Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

As an American who spends a lot of time traveling to Japan and who had experience living there (and who has dreams of moving back there once I pay off my student loans), I’ve done this type of confession twice; it’s quite different from the ambiguity that often occurs with forming relationships in America where people don’t know exactly where they stand. While it doesn’t remove all ambiguity (does she like me? Why is she holding my arm?), I like the being able to clearly articulate my feelings, and I also like the clear understanding from both parties not to behave like a couple until we mutually agree to become a couple. I generally find this aspect of Japanese dating culture remarkably refreshing compared to America.

This feels very similar to <i>namorar</i> in Brazilian culture, which is a verb that is basically means &quot;become&#x2F;be an exclusive couple&quot;.<p>If you&#x27;ve started going on dates, then at some point someone will ask the other to <i>namorar</i>. It&#x27;s a very explicit ask, e.g. &quot;let&#x27;s be boyfriend&#x2F;girlfriend&quot;.<p>While in the US it&#x27;s not unusual to just organically become a couple and never actually discuss it &quot;officially&quot;, the official ask is usually a really meaningful event in a relationship in Brazil. Technically it means that hooking up with someone else before it wasn&#x27;t cheating, but afterwards it definitely is.<p>But <i>namorar</i> is definitely not &quot;love&quot;. And you&#x27;d never declare it <i>before</i> going on a first date. Usually it would be after several weeks&#x2F;months of dating, depending on how serious you felt about each other.

&gt; <i>Is it like or is it love?</i><p>It&#x27;s definitely just like.<p>Sure, we say &quot;I loved that donut&quot; or &quot;I love her personality!&quot; but you&#x27;d never just straight-up say &quot;I love you&quot; with that meaning because it would be completely misunderstood.<p>So this whole article seems premised on a mistranslation that the author brings up but never actually admits.

I read carefully the first half of the article then scanned the rest, so I may have missed it; it didn&#x27;t seem to also mention &quot;The moon is beautiful, isn&#x27;t it?&quot;, which is a poetic way of saying I love you as well:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tsuki.world&#x2F;world&#x2F;the-moon-is-beautiful-isnt-it" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tsuki.world&#x2F;world&#x2F;the-moon-is-beautiful-isnt-it</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wikihow.com&#x2F;The-Moon-Is-Beautiful-Isn%27t-It" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wikihow.com&#x2F;The-Moon-Is-Beautiful-Isn%27t-It</a>

I&#x27;m just shocked they didn&#x27;t use the Shinjuku edition &quot;LOVE&quot; sculpture. Missed opportunity!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;JGE9smpyCJte7p5z8" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;JGE9smpyCJte7p5z8</a>

I find it really lame that this article includes a long list of &quot;fails&quot; instead of successful examples.

I thought it was a really entertaining article!<p>In contrast to a big difference from US culture, I found most of the examples to be pretty much the same kind of stuff that happens here.<p>The article is obviously written for young female readers, this is the author&#x27;s perspective, and all of the impressions, reactions and comments are from females.<p>So here&#x27;s something a young womaan isn&#x27;t typically going to notice: depending on whether the guy looks more like a j-pop idol, or the sterotype of the ugly guy that the last girl at the gokon gets stuck with; whatever words are said will be interpreted to give the opposite responce to the two otokos 8-)<p>In most cases this is probably subconscous. It&#x27;s also not at all unique to Japan. Although in Japanese culture this can easily be included in 面子を立て, or saving face.

Btw, &quot;confession&quot; is a mistranslation of kokuhaku and I&#x27;m pretty sure it actually means &quot;declaration&quot;.

&gt; it was kind of rude to send a text to people while they are probably sleeping<p>Not the point of the article, but this is a personal bugbear of mine - no it wasn&#x27;t. Text-based communication is asynchronous. It&#x27;s rude to _expect_ that someone is present and available if you message them out of the blue (or, rather - rude to get upset if they don&#x27;t immediately reply), but it&#x27;s not rude to send the message in the first place. Particularly - it is never correct to send a Delayed Message on Slack &quot;because it&#x27;s the evening&#x2F;weekend and I don&#x27;t want to bother them&quot;. The four possible outcomes are:<p>* You send delayed; they could have benefitted from the information earlier (e.g. there&#x27;s an outage overnight and your delayed message contained helpful information) -&gt; your delay had a negative effect<p>* You send delayed; they read the message when they come online again during business hours -&gt; your delayed message had no impact (assuming you correctly guessed their business hours)<p>The only situation where &quot;sending delayed&quot; has a positive impact is where there is a culture whereby a message _must_ be replied to at the time it&#x27;s sent. In such a situation, you need to fix that broken culture rather than working around it with delay-hacks.

&gt; I would like to have a relationship with you with the objective of an eventual marriage<p>Probably saves a lot of time. On the other hand, Japan&#x27;s population is declining.<p>&gt; Can you financially support me and my parents<p>Seems pretty honest, and maybe good to know up front.<p>&gt; He suddenly showed me his pay slip<p>See above.

I know the grass seems always greener on the other side and this culture has its own set of problems but I still think I would prefer this over what the west has to offer in the dating market. I absolutely hate the ambiguity of the relationship in the west, “Dating? I’m not sure, we have only started sleeping together a month ago. They might still be seeing other people.” And yes, not everywhere is like this but around my parts, seeking a serious relationship is a recipe for disaster and not something worth spending any sort of asset for.

&gt; In Western culture, if someone suddenly and unexpectedly confessed this to you so quickly you would start running, I think.<p>As a Chinese I can&#x27;t wrap my head around the concept of running away because someone loves you. So to enter a relationship with someone you have to <i>not</i> love them while still loving them...?! Do western people all have fear of commitment?<p>I&#x27;m just glad I&#x27;m married now (to a Chinese girl) and not having to deal with this mess.

Is this culture exported to overseas via drama, manga, and anime? Love is obviously a popular theme for story.