Oh, young love! Famed baseball pitcher Darvish Yu — age 20 — and entertainment production company employee/actress Saeko — age 20 — have decided to get married! In an era where youth take their pretty time to stagger aimlessly towards the responsibilities of adulthood, there is something refreshing about a couple with their whole lives ahead of them deciding to throw future possibility to the wind and settle down at such an early age. And for a professional ball player, who can have scores of different women every night, to show such adult devotion to a single woman without even taking a few years to taste the crate-loads of free fruit his athletic prowess ensures! The purity of their endeavor will surely make them role models for an entire generation.

Oh, I should also mention that Saeko is pregnant with Darvish’s baby.

(I had my suspicions that he had “hit a home run” after seeing his sexy shirtless photo on cover of an•an‘s Sex issue last month, but their public announcement of a dekichatta kekkon ended all rampant non-speculation about his virginity.)

If the Darvish-Saeko shotgun wedding sounds like a familiar story, you are probably thinking of the post-conception marriage announcement of Morning Musume’s enfant infantile Tsuji Nozomi (age 20) and some guy who dresses up in Ultraman costumes as a career (age 26). While it’d be fun to call this unplanned pregnancy rodeo a “trend,” the preggers –> wedding bells narrative also explains the past marriages of stars Amuro Namie, Shiina Ringo, Tsuchiya Anna, and Ishiguro Aya (also from Morning Musume). I know Japan is a unique country — with the totally unprecedented “four distinct seasons” and all — but as in the rest of the world, unplanned pregnancy is often caused by unprotected sex. Even the most talented celebrities succumb to reproductive forces.

I certainly do not advocate drawing larger conclusions about the state of sexual attitudes in Japan from these twenty-year old stars. Without even glancing at current statistics, American teenage pregnancy rates must dwarf anything seen in Japan. (And are Britney Spears’ model marriage to what’s-his-name and Nicole Richie’s pregnancy with the guy from that terrible band really so different?) Abortions have been decreasing in Japan. And the birth rate and frequency of sex rate are amongst the lowest in the world.

Somebody made the hilariously naïve mistake of asking Tsuji and the finance at the press-conference why they didn’t think about using contraception. I guess the reporter did not know that Japan is the one of the only countries on Earth where condom use declined in the 1990s. More famously, Japan only legalized the birth control pill in 1999, despite decades of feminist protest. Although safely used in dozens of other countries since the 1960s, Japanese male lawmakers and bureaucrats knew something that others had not considered: Bitches don’t deserve control over their own reproductive systems, because they would just go out and prove themselves to be dirty ho’s. Or maybe, it was the formidable oligopoly power of the condom lobby and the neighborhood abortionists. Whatever the case, the Gov only decided to give the Lesser Gender the Pill once the Feminazis started asking too many questions about the selfless and speedy efforts to legalize Viagra — a harmless recreational drug with mild side-effects like death.

But the bonered-up Old Patriarchs still managed to win the larger war, since the Japanese public is so massively uninformed about the Pill’s safety that barely anyone uses it. According to this, 70% of Japanese women would never even consider trying oral contraceptives, and I don’t blame them: If rumors are to believed, this demon medicine makes you permanently infertile, distorts your emotions, and screws up your natural cycles. Also, taking the pill is “kinda slutty” — like a giant billboard announcing the desire for daily sex that no one else can see. These arguments are neither new or unique, but they’ve settled in for the long run.

So no Pill and not much condom use among kids is going to lead to some babies. Any sort of criticism of dekichatta kekkon (できちゃった結婚, something like “Oops, We Conceived” Marriage) will fall automatically into worthless pronouncements on sexual morality, and in Japan, the mainstream sentiment seems to be one of snickering mockery rather than outrage. Maybe some crusty old men like Wada Akiko will go out of their way to say that Nozomi was “irresponsible,” but Nozomi can just answer back, Pro-Life, y’all, in her 12-year old baby-doll demeanor. Behind the scenes, I am sure the girls’ management companies are not so happy about their female stars’ immediate drop in future earning potential, but serves them right for not forcing temporary sterilization as part of their indentured servitude to the media-entertainment complex.

Otherwise, what are the drawbacks of a shotgun marrying nation? Look at the cute conservatism displayed so far: “I am pregnant, so we must properly get married.” Sure, most of these celebrities get properly divorced less than a year later (Shiina, Tsuchiya; Amuro actually gave it a few years), but as they say, trying and failing is better than not trying at all. And really, can you blame someone for not liking at 23 what they loved at 20? I forget the statistic, but maybe 70% of college juniors who get that awesome tattoo of a wrist watch pointing towards 4:20 regret it later in life.

Most importantly, no one in Japan is going to come out against this kind of teenage shotgun wedding spree, because the couples are serving the goals of the state. With adults waiting too long to get married, the birth rate has reached a critical low. Whether the actual marriage works out or not, these celebrities are taking up the slack to make sure someone will be around in the blazing hot future to pay for their nenkin retirement funds. The best thing that could happen to Japan right now is if 20 year-old boys from Wakkanai to Yonaguni repeatedly impregnate their 18 year-old girlfriends. Mass weddings? No problem: Prime Minister Abe can get us a great rate with the Moonies. Condoms or ovary-destroying Pills are unpatriotic, creating barriers between the forces of national replication.

So, who’s irresponsible now, Wada Akiko?

I have been thinking about breasts a lot these days. No, not in a sexual way.

This all started with Hoshino Aki — a horribly annoying ex-young woman who has become a variety TV regular solely because of her enormous breasts. I wrote an entire column for OK Fred on the topic, so I don’t want to explicate my tirade here. But that essay did not placate me. Now I can’t be so surprised that a no-talent, nobody gravia idol had a boob job (the unconvinced can check the not-so-old picture here), but I am royally annoyed that her handlers make such a big deal about her “perfect” breasts and no one bats an eye.

These days, the same thing is happening with the marketing of Fukada Kyoko. In some weird twist of fate, I actually met her back in 1998 via my Kodansha internship. All I remember is that she had terrible skin as a youth, but she has grown out of this in recent years. She also, apparently, grew H-cup-sized breasts while no one was watching. Japanese gossip sites are suddenly required to describe her as “H-cup Fukada Kyoko.” In the past, she had just been an actress with a storied sex life. Now she is cup-coded.

Starting any day now, she will be seen each week in the subtly-titled Fuji TV drama Mountain Girl, Wall Girl 「山おんな壁おんあ」. Her mysteriously new H-sized breasts won themselves a starring role as the mountains in “mountain girl.” Just in case you did not catch the metaphor, the entire plot of the manga-based series revolves around breast size. Ito Misaki plays a woman with a complex about being a surfboard. From the first two paragraphs of the show’s website

Aoyanagi Emi boasts the good-looks of a Paris Collection model. But she’s got one single complex: Her bust is as flat as a “wall.” Emi is an employee of the Marukoshi Department Store. She is in charge of the bag-sales section of the first floor that is seen as the “star of the department store.”

One day on her way to work, Emi is swayed in a crowded train and feels big soft breasts against her back. She sees a girl with giant breasts through the reflection in the glass. This is the first time she meets her [Fukada Kyoko's character].

This is Fuji TV prime-time Thursday night show, mind you — not some late-night noir with unrealistic lesbian subplots. Casting this over at Ryoichi Sasakawa’s Kenon must have been fun: Hey, Ito Misaki, you have tiny breasts! You’d be great in this role.

Now call me cynical, but photographic evidence (even some secret illegal onsen shots) points to Fukada recently “taking up a new set of skills” to fill this role. Either that or famous Japanese women have evolved some amazing ability to grow two or three cup sizes way after the last pangs of puberty. If they could figure out how to bottle this natural genetic power, they could make millions.

Breast augmentation surgery is so common in countries like Korea and the U.S. that the audacious claims of publicists would be a punchline akin to Paris Hilton’s “I never did drugs” on Larry King. But in Japan, there is this creepy radio silence about the regularity of plastic surgery. This combines with a general media hesitancy in criticizing celebrities to create an odd situation where everyone has to play along that Fukada Kyoko’s breasts are real and that she is “finally going to show us fans in the new show what she has been hiding all these years.” As if, all the swimsuit shots from 1997 to 2006 had been conspiratorial work of deceit and lies — suppressing her supple curves from proper viewing.

Although Weekly Playboy-style patriarchy may not be 100% responsible for Japanese womens’ manifold breast-complexes, I am not sure it helps to have these stars secretly gain enormous breasts and then have no real public dialogue about whether such plastic surgery exists. (This reminds me of the fact that Japanese TV also seems to be the only global media force uninterested in debunking Uri Geller.) Questions of bodily alterations are relegated to the ghettos of spam-financed internet sites.

Okay, okay, I am too easily outraged by the entire Japanese entertainment world, but if you are going to add bags of plastic to women, don’t expect me to bow down to such plastic as miraculous gifts from God. Barry Bonds may hit regrettable home runs with his chemically-induced arm girth, but at least they don’t introduce Barry Bonds as the guy with the “Huge Arms.”

Reference: Previous Neomarxisme essay on Japanese breast obsession “Magazine Rack”

The new issue of Weekly Pureiboi offers us an epic dichotomy to titillate our senses: “Japanese Idols vs. World Sexy”

On the cover, the issue’s featured women are organized into two distinct groups:

The left-hand column makes sense: all four of the girls are Japanese race-queen/idol types with proper Japanese names. (Although “Leona” sounds like she could be half-Jewish.)

The right-hand group, however, is extremely problematic. Ignoring the fact that no one finds Paris Hilton “sexy,” Beyonce and Paris at least fit the most basic description of being global celebrities. Why then is purely Japanese actress and model Kuriyama Chiaki — the magazine’s cover model — part of “World Sexy”? This affiliation seems like an implicit acknowledgment that Kuriyama’s popularity stems solely from her appearance in Kill Bill. Objectively speaking, she does not fit the normal profile of a “hot girl” in Japan, and Pureiboi appears to feel the need to legitimize lust towards her from the perspective of popularity abroad.

Ozawa Maria’s inclusion in the “world sexy” group, on the other hand, boils down to question of nation-state being strictly defined through racial homogeneity. Ozawa is a 21-year old half-Japanese, half-Canadian porn star and Christian Academy in Japan graduate whose career is based exclusively in Japan. You may know her from such films as 2006′s Barely There Mosaic and 2007′s Popular Fashion Model Maria Ozawa Nakadashi Raped for 20 Consecutive Times! Ozawa is not especially known outside of the Japanese adult video market. Unlike Kuriyama, she has no feet on the global stage. Pureiboi consciously or unconsciously placed her outside of the “Japan” group only because she has what amounts to impure blood and semi-Western features.

So here, being a “Japanese idol” requires popularity originating in the Japanese market — unless you are half-Japanese, which makes “Japanese” categorization impossible. Even in matters of objectifying women, “Japan” remains so narrowly defined.

I have a Canadian female friend who used to work at a foreign hostess club in Roppongi, and I invited her to write something about her experience. (I edited for grammar and length.)

I was backpacking through either Thailand or Cambodia — it’s a blur at this point — when some British girl mentioned to me that I could make a lot of money being blond in Japan. Japan sounded equally Asian as Thailand (or Cambodia or Laos), so I booked a ticket for Tokyo Airport and then figured out how to get from the airport to Tokyo, which took me like three hours or something.

I ended up crashing on my college roommate’s cousin’s floor for a week before I finally got an interview with the club. My college roommate’s cousin had mentioned that this whole “water business” of foreign hostessing was sketchy and sometimes dangerous. So I was a bit on edge during the interview. The manager’s English and breath were terrible, and there was something very dark and depressing about the whole bar. When not trying to look down or up my dress (he had this kind of Galileo telescope thing), he kept staring at my roots to make sure I was really blond. He reached for something in his jacket and suddenly asked me, “You dye now?” and I started to freak out. (Turns out he was just scratching himself.) I explained that I had been naturally blond as a child but that most adult Western women become more brunette as they get older. He ominously told me, “Well, I hope you dye soon” and then handed me my punch-card. I was hired.

The job was boring. I would come in to work at around 8, and then the awful customers would start coming in. First of all, the customers were mostly Japanese men. Second, they were Japanese men without any sort of history with real life women. It was almost as if going to this club was a product of failure with Japanese women. They smelled bad and wore boxy black suits and wanted to talk about golf. The liked to sing John Denver at karaoke, and I don’t like John Denver. I would always want to sing No Doubt or that one Adam Ant song, but they didn’t have these in the karaoke machine.

One guy always came in and wanted to show off by reciting Pi to 6,000 digits. This would take three or four hours — before he finally gave up and went to the bathroom. He would always want us to join in, which was impossible for most of the girls, but this helped me learn to count in Japanese.

Another guy used to come in and recite “e” — the natural log digit or whatever — and he would get in a battle with the Pi guy. This was a big source of stress. The Pi guy was “my guy,” and the e guy was this Russian girl’s guy. This Russian girl hated me, and the e guy started to like me, because he thought I liked to have digits read to me, which I don’t, even to this day. So the Russian girl starts to totally hate on me, because the e guy and the Pi guy are fighting for me very openly. In the end, they both got over me and started to like this bimbo from New Zealand. Once they made amends, they would read off together the 3,000 digits of if you subtracted e from Pi. All I remember is that it starts out 0.4233.

After a while, the whole thing became very tedious. The money was not that great, and Japan had no beaches or anything.

With nine-year old girls in thong bikinis currently leading the march of eroticism in Japan (or at least grabbing the most real estate in der Zeitgeist), refined culture magazine for urban professionals Brutus has decided to come out and remind its readers that “adult” women can also be beautiful. The idea is a bit of radical contrarianism, for sure, but such sensational headlines are known to move copies. Relatively young and over-make-up’d Kashii Yuu graces the cover, but the main feature exhibits portrait shots of various older and professional Japanese women that buck the recent infantile gravity of beauty standards.

From the Brutus website:

As seen in the rush of new women’s magazines starting publication, this is an era of diverse ways in which women can “shine.” From catchphrases such as “You’ve graduated from trying to attract boys (mote)” and “Adult, but cute (kawaii),” more focus is being put on “adult” women. Beauty comes from refinement, intelligence, and a strong will. The keyword for the charming female image is “adult” for men — and maybe for females as well. Our sessions with famous photographers are full of charming beautiful women. In this special feature, adult women are beautiful!

Japan these days is a bit SCREAM — Socio-economic Class Rules Everything Around Me — and we therefore are best seeing Brutus as a media representation of the taste culture of professional, well-educated upper middle-class Japanese men rather than as just as a magazine. Brutus is “kachi-gumi” (winners) media and not targeted towards either middle-range salarymen in the “make-gumi” (losers) without proper cosmopolitan taste or artistic freeter who have chosen passion for individual creation over a high income. Mr. Brutus is drinking champagne at the opening of Tokyo Midtown in a slim navy-blue pin-striped Super 120s suit with slant pockets. He is not playing pachinko within a dirty cloud of nicotine and J-POP Trance Best 2005.

Sexual attraction and social class are not independent of each other, especially seeing that a specific attribute underlies both career success and interest in “adult” women: self-confidence. This is starting to read like the script to one of those businessman LPs of the 1960s, but the self-confident man has no need to fear women who may challenge him in the realm of ideas or even, gasp, on the income ladder. A sophisticated man needs a sophisticated women on his arm. James Bond does not dote after 16 year-old girls — at least while the camera is rolling.

But whether self-confidence is a source of business acumen or just an inherited privilege of the wealthy, lusting after little girls under the guise of appreciating “genki” or the “blossoming of youth” does not match the chic Brutus lifestyle. The relative newness of the Under-15 boom suggests that it is a sexual desire born of contemporary social conditions: Men are attracted to these girls’ innocence as a retreat from a harsh reality in which they are completely emasculated. The “make-gumi” man lacks self-confidence, and extremely young girls (or in more mainstream cases, hostesses/prostitutes) symbolize a desire to create fantasy moments in which the man can regain a sense of control and dominance. Adult women are no good, because they are a reminder of the fall in stature rather than a cure for the failure itself.

Brutus smartly reminds us, though, that “adult” is not just the key for men, but also for women. Japanese analysts posit that women in contemporary Japan pay attention to their style primarily to meet and secure upwardly-mobile men (or at least, self-confident without necessarily the economic motive), and if so, the woman herself must now move towards “adult.” A man’s affection for the immature is a sure sign of low earning potential. This means young women must eventually abandon the simple algebra of “mote“ (being cute in the way that boys like –> a boyfriend) for a more complicated calculus of following your own will as a means to attract the sophisticated man (who may just happen to possess a bulging pocketbook.)

I had doubts on the fairness of putting “adult” sophistication on the same continuum as the pedophilic tendencies of the otaku, but I just went to the bookstore to check out the issue, and much to my surprise, the intro paragraph of the Brutus feature specifically name checks the “Junior Idol Boom” as proof of infantile sexuality taking over modern society. And they too see the fear towards adult women in the communal lack of self-confidence. Without saying it specifically, Brutus does seem to be asking, are you enough of a Winner Man to take on a Winner Woman?