Japan Yesterday, the World Tomorrow, and the Philosophy of Mr. Toru Honda

I have over the years remarked just how much developments in Japan seem to run a bit ahead of developments elsewhere in the world--Japan's today, or even yesterday, often importantly indicative of the tomorrow of the rest of the advanced industrialized world.

Consider what has happened in Japan since the 1980s. A bout of historic speculative frenzy, substantially connected with real estate, ended with a colossal crash that marked the beginning of a long period of economic stagnation (the "lost decade," which turned into "lost decades") that upended not only economic but also political, cultural, social life--with just one of the consequences a trend of young people who, amid diminished prospects in an ever more materialistic culture with an ever less attainable bar for "success," withdrew from social life (most notoriously, the hikikomori), and a sharp decline of marriage and birth rates, feeding the country's culture war, and helping make old-fashioned concern with natality a hot topic in the process.

So has it gone elsewhere in the advanced world, and beyond, with the crash of 2007 and its aftermath in the "Great Recession" doing for it generally what the crash of 1990 did for Japan, with America no exception, the country since discovering its own "hikikomori", in which a reported decline of marriage, falling birth rates and natalism have become major issues, all of which has fed into its own culture wars. Still, there have been differences between the situation of one country and another, with an interesting case Japanese cultural critic Toru Honda, who quickly emerged as a figure of sufficient note to get interviewed for the Asahi Shimbun (Japan's equivalent of the New York Times, or at least what the Times used to be) in the wake of the (within certain circles) controversy over the popularity of the Densha Otoko franchise. His position was that capitalism had done to romance what it had done to everything else, in the process devaluing much of the population such that it had no hope of getting anything by involvement in what may be called the "dating" or "marriage" market (just as many are unemployable in the labor market, and not incidentally thereby rendered hopeless in the dating/marriage market too), and that it was an entirely valid response to reject it--and indeed, to accept as a substitute for an unattainable love with a "3-D" human being one's emotional relation to a "2-D" character.

Just as in Japan the U.S., amid a deterioration of the economic situation, has seen young people become more critical of society's expectations of them, not least in as they interact with gender roles. There has even been some talk of people frustrated with an unpleasant contemporary reality preferring a virtual one to "Real Life" (Edward Castronova and Jane McGonigal, indeed, warning of the possibility of an "exodus" here). However, so far as I know no analysis to compare with Honda's has got a remotely similar level of attention--for reasons that seem quite telling. Much as American commentators smarmily speak of how "liberal" American society is relative to "conservative" East Asian cultures like that of Japan, in America, one may not speak of the prevailing economic system except to glorify it and abase oneself before it. Meanwhile the gender politics prevailing in the American mainstream mean that the expression of male grievance (which is how Mr. Honda's view is taken, even if what he says about the alienations of "love capitalism" and the viability of "2-D love" would go for women as for men) enjoys about as much mainstream tolerance as criticism of capitalism.

The result is that one only sees any criticism of the expectations regarding relationships of this kind from the alt-right, which is of course where criticism of capitalism is least tolerated. Indeed, where one might look at Honda's theorizing and plausibly see some hint of later alt-right thinking, one ought never to forget that in contrast with Honda they criticize feminism, not capitalism (absolutely ignoring or attacking any suggestion that it may have something to do with the situation they find untoward), while the alt-right does not prioritize individual happiness the same way. Rather it sets traditionalism, and natalism, above personal happiness, and tells men to "get out there and talk to a girl" (and brooks no excuse for failure) rather than retreat into a world of "2-D love," so that one would expect them to be dismissive of Honda's ideas. Still, given that neither the country's economic troubles, nor its fraught gender politics, seem likely to change anytime soon, all as "artificial intelligence" may be making "2-D love" more alluring for some. (Indeed, returning to Japan it seems notable that the maker of what may be the country's most popular "dating app," citing disinterest in dating among the young, launched a "virtual girlfriend" app that it thinks will be more appealing to many.) Amid all that it seems plausible, even probable, that we will hear more from those who think along the lines that Honda did two decades ago--and on this side of the Pacific Rim as well.