Disclaimer: reading this article will not transform you into an actual jujitsu master.
Still here? Great! Reading ahead will not in fact make you a real-life, dagger-wielding, jujitsu pro, but it will tell you whether Mami, a fifteen year old Japanese girl of my acquaintance, would call you one, and that’s easily as good, right? Ok, so she’d technically be talking about the word ‘juujitsu’ (充実, juujitsu, meaning enrichment or fulfillment), but given the words’ near-homonymity, let’s imagine for one second that she’s talking about the martial art.
It’s really quite easy to discover whether or not you do ‘real jujitsu’ in Mami’s eyes: basically, are you in a relationship? Yes? Congratulations – you’re doing real jujitsu! In fact, you’ve been doing it ever since that awkward moment when you accidentally called her your ‘girlfriend’ and she didn’t dispute it, or run screaming.
The moment you enter a relationship you begin the life of ‘real jujitsu’, abbreviated to ‘riaju’, or so say most young Japanese people. I know ‘most’ sounds like a bold claim, so for those of you who are all about stats, let this slow your rising eyebrow: a survey listed on www.acronyms.com (‘the web’s largest resource for acronyms and abbreviations’, no less) claims that ‘riaju’ was the most popular word among Japanese teenagers in 2011, used to mean ‘people who enjoy a fulfilling life’. The example they use? ‘I got a girlfriend, I’m gonna be enjoying [a] fulfilling life.’
The implication is that people in relationships are making the most of life and having great ones at that – ‘LML-ing’ as kids back in the UK might have said a couple of years ago. Poor singletons, on the other hand, are apparently missing something major and not making the most of things; not being riajus at all. Mami (not Tofugu’s Mami), the girl who introduced me to the word riaju, made this point in just a couple of words of very broken English.
‘You,’ she said, pointing at me, ‘riaju’; a huge grin illuminated her face.
‘Me,’ she continued, pointing to herself with an exaggerated and very kawaiii pout, ‘solo-jo.’
She left me in no doubt that the status of riaju was one to be envied and emulated, and that of solo-jo something to be bemoaned and avoided.
My Japanese isn’t yet quite advanced enough to ask Mami whether this might possibly be a false dichotomy and an oversimplification of Japanese romantic life. But I have no reason to think her views are atypical of girls her age; indeed I have met and taught a large number and all seemed to share Mami’s monochromatic vision of relationships and happiness. There seems a tendency for Japanese young people to paint coupledom and singledom as opposing ends on a spectrum of happiness, rather than considering the varying levels of happiness and fulfillment that either status can bring. Thus a person in an unhappy relationship is still assumed happier than a single person; it is the status of ‘relationship’ which brings happiness, apparently, rather than a relationship’s specific qualities or lack thereof.
This makes it all the more strange that singledom is increasingly common among young people in Japan. The high proportion of young Japanese people who are single has recently hit the press. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research reported in 2011 that 49% of Japanese women aged 18-24 were single, and that 61% of unmarried men of the same age were single. Since then journalists have apparently competed to pen alarmist commentaries, a recent Guardian headline even asking its readers: ‘Why Have Young People in Japan Stopped Having Sex?’ Yes, apparently young people in Japan have abandoned this most ancient of pastimes (although it seems no-one has remembered to inform the still-thriving love hotel industry, which continues to provide accommodation by the hour in most corners of the capital).
So despite the oversimplification involved in ‘riaju’-status (what, teenagers seeing the world in naively black-and-white terms? Never!), its prevalence does at least counteract the sensationalist notion that the Japanese do not aspire to relationships.
When reading about Japan, it’s hard to miss the tendency among Western journalists to present the country as alien and faintly ridiculous. I’m lucky enough to have lived in Japan for nearly two months now (with many more to come). I’ve yet to see the used-underwear vending machines I was led to expect, or vast hordes of gothic lolitas; thank God I didn’t come to Japan to see these things the papers assured me were the norm. The alleged paucity of both sex and romance is most definitely another Western overreaction and does not reflect the reality in Japan.
Indeed, far less commonly cited is the statistic, recorded in the very same survey, showing that 90% of Japanese singletons between 18-24 intend ultimately to partner up and marry. Likewise the admiration of ‘riajus’ suggests that the statistically undeniable prevalence of singledom is not some strange cultural aversion to relationships. Relationships are clearly something to which the Japanese youth aspire as an integral part of their future happiness.
So, as anyone who has lived in or even visited the country will find completely unsurprising, Japan is not a society overrun with asexuals, and teenagers’ admiration of ‘riajus’ makes this very clear. The young clearly desire relationships, but do seem to be embarking on them later in life.
Why then might this be? One Western perception of Japanese culture that does generally hold true is the cripplingly long working day to which the Japanese workforce subjects itself. Especially for women, a relationship (which might lead ultimately to marriage and children) can be the first step away from a career and financial independence. With working hours as long as they are, a working parent is unlikely to have much time to speak of at home to care for children and run the house; if one parent is hardly ever there, it does seem practical for the other always to be, and over 70% of Japanese married women are full-time housewives.
For men too there are practical reasons for delaying serious relationships. A rising cost of living and the stress of the long working hours (another consequence of which is the tragically high suicide rate among Japanese men of working age) mean that the idea of marriage and mortgage, let alone kids, is understandably not high on the agenda for many young Japanese salarymen.
So there are practical reasons which go some way to explaining the prevalence of singledom rather than serious relationships among Japanese young people (and the statistics only refer to exclusive relationships, not sex, despite being bandied around left, right and centre to evidence Japan’s apparent celibacy). These reasons don’t mean that Japanese people have stopped having sex, or that people in Japan have somehow collectively decided that relationships aren’t for them, but rather than some Japanese people are delaying relationships. Sadly, ‘Some Japanese People are Waiting a Little Before Having Serious Relationships’ isn’t quite as dramatic as commentators would like, and isn’t printed.
Why spend time thinking about a slang word used by Japanese teenagers; what might we learn from their idea of ‘real jujitsu’? Picking apart the idea of real jujitsu we see that relationships are not something unanimously shunned in Japan: Japanese men and women do not live in some asexual cloud, or derive their pleasure from manga and virtual-reality partners rather than, y’know, actual people. Relationships are still very much aspired towards, and celebrated: if you’re in one you’re thought of by millions as a riaju/ real jujitsu* (what could be cooler?!) and if you’re not? 頑張って下さい! Ganbatte kudasai: good luck, go for it!
The teenagers right now cooing over riajus will in a few years be the ‘young people’ found by some survey or other to be totally apathetic towards sex and relationships, but we’ll be ready for that. ‘Those ones,’ we’ll say, ‘those 18-24 year-olds? Of course they haven’t abandoned the idea of relationships: ask them about riaju,’ and we will laugh.
*Obviously ‘jujitsu’ is a martial art rather than a title, and so it doesn’t make sense to call someone ‘a jujuitsu’. However, given that in this case ‘real jujitsu’ is a contraction of ‘riaju’, and riaju is applied as a label (as in ‘you are a riaju’) it makes sense in this context to refer to someone as a ‘real jujitsu’.
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