Jokyu Eigo

#Final draft
2015.1.21

Why dont recent young people in Japan date?

12A3146026D Mirai Fukushima

1. Introduction
Nowadays, Japan has big problems with the declining birth rate and aging society.
Especially about the declining birth rate, there are some causes such as late-marriage, womens
progress, and even worse, the high rate of singles in entire life. That kind of problems are probably
happening in other developed countries too, but it looks like Japan is particularly severe. When
asking some friends about dating, not all but some feel dating is not so attractive. What does make
them think so? To find the reasons, I decided to research on Love, which is too abstract to survey.
Then, I divide my research into 3 parts : What is love, differences of Love and Friendship, and
reasons of not dating.

2. What is Love
This might be one of the most complicated questions, but I asked 4 people about it. They
answered differently, which is so interesting. My friend A answered that love is patient. Love
hardly comes true, so he thought we have to endure something when falling in love, which means
love is somewhat hard thing. My friend B told me that love is that he want to protect his significant
other from everything. He looks so passionate toward love, and inspired me that love gives us the
unimaginably big power. Here is another answer from my friend C, that love is secret intention. It
means the clear underline of love and friendship is whether they want to kiss the other or not. That is
good point because probably we feel something special feeling which we have never felt so to the
other. She said that is secret intention. The last is from my friend D, which answer is love is just
unfamiliar with her. Because she has never experienced falling in love, love is mysterious.
Interestingly, answers are different and these depend on each persons background. For
people who experienced falling in love many times like friend A and B, love is more serious than my
friend C and D thought. As stated above, love is mysterious, so it is natural there are various opinion.

3. Differences of Love and Friendship

Then, what are differences of love and friendship? To figure out might be one of steps of
understanding the low rate of dating recently. According to a website, called Wiki How, love and
friendship are close but different with our feeling.

Look at the picture above. For example, if you are just friends, you can be happy when he
(suppose you are a girl and the friend is a boy) tells you that he me a really cute girl and he likes her.
If you have special feeling to him, you cannot celebrate in that case because you love him, but he

loves other girl. You definitely feel jealousy, sadness, but happiness. Even if you have never thought
you love him, then you can notice your real emotions toward him.

Another example is whether you and he have to confirm the relationship or not. Imagine
when you have new friends. Do you say Are we friends now? or something? Maybe no, because
there is no need to say such thing when you are just friends. We can have friends very naturally.
However, if you are in love, you have to confirm the present situation because the relationship will
chance into a couple. Then, you should say to the other like I love you or I think we are in love to
make the relation clear. That is big difference of just being friends and dating with somebody.

4. Reasons of not dating

According to Japanese famous magazine, Josei Seven ( ), 65% women and

70% men dont have the significant other in 2011, and because of that, our generation is called ecofriendly love generation. There are some reasons which made us so. First of all, in babble economy
in 1990, people wanted exciting and hot love , but now situation has changes into less passionate
toward love. Second reason is well-known, but boys have been modest and they are called
Vegetarian boys. On the other hand, girls are called predatory girls but they found
comfortableness with same sex friends. Therefore, they often enjoy girls meeting.
One professor has a little different opinion, and he says the young have a shallow
friendship now which means there are no clear differences between boys and girls. It leads the young
generation to be just friends without any troubles because being friends is more comfortable than
dating. Moreover, because of animation, they dont need actual people, but enough with virtual
significant other instead. These are recent trends.

Here is another opinion from the website, BLOGOS, which says the reason of not dating is
just simple. The young people dont have enough money to meet someone. As the graphs show,
students today cannot use so much money compared with students in the past, but on the other hand,
the fee today in Disney land is the highest in this 30 years. This is so ironic because Disney land is
one of the most famous dating spots in Japan. Those elements make young generation dont have the
significant other now.

5. Conclusion
There is no right answer on love because love is abstract and it gives us images differently.
However, regarding my question why dont recent young people in Japan date? that is just because
it is the present trend not to date. Unlike students in the past, students today dont regard dating as
the best relationship, or even dont have any interest in dating. What makes them think so are
development of technology such as TV or smart phones, and changes of each genders characteristic.
Personally, I think there is little need to be comfortable with someone but can feel comfortable with
mere devices because they can connect people indirectly. We are satisfied with indirect relationship
nowadays. That is the big difference between the past and now. Though this trend might cause the
declining birth rate as a result, the trend and situation are made by society, hopefully there may be
new style of love in the future.

Citations
1.
http://m.wikihow.com/Differentiate-Between-Love-and-Friendship#
No author, No date, 'How to Differentiate between Love and Friendship', Wiki How, viewed on 9th
December 2014
2.
http://www.news-postseven.com/archives/20111109_68528.html
no author, November 17th 2011, '
',
Jyosei
Seven,
viewed
on
December
16th
2014
3.
http://asread.info/archives/1140
Itsuro. K, no date, '', ASRead, viewed on December
16th
2014
4.
http://blogos.com/article/96412/
Willy, October 13th 2014, '', BLOGOS, viewed on December 16th
2014