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Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

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Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#111

Post by johnea »

I thought it was a really entertaining article!

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.

The article is obviously written for young female readers, this is the author's perspective, and all of the impressions, reactions and comments are from females.

So here's something a young womaan isn'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-)

In most cases this is probably subconscous. It'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.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#113

Post by mock-possum »

blown_gasket wrote: post #7
scubbo wrote: post #4

> it was kind of rude to send a text to people while they are probably sleeping Not the point of the article, but this is a personal bugbear of mine - no it wasn't. Text-based communication is asynchronous. It'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't immediately reply), but it's not rude to send the message in the first…

I hold the opposite opinion to most of this. Text messaging, yes is asynchronous - but you don't know what the settings of the persons device are. They could have forgotten or not have quite hours set and now it is very much a synchronous notification even if it's not synchronous communication. Sending delayed - again things happen. I would rather send a delayed message when I am in full control of the situation rath…

Yeah but that assumes you know better than your recipient whether they should like to know that you’ve texted them. That’s a bad habit to get into.

Let people manage the settings on their own devices - whether they’ve forgotten to set their quiet hours is not your concern. Trust other people to take care of their own responsibilities. If they mess up, they deal with the consequences - it’s not your problem. If they feel the need to answer your text immediately when for you it wasn’t necessary, let them choose for themselves. Don’t presume to take that choice away from them.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#114

Post by mock-possum »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #13

> In Western culture, if someone suddenly and unexpectedly confessed this to you so quickly you would start running, I think. As a Chinese I can't wrap my head around the concept of running away because someone loves you. So to enter a relationship with someone you have to not love them while still loving them...?! Do western people all have fear of commitment? I'm just glad I'm married now (to a Chinese girl) and no…

two people grow to love one another together - it’s a simultaneous process. A sudden / unexpected confession implies that feelings are one-sided. The two immediate responses would be “but I don’t love you,” or “how could you love me, you don’t know really know me.”

To enter a relationship with someone, you have to like what you’ve seen of them, enough so that you’re willing to work together to see what could be between you. Again, it takes two willing participants. If one of you falls for the other faster, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but along the lines of those responses I gave as examples above, the expectation is that when one confesses the other is ready for it.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#115

Post by makeitdouble »

midoridensha wrote: post #104
makeitdouble wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still putting the burden on the receipient to setup a system that filters out emergencies and non emergencies, and who they want messages from at what time, potentialy switching things on and off as their schedule changes etc. Basicaly they're still spending time and effort so you don't have to.

I don't know about you, but for me spending that time and effort is a requirement , and not just because of friends or relatives sending me text messages when I'm asleep. If I don't set up do-not-disturb, I'll get woken up by various automated messages and alerts from different apps, not actual humans: maybe Amazon sends me an alert about something that's on sale, maybe a news app sends a notification about a new sto…

My work alerts are very granually defined.

On Personal alerts though I gave up the granular filtering a long time ago, real people in my contact list all go through without any specific rules, and I'll actually tell people to stop sending me links to facebook rants in the middle of the night.

Some of the companies and automated services have special rules (my bank, Google account alerts etc.) to let notifications through, but by default I won't allow any service to have notification bells, mail and SMS are silent as well.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#116

Post by mock-possum »

331c8c71 wrote: post #39
FooBarWidget wrote: post #13

> In Western culture, if someone suddenly and unexpectedly confessed this to you so quickly you would start running, I think. As a Chinese I can't wrap my head around the concept of running away because someone loves you. So to enter a relationship with someone you have to not love them while still loving them...?! Do western people all have fear of commitment? I'm just glad I'm married now (to a Chinese girl) and no…

> So to enter a relationship with someone you have to not love them while still loving them...? It's weird and even offending to hear "I love you" (said seriously) from a person who doesn't know you well. My take is that you can say you are _in_ love and this may sound fine if delivered right. Still, better be sure that there is at least some mutual sympathy. Also highly language-specific I guess. EDIT: I personally…

You could also say you’re falling in love with them - that’s the beginning of the process, that’s not quite full on “I love you.” “I’m falling for you” or “I’ve been having a crush on you” are also sort of ‘intro’s to full-blown love.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#117

Post by sigg3 »

totallywrong wrote: post #90
linguae wrote: post #3

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…

Does that mean nothing ever happens until you've agreed to a serious relationship? I do not see that refreshing or better in any way than our dating style.

Our dating style did have this kind of communication too, in declaring one's intentions. Either we've forgotten, discarded it or could be the result of a more nomadic lifestyle. I'm not a historian. I'm also from Norway, but I think this goes for most of Europe. However, grain of salt.

If a man declared that his efforts towards a girl were an intention to get married, and subsequently reneged without good cause, the local community would deem him untrustworthy. This could make him unfit for marriage but also for employment. So not declaring one's intention if pressed was suspect.

My grandmother did the housewife school to make sure she was going to be a good wife, which stems from this kind of worrying about public rejection. People didn't move around so much so your local community's estimation of you was important.

As for the Japanese practice, the country was essentially "locked up" culturally until the 2nd world war so I'm not surprised old practices are still remembered. (Again, not a historian.)

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#118

Post by esafak »

crazygringo wrote: post #50

This feels very similar to namorar in Brazilian culture, which is a verb that is basically means "become/be an exclusive couple". If you've started going on dates, then at some point someone will ask the other to namorar . It's a very explicit ask, e.g. "let's be boyfriend/girlfriend". While in the US it's not unusual to just organically become a couple and never actually discuss it "officially", the official ask is…

sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_steady

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#119

Post by midoridensha »

makeitdouble wrote: post #115
midoridensha wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but for me spending that time and effort is a requirement , and not just because of friends or relatives sending me text messages when I'm asleep. If I don't set up do-not-disturb, I'll get woken up by various automated messages and alerts from different apps, not actual humans: maybe Amazon sends me an alert about something that's on sale, maybe a news app sends a notification about a new sto…

My work alerts are very granually defined. On Personal alerts though I gave up the granular filtering a long time ago, real people in my contact list all go through without any specific rules, and I'll actually tell people to stop sending me links to facebook rants in the middle of the night. Some of the companies and automated services have special rules (my bank, Google account alerts etc.) to let notifications thr…

>real people in my contact list all go through without any specific rules, and I'll actually tell people to stop sending me links to facebook rants in the middle of the night.

Instead of expecting them to guess your waking hours, you could just set your DND to not alarm during those hours. If I didn't do that, I'd be frequently woken by things like Facebook Messenger message alerts.

Re: Kokuhaku: Japan’s Love Confessing Culture (2013)

#120

Post by solardev »

lmm wrote: post #102
totallywrong wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean nothing ever happens until you've agreed to a serious relationship? I do not see that refreshing or better in any way than our dating style.

> Does that mean nothing ever happens until you've agreed to a serious relationship? You go on dates. Among people looking for a serious relationship, many women won't have sex - may not even kiss - if you haven't agreed to a serious relationship. Of course hookups exist, but looking for a hookup is a more or less separate activity from looking for a relationship, and happens in different spaces with (largely) differ…

How do you know if you want to be in a relationship with someone without having sex with them first?
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