I watched this documentary on Youtube, and it is about the social status of young adults in Japan.
This is not a subject that is in my habitual repertoire… Nonetheless, it is important and I had to write something. I am really affected and saddened… not by the video, but by the resulting reflection.
I am shocked. Just watch the first 12 minutes… you’ll understand.
Never before today has there been such a clear separation of the sexes. Young men play video games. Young women hang out together. The mingling of sexes is not happening.
What is wrong with this situation? Families are disappearing. The birth rate is plummeting.
Japanese young women pay for nonsexual boyfriend experiences, just to take a walk in the park and hold hands. Japanese young men are paying for nonsexual girlfriend experiences just to get a hug and put their heads on a woman’s lap and talk.
The height of loneliness is illustrated by the new phenomenon of “solo weddings” for single Japanese women.
This documentary forces a reflection on our collective survival and the well-being of our progeny.
The future of our children, their future happiness, will not be found in the mastery of technological tools and in deep knowledge of sciences; they will find it in a balanced education that gives them the tool to create and take care of satisfying, meaningful and resilient human relations.
It’s very tempting to fall into judgment… but we need to look at ourselves first. In 2022, in Canada, there is a new generation of young women in their early twenties who find that boys their age are immature kids that play video games all day, and who spend most of their lives in the digital world of Instagram and Tik Tok. Young adults who enjoy in the flesh human connexions are uncommon.
I dream that my son becomes a mature young man, able to relate to women in a balanced and respectful manner and enjoy their company in the real world. This idea might be more important to his well-being than getting a good job or a university degree.
Japan is surely full of very intelligent, qualified Japanese men with nice university degrees and great jobs who lose all their senses in front of a woman and will pay 100$/hr to have their head patted in a booth by a platonic escort.
It worries me so much that I picked a shocking title.
To survive, a species must reproduce.
I am sorry.
Martin Pham Dinh 