
A January article 2020 of the BBC entitled "The rise of super lonely culture in Japan" speaks of a custom that is called Benjo Meshi, What does lunch mean in the bathroom. Some Japanese, Before the blush and stigma that involves lacking friends in study or work centers, They decide to lock themselves in the bathroom and eat sitting in the cup of the toilet. Some surveys point out that five percent of the Japanese admit having made some lunch hidden in the toilet.
Nor has anything notable. I remember entering the public bathrooms of the Shibuya station, In Tokyo, through which more than 3,5 millions of people a day, and find them cleaner than those of many private houses in which I have been. “The Japanese feels ashamed to dirty a common space, They teach us from children ”, Hayato told me, A Japanese who told him with whom he played tennis.
Ohrisama, which means "a person" or "party party". It has become a new fashion of young people who go out to eat alone, They leave camping without friends, Or they spend a fun evening singing in individual karaoke rooms
Loneliness in Japan has made an epidemic that has specific ailments. Another of them is called Ohitorisama, which means "a person" or "party party". It has become a new fashion of young people who go out to eat alone, They leave camping without friends, Or they spend a fun evening singing in individual karaoke rooms. I don't think practice is bad. Maybe we should all exercise loneliness. Knowing how to be first is only the best way to be well in company later. At least, Avoid the doubt of whether he falls asleep at home with a lump to the side to avoid that at Christmas they will be placed at the table of the nephews.
But loneliness can also be a ailment that grabs the chest like the flu of the beginning of autumn. The hikikomori It is a psychopathological phenomenon that affects hundreds of thousands of Japanese living without having social contact with anyone. They are people who hide in their hairs so that no one comes to import them with a good morning to answer. An article by ‘Japan Times’ of the 1 April 2023 states that there are almost 1,5 Millions of Japanese, which is a 2% of the total population, that suffer from that mental ailment that prevents them from relating to others. "And since then I live there, without having worked for once, What a piece of gandul! (…) Said in the words of now, It would be a hikikomori ", The Japanese Hiroko Oyamada writes in her work ‘Hole’.
Japan resembles being the experiment of a more advanced society than the rest. A particular universe, genuine, With its pathogens inside. There are not so many places like this in the globe.
But, There is also a facade, A society hidden with serious wounds to cure. “Many Japanese soldiers were photographed by killing, While they laughed. They sent the photos to their house, to his parents and his brothers, To illustrate their warrior feats at the service of the homeland ", Javier Reverte recalls in his book "A Chinese summer", About the massacre that Japanese troops performed in the Chinese city of Nanking.
The figures of what happened are difficult to digest. “A nanking They died killed, in seven weeks, Bayonetazos, Burned live with gasoline, shots in the neck, slaughter, decapitation and executions, more than 300.000 People, of them 280.000 No combatants. Nearly 80.000 women, Between eleven and eighty years, They were raped, And most of them later murdered ", Write Reverte.
Nearly 80.000 women, Between eleven and eighty years, They were raped, and most of them killed later
That is in the Japanese psyche. That guilt, That need to find social harmony to avoid falling to the precipice of low instincts. And it works. “I left a good tablet on a train in Japan and called to see if they had found it. A week later when I returned to Tokyo I was waiting for me at the hotel I indicated ”, Carlos told me, A Mexican friend.
When I have gone to Japan I am sure that I can give the waiter my wallet so that he is charged without any risk. It is not left tip in Japan, is frowned upon, It would be like dishonoring the professional who already charges for offering his best service. The tip would question that, The honesty of commitment.
And then there is the other, The shadow, What is swept down the bed, The cry and blow after the curtain. The high number of violence in homes, Latent racism, Sick sexuality ...
En Bangkok, where I live, There is a huge Japanese colony. They usually live in certain areas of the city, occupying condominiums that become homeland, And then they have their entertainment areas. I live near the Pong area, The first large brothel neighborhood in the city. It is still a massage zone, Karaokes and prostitutes. A neighboring friend who carries 15 years living here told me: “If you wanted to enter any of those clubs they would not leave you. They are for Japanese and just want Japanese to enter. They like their own perversions”.
Yet, nevertheless, I always feel that there is something innocent in this admirable people, of naif, of people who do not understand the rules of the rest of the world with their changals and spells. Rudyard Kipling says in his book "Trip to Japan" that "A Japanese will be dishonest just to save discomfort. In this sense, It's like a child ".
And me, Among all those layers that I am not able to unveil, I feel that I am fascinated to walk through Tokyo, At any time, In any circumstance, contemplating the respect they have for the environment, His thunderous voice in the taverns, The Metro Silence, The mixture between the classic and the still invented, His morbid idolatry for certain figures and comics, The delicacy with which they touch everything, His loneliness.
