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“Arafo” women -- women of “around 40” (the neologism took root last year) -- are doing just fine, thank you, leading lives that are the stuff of envy and TV dramas. But Shukan Asahi (May 1) trains its scope on “arafifu” men -- men of around 50 -- to find the picture, if not quite bleak, certainly less scintillating.
Money, sex and career, not necessarily in that order, are the issues that weigh most heavily. “I’m 48 years old and I can barely afford lunch at McDonald’s!” sighs a printing company employee. Owing partly to what the prime minister has dubbed “the worst recession in 100 years,” partly to a Japanese custom which has the wife taking charge of the family income and doling out a monthly allowance to the husband, this man’s lunch budget is 500 yen a day. It was never substantially higher, but the approach of 50 seems a time for heightened sensitivity to little indignities that once went unnoticed.
While he and legions of others like him swallow their pride and belly up to train station stand-up noodle counters, a certain restaurant in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza neighborhood is booked months in advance, its minimum luncheon fare several thousand yen. Look in any time around lunch hour and it’s packed -- not with businessmen, Shukan Asahi notes wryly, but with “arafo” women.
“Beginning this month,” the disgruntled printing company employee continues, “they’re making us pay out of our own pockets for business calls we make on our cell phones. That hasn’t netted me an increased allowance [from my wife], so I have to tighten my belt even more. What can I do? My daughter’s preparing for junior high school entrance exams. I can’t very well take her out of juku (cram school), can I?”
He sighs. “Twenty-five years of work, and this is where it’s got me!”
One naturally asks oneself at 50: Has it all been worth it? At 30, even 40, all the effort can be justified by future goals, vague but, seemingly at least, real. At 50, all too often, the end is in sight, but not the goals. “You start to see that your prospects are limited,” a 51-year-old salesman tells Shukan Asahi. “I want to give my kids a bit of a leg up in life, but education is so expensive. So I don’t think about limits and just work like the devil. I know I’ll never be a director, but maybe the chance of my making company executive isn’t quite zero. It's all so futile,” he sums up ruefully.
Less so, it is pleasant to report, is life on the sexual front. True, marital sex tends to be dead or dying, but extramarital sex appears to be making up for it; of 50 “arafifu” men Shukan Asahi surveys, 32 report having girlfriends whom 90% of them encountered at work.
“Even when we were young,” says a 53-year-old hotel employee, “sex with my wife happened only a few times a year. Once we passed 40, it became ‘Olympic sex’” -- suggesting not athleticism but radical infrequency. Marriage after a few decades is too stable, too domestic, for sex. “But if you have a girlfriend,” he continues, “you start to feel again that masculine drive, that urge to conquer."
© Japan Today
49 Comments
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nath
If a man is making the money then he should control the money. ¥500 a day? I would not tolerate it. As far as having a girl friend....unless she is splitting it with you, it can cost you ¥20,000 for a full weekend with two romps in a love hotel accompanied by drinks and snacks. That is a lot of lunch money.
jonnyboy
i would be interested to hear their wives' angle on this. it seems to me that disconnecting men from the house's actual expenditure is a good way for the wife never to learn the value of the family's income, but perhaps i'm wrong
nath
Was that 32%? If so, I doubt it seriously. The average age of women in the workforce must certainly be below that which would support interest in 50 year old balding and fat men at that rate.
azzassa
@Tjrandom: Truth be told, compared to the rest of the world, not that many Japanese men in their 50s are either fat or balding.
nath
I accept that - but 30's something ladies are generally not interested in 50s men either - else I would be hot!
ronaldk
What the hell is wrong with fat and bald?
nath
Well, for one thing - generally not considered hot by the ladies. Also, life shortening - the fat part at least. And of course can cause sun glare if the head is tilted just so.
LoveUSA
Most men after 30 are bald or balding, especially foreign men. I have nothing against it. It is connected to testosterone levels. Nothing wrong with it. I do not understand why men worry so much that they can become bald. It is natural. It does not make them less attractive, on the contrary. It is funny that many men do not understand how cute they are and develop a complex. I think much worse thatn being bald is to try to hide that you are bald by funny ways.
Moderator: All readers, back on topic. "Fat" and "bald" have nothing to do with this discussion.
30061015
This is truely pathetic. J-men have to take their nads back from the wife or risk extinction.
DentShop
A lot of men are really bad with money. Thats a fact. Men will usually spend whatever they are given. You get some money, a bunch of beers for everyone, taxi home, ramen and then you are broke. Many males last beyond 40 only because of a woman controlling his money. If the man allows his woman to control his money, he deserves the situation he is in - for right or wrong.
tkoind2
One phrase "Wage Slavery"
I know a lot of salary guys who work like dogs. Up at 5:30, onto a crowded train, work until 9 or even last train and then back on a crowded train. At home they are disconnected from the family and alienated. They are not around so emotionally they are not as tied as mom to the family. Many say they feel they are just a source of income for the wife and kids.
You have to give credit to these guys for being dedicated enough to family to keep this up for 20-30 years. Especially when statistics show that a lot of them will be left alone when they retire and the kids are independent.
Now ask your average western guy to give up this much autonomy and most of us will say NO WAY. I expect the wife to work after the kids start school. We are a team, period. And Teams work together to achieve family goals.
Maybe Japanese guys need to pull their wives out of cafes and into running home businesses or going to work. And they should demand more economic autonomy and power. The traditional Salaryman role makes slavery look good by comparison. At least slaves had the ability say "I'm a slave" and to hope for liberation one day. All these suit wearing slaves have to look forward to is death.
Samuraiiki
Few people squeezing blood money from the masses.
ZazoomZa
yes the ararifu keep ganbaru-ing and fit and hairy. thats good
mazzda
Get those lazy J girls out out to work and share the pain.
magpie
tkoind, I think in many a case it is self inflicted. Many J males dont seem to understand the conspet of father, husband. They think that as long as I'm providing the income I am doing my job. Yes being a breadwinner is important, but it get's you no where from an emotional bonding perspective. I went 12 years in my marriage thinking of work, deals and bonuses till i nearly got divorced. Nowadays, I'm happy to let the wife control the purse. I get out of the office at a decent hour such and spend about an hour with my kids going through their day before they turn the lights out in the rooms around 10:30pm. I get up at 6am so I can have breakfast with them and go through the day's schedule before i send them off to school.
Many J males just don't seem to get it. For them, they work and then go drinking with their colleagues or clients. Get home and sleep for 5 hours and repeat the whole day. On weekends if they're not sleeping to recover, they're out playing golf with their mates.
Not saying that all are like that but many are. Can't blame the wife if there is a divorce after retirement you know...
ogtob
Dude should get a life and make his wife make him lunch; especially if she is sitting at home. Spend the 500 yen on a couple of Shochu's at the Tachinomi after work. This guy deserves his miserable life because he has no imagination.
30061015
The same allowance Mom gives to the kids she gives to hubby, which makes the kids equal to Dad, or... even lower. How could J-kids ever respect such a father? How can he respect himself? This is a J-custom? She spends his blood money for years like a leech and turns him out like sodai gomie when he is old? ( if he doesn't commit suicide first ) How are boys supposed to respect an absentee father that is treated like the oldest son when he is home, or how can boys respect women when they grow up being suppressed, castrated and feminized by an over zealous matriarchal kyoiku mama who holds power over papa? Fushigi deshou?
Alphaape
How about this, since you are making the money, just tell the wife that you are taking a bit more out for your lunch. I am not talking about taking all of your income to yourself and leaving your family in a bind, but just simply state, you are taking a larger allowance from YOUR salary that YOU have earned for the dignity of being the bread winner and being able to buy your own lunch. For Pete's sake dude, grow a pair and don't just use them for cheating but just to be a man.
cleo
The last two posts made me laugh out loud. What big tough men. I suppose your wife played no part in helping you earn that money. And of course out of YOUR salary you paid her the going rate for all the washing, cooking, cleaning, shopping, nursing, childcare, mending, gardening, chauffeuring she did on your behalf. Not to mention the night duties. Wake-up call - once you have a family to support, it's no longer your salary. If you can't get your brain around that, don't make babies.
Real men don't have tantrums over what's for lunch.
Alphaape
cleo, I am not saying that the wife has not helped him as he goes out and go to work by keeping the house. What I did say if you look closer was that why doesn't he just say to the wife, I am going to take a bit more for lunch, and not go groveling to beg for an allowance.
That is a true statement, but I did not say he needs to stop supporting so that he can go out and buy something expensive, but mainly to be able to afford more than a 500 yen lunch. If times are that tough for the family, then maybe not only to his "wake-up call" as you put it maybe his wife also needs a "wake-up call" to see that she may need to get a job to help support the family.
So, as this story goes, the women whom you claim do all the house work and "wkfely duties" get a chance everyonce in awhile to go to Ginza for lunch, but poor old hubby get's nothing.
cleo
Maybe because he knows things are tight, his wife is already doing a wonderful job balancing the household budget on his meagre earnings, and there isn't a bit more for lunch?
Maybe she already has one. Most of the wives I know get at least a part-time job when the children are older, to help pay for education costs.
Yeah right, that's why the hostess clubs and nomiyas are full every night and the trains reek of alcohol from all the drunken sararimen (at least they are if you believe everything you read on JT)
What it boils down to is that the household finances are no one's concern but the members of the family concerned. Different folk have different arrangements. I know a couple of families where the husband controls all the finances, giving the wife a monthly housekeeping allowance. Those men look like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and envy people like Mr. Cleo who only has to worry on a daily basis about whether he's got his lunch money.
Few families have so much income that they couldn't handle a little more, but most men accept that their lunch isn't necessarily the top priority.
fairyprince
cleo:
Real men don't have tantrums over what's for lunch
Real men can do whatever they want. hahhahaa
helloklitty
I bought "The Slightest Touch" for my wife and our romantic life remains as good as it was the first 3-4 years.
sharky1
It is through the demasculinization of Japan that allows the woman to dominate nearly every aspect of the man. Major cause of many of the social problems in Japan. Can't say this is true just in Japan, but seems to be a global thing. Manhood is disappearing from the face of the earth.
bdiego
Wow where to start. If you notice from this article, some men are having to squeeze by on 500 yen lunches because they are going to love hotels. Please take a step back and think about that.
Now that's some men, not all. And truth be told the reason why some of them are on a tight budget is a sense of duty to their family. Call it habit or tradition, whatever but it's just common sense. Maybe you'll criticize them for not being there for their children or not spending time with the wife and working all day, but the bottom line is they're more likely to whine and beg than to simply make decisions about the money. I know a few Japanese husbands who are exceptions to that, and everybody whispers he's a bad husband. You can do almost everything else and not be a bad husband. It's like the Chinese saying where not having children is a worse crime against your parents than abandoning them. They have their sense of priorities here.
Since it's still common tradition for the man to work and earn money and pay all the household expenses, if the wife also works all that money is extra money. That's why arafu women can live well. Single women in their 30s are a different story - they tend to live at home so again all that money is extra and their parents take care of the rest. We can learn a lot from this - living with your parents can be a good plan B if expenses are too high.
Just accept this for what it is, right or wrong. The more you dissect what's going on here, the more you realize other societies have mostly traded one problem for another.
bdiego
This isn't about the man dominating the wife or the wife dominating the man. Most men are proud of giving their salary to their wife because that's tantamount to giving the money to the household. Keeping it for themselves is keeping it for themselves. Now not all families work this way, but this is the traditional expectation and it's because a busy man at work has no time to plan or pay the bills.
Alphaape
Then I suggest you take your own advise. Not saying that I am going to shirk my responsibility to my family. Not all men go to the hostess bars after work. As for Mr. Cleo, I guess you not only control his money but give him his talking points on how to interact too. No offense, but I still like to think I am independent even though I know my responsibilites to my family and don't need someone to control my purse strings or movements. Just my hunch, but that is probably why the hostess business has been around in these parts for so long.
Sarge
"I'm 48 years old and I can barely afford lunch at McDonald's"
That must really suck.
tokyocrawler
Hold on this article says that the men around 50 dont have much luxury while the women around 40 (single?) enjoy nice lunches....
well, given the choice I am sure most of these men at 50 would rather go for the 500yen noodles than the 3000 italian setto in Ginza anyway!
Lets face it, chicks love their fancy lunches, they get major thrills from it! Dudes, especially at 50...dont. they would rather skimp on lunch so they can go fishing or golfing! Ok im sure they would like a few more hundred yen or wanna go somewhere nicer once a week ..... but these guys are commited to their families and know the sacrifices they are making are for the family!
instead, the article starts drawing selfish lines between males and females as if enemies fighting for their own individual benefits, thats not fair. In marriage they are both working hard, life is hard people, we should be supporting them ,not taking shots at them
Alphaape
tokyocrawler: good points that I didn't realize (comparing who was being studied in the article).
In my posts, I was not trying to come off as some sort of ogre who would leave their family high and dry while I enjoyed the spoiled life. But like you say, marriage is hard work for both parties, and sometimes sacrifices must be made by both for the overall good of the union. If that means a man gets to have every once in awhile more than 500 yen a day for lunch of the wife gets to go and have her enjoyment at a nice dinner, both parties need to understand.
cleo
Then again the man could have his 500 yen lunches while the wife has 'fridge tidies' for lunch, and when there's a bit left over they can go out and enjoy a nice meal together.
Very well said.
grafton
Sounds like some very sad marriages out there. Ours is a partnership, we have our money that we use as we need to, which ever of use earns makes no difference we know what we have to pay out & what is left over, when there is a need to be careful we both know that & are careful. “WE” seems to be the most important word missing from both the article & the posts.
mindovermatter
Then they need real parents, and they need to leave the country right away, to study at some REAL university's outside of Japan, where they will actually learn something after they pass the entrance exam.
Don't wait, your children are already being "Dumbed Down" just spending a few mins a day with clowns like you.
nath
People talk about how much work the wife puts into the family, but forget that most men would be quite happy to have no wife and family and keep all the money to themselves for chasing women. It's just that at some time, usually in the thirties, men get tired of chasing tail and unbridled alcoholism. Someone tells them it's time to settle down and so they do. For most of them it's a decision they regret for the rest of their lives, mildly ameliorated by the pleasure of the kids, until they have been brainwashed by their mothers into hating their fathers too.
cleo
Maybe it was for you.
likeitis
500 yen is plenty of money for lunch. Just make your own darn lunch and put it in a lunchbox. If you cannot take 2500 yen to the grocery store and get enough stuff for 5 days lunch that is also more healthful than what you would buy at any restaurant, then you have simply not been raised properly. I say that because you should been raised to be able to do that yourself. Or, barring that, to at least to choose a spouse who could and would do it for you.
tokyocrawler
oh yeah what happend to the "Aisai Bento"? the lunch box ur loving wife makes for you?...i learnt about that in basic japanese classes 20 years ago (woops, time flies!)
People seem to look on marriage as all doom and gloom. Thats an individual choice to make the most of whatever situation youre in.
If we are selfish and seek our happiness in our own needs then ,yes, we will be sad when in a marriage. If you look at your family as a way to extend your love and grow it, then no matter what job you do ,you will make a positive of life.
but yes, the young women these days seem to be very selfish and just wanting the benefits of a stable income...this is the comeback in human evolution to balance out times when the mans needs were catered for by a doting housewife. I welcome the next stage of cooperation and selflessness. Bring it on! (before i get married please)
nath
Me and every married man I know. Men just aren't honest when they talk to women - of course they're not going to admit to being unhappy to a potential mate - it would damage their chances.
cleo
If they're stuck in an unhappy marriage and regretting it, it sounds like they're already mucked up their chances.
nath
You said it - that's the unhappy state of affairs for most married men. There is, of course, a happy minority, but it's much smaller than you would think.
cleo
Sounds like you're saying men are stupid - you all know what marriage entails, you don't like it and yet you still get hitched.
Well, it's a personal choice every man and woman makes for themselves, and apart from the tiny handful of truly horrendous matches that should never have happened in the first place, anyone who gets married and then doesn't do everything they possibly can to make it work is a fool. Sitting moaning about how badly-done to they are doesn't help, either.
nath
Marriage is a redundant institution. Why would any couple who love each other chose to celebrate their love with a legally binding contract? Insane.
cleo
The tax breaks come in handy.
And you get to share the pension.
Nessie
Cleo, you hopeless romantic. ;)
Orangeporange
>“WE” seems to be the most important word missing from both the article & the posts.
Well said! Marriages CAN work, it is really what you put into them. All these hours of working and spending no time with the family gets you what it gets you..distance, resentment, anger, frustration, and eventually nothing. I love my marriage, I love my husband, we work together. We are a team. We have conflicts, but who doesnt. Working through them is a part of growing up and becoming an adult. Too much childishness going on here.
Brunobear
I am 63. All my mates are the same age and happily married to the same girl after forty years or so. Plenty of fun in our lives with our kids and their spouses and our grandchildren. We spend a lot of our time with our families and always have. Family first. My wife has said if I want it on the side to go to a brothel - she wouldn't object if there is no attachment like with an office romance/affair. Not interested in any side games. My marriage and family are far to important to be a drunk/womaniser/gambler or any other vice or habit that detracts from the welfare of my extended family or would shame me with them or my community. I have a great life in Melbourne, particularly with AFL footy. A game the whole family loves and participates in as spectators, or players. It will not surprise you that my team is the Saints.
ca1ic0cat
You are all married to the same girl after 40 years or so? Pardon me, but are you all married to her at the same time or are you taking turns?
Your wife's idea of a brothel is probably a good one. You don't pay a woman for sex, you pay them to leave! No competition to the marriage there. These pathetic salarymen should learn to go out and have a good time. At least demand enough money for a few beers!
Fadamor
49 years old myself, so I can feel these guy's pain. Just wrapping up my first marriage now. Should be getting the final divorce papers in a few weeks. Sex disappeared after the first three weeks or so. I think I'm too tired to be chasing tail anymore, so once this is done I'll live the life of a eunich (why not? been doing it for the past two years or so.)
If you're not able to meet household expenses plus 500 yen/day, how the heck are you going to pay for a prostitute unless you make it an annual present to yourself from the loose change you save throughout the year?
nath
@Brunobear - It is OK now, you wife is no longer looking over your shoulder - you can say what you really mean. ;-)
But for real - my wife is Japanese, married for nearly 40, still enjoy each other and sex too - so it is not true that marital sex is dead or dying for all. Probably has something to do with shared interests, respect, etc.