Love & Pop

[Dunn Brian]

>I hear reasons not to become a
>prostitute all the time! Disease, violence both physical and emotional,
>inability to relate to other people in a healthy manner, etc.


But where do you hear these reasons?  I hear them too, but I'm in America.

I think the point was that no one seems to say *why* it's wrong for these 
young girls and these older men to be having relationships, inside Japanese 
society.  People may look down at the girls doing it.  But what about the 
normal men, the business men, the teachers, etc., who are taking their money 
and buying services from these girls?  It's real easy to shift the blame and 
not see where the real problem is.

And, as always, the problem is labeled as a problem among high (& middle) 
school girls.  No one talks about or seems to notice the disgusting men who 
are paying for these services (not always sex).  I think these men are the 
source of the problem, because they are the ones paying for the services, 
and without men willing to pay 30,000 yen to have a teenage girl sing 
karaoke together or whatever, the girls wouldn't be doing it.  That's what I 
thought (the book) "Love & Pop" was about -- people may say it's bad, but 
nobody says *why* it's bad, and everywhere people look it's presented as a 
normal thing, and it's even promoted to the male part of society.  Society 
is based on Money and Materialistic Values, and the perception of women 
isn't very good, either.  Many (teenage/young) women see no future for 
themselves after high school or junior college besides marriage and having 
and raising children, and staying thin and pretty all the while.  I remember 
looking through one of my wife's fashion magazines, and there was a section 
on working out and dieting, to slim up.  In big print, it said something 
like "?????????A???????????v???[???g???O???b?h?A?b?v?I"

So in this money-based, materialistic, instant gratification society, why 
would a girl work for 6 months at a fast food joint to buy a Louis Vitton 
bag, when she can have dinner with a couple of guys, or maybe sing some 
karaoke, and have the bag in a couple of days or a week?  (I'm not condoning 
it - just pointing out the attitude)  No one will say why it's bad.  It's 
like a parent telling a child not to smoke "because I said so," despite the 
fact that the parent him/herself smokes.  Then, even if people are 
constantly saying "smoking'll kill ya'!  smoking's bad for your health!" - 
people still smoke, because they still see it accepted around them (other 
people, media stars, media/TV/movies).

I don't think it's a high-school-girl problem.  I think the society is set 
up this way, especially with the sex industry history it has -- it may be 
"not OK" on the surface, but I think it's accepted.  If it wasn't, people 
would be doing something about it.

I think there is also this problem in Japan of shifting blame and 
responsibility for things.  Instead of coming down hard on the girls for 
doing this, if the problem was addressed at the roots - the men with the 
money paying for this, and the family problems at home (most girls who end 
up doing this come from broken homes, or homes with bad environments, and/or 
homes where the dad is never around, always at work or out drinking with 
coworkers, and even rich families where money is the main goal in life and 
the parents never spend time with the children) - then maybe some things 
could change.

I think the comic GTO, and the TV drama series based on it, did a very good 
job of dealing with these kinds of issues, and showing how normal everyday 
people can be guilty of these kinds of things.  After all, the only decent 
adult was the "Bouryoku Koushi," Onizuka, (and Fuyutsuki-sensei, plus the 
older teacher who always got picked on) - while all the so-called 
"upstanding citizens and elites" were the twisted and warped ones, blaming 
everyone else (usually Onizuka-sensei) for everything that went wrong with 
their kids and theri students and with society, even though it was usually 
their fault.

On a side note, I saw on the news last night that, according to the FBI and 
the INS, 100,000 women have been smuggled into the US and illegally sold as 
(sex) slaves in the last two years.  This is bigger than the drug trade.


Anyway, kind of off-topic.  I just get kind of worked up when people things 
on everyone else, especially when young people and teeangers bear the brunt 
of the criticism.





Brian Dunn

b1dunn at hotmail.com
University of Washington
Dept. of Asian Languages and Literature

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