It has been several years since Japanese women first signalled their contempt for the long tradition of showering male colleagues with chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Now the country’s young people are slaying another sacred cow associated with Friday’s orgy of commercialised romance: one-sided gift giving.
Traditionally, women are expected to buy gift-wrapped chocolates for the men in their working lives, usually senior colleagues and others to whom they feel indebted – a tradition called giri choco, literally “obligation chocolates”.
But the age of giri choco seems well and truly over. Just 12.5% of people said they planned to give sweets to colleagues on Valentine’s Day – the lowest proportion on record – according to a survey by Nippon Life Insurance. That compares with almost a quarter in 2020, the year the coronavirus outbreak became a global pandemic. More than 70% of those surveyed said they thought the custom was “unnecessary”.
Another intriguing phenomenon has also emerged this year, with an increasing number of teenage boys viewing Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to reciprocate rather than wait until White Day on 14 March, when men are traditionally expected to return the favour.
One survey reported in the Weekly Playboy magazine found that almost a third of girls attending middle and high schools had received Valentine’s gifts from boys in recent years.
“Today’s teenagers and people in their 20s tend not to be bound by gender stereotypes or ‘romantic supremacy’, so Valentine’s Day is no longer just a day for women to confess their feelings to men,” Hikari Asahina, the president of seamint, a market research form focusing on gen Z, told the magazine.
The soaring price of cocoa beans, following poor crops in Ivory Coast and Ghana, has also blunted enthusiasm for lavishing chocolate on multiple recipients, some or all of whom may not be the object of the giver’s desires.
The average price of a chocolate bar has risen from just under ¥100 (65c) before tax in 2022 to ¥150 today, according to Intage, a market research company. “Given the continuing price hikes, we expect people this year to juggle expenses, such as by reducing the amount of ‘obligatory’ chocolates they buy,” the firm said.
Consumers spent an average of ¥3,818 ($25) on Valentine’s Day treats this year, a separate survey found – down from the ¥4,008 spent last year.
The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported that supermarkets have replaced more expensive department stores as the preferred place to buy Valentine’s chocolates.
In a poll of women by the market research firm Nippon Information, 31% of respondents said they would buy chocolate from a supermarket, followed by department stores on 29%, while 21% said they would make their own.
“This is just a theory, but given the soaring prices of food and daily necessities … we believe there is greater demand for supermarkets, where the prices of Valentine’s Day products tend to be lower compared to department stores,” a Nippon Information spokesperson told the Mainichi.
Giving chocolate as Valentine’s Day gifts took off commercially in Japan in 1958, when a confectionery firm held a special sales campaign at a department store in Tokyo. In 2019, the Valentine’s market was worth ¥126bn before shrinking slightly due to the pandemic.
The pressure to avoid causing offence by spending thousands of yen on chocolates for colleagues has prompted some firms to ban the practice in recent years, amid rising awareness of harassment in the workplace.
Instead, more women are buying chocolates for themselves – jibun choco – or splashing out on oshi-choko: chocolates accompanied by photos and merchandise belonging to their favourite oshi (character or idol) that they post on social media.
