Thoughts on men who fall in love with pillows

Just like everybody else in the world, I’ve been reading the press coming out of Japan almost religiously.  Reading one of those articles led me to another article which led me to another article that I can not find now for the life of me.  But it got me thinking, and the thoughts started swirling around in my head, and now I have to write a post to save myself the cost of the therapy I would need if I were to keep getting worked up about this. 

The article was basically about the trend of Japanese men falling in love with “2D” characters, mainly in the form of pillows or dolls that look like preteen anime girls.  The fact that they are PRETEENS just makes me SO… 

If you aren’t familiar with International Justice Mission, “a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppressions”, check them out at http://www.ijm.org/.  Consider how you can support their work, whether financially or by some other means.

But we’ll set aside the fact that theses pillows picture anime PRETEENS (!!) for the purpose of this post…

One colleague who used to work in Japan noted that the country has a 1950s concept of women.  This article basically noted the same thing – that women are expected to quit their jobs when they get married and have children.  So women are looking at their options and deciding that they would rather stay in the workforce.  And apparently there are a lot of men that are “falling in love with” pillows or dolls.  I read another article (in my search to find the original article again) that said some men set up separate apartments in the city for their dolls, as if they were mistresses.  (From my own limited experience in Asia, I had noticed that pornography was much more obvious and available there than anything you would see in the U.S., but I saw nothing to this extreme.  Praise God.)  Statistics are showing that the natural population change rate (live births minus deaths) has been increasingly negative since 2005.  Marriage rates in Japan are dropping and not-insignificant percentages of men have no interest in sex with an actual person.  Basically, large numbers of men would rather be in a relationship with a fantasy.

I’m not an expert on these sorts of issues at all.  But this article got me thinking about a lot of things.  I never used to consider myself a feminist, but I clearly hold to certain Western ideals of both equality and chivalry.  I think it’s wonderful when men open doors, offer to carry something heavy or give me their seat on a crowded bus.  I think that’s something to be encouraged.  But I also expect my intelligence to be respected and that I not be metaphorically patted on the head.  I understand that these are particularly Western ideals.  But I also think they are particularly Christian ideals.  Didn’t Jesus shock his contemporaries by talking directly to women and by their involvement in supporting his ministry?  We never hear of Aquila without his wife Priscilla, and Lydia was a significant figure in the church in Philippi.

So I look at this situation in Japan and, while I know that it is much more complex than this, I wonder what came first – the chicken or the egg?  Did men’s obsession with pornography and fantasy relationships with pillows lead women to say “better off staying in the workplace!”  Or was women saying they want to continue to work a trigger for men to choose “2D” relationships?  If it’s the latter, then why is it that when women said they wanted to keep working in the West, the majority of men learned to accept and even welcome the concept of a spouse who also worked outside the home (granted, over the course of decades)?  But in Japan, what you apparently see is not more married women working, but more men turning to pillows and dolls?

I don’t know the answers to these questions.  But I hear tales of a lot of men who are more interested in fantasy than reality, and a population that is literally dying off because of it.  And I pray that the lost will be found before it’s too late.