I've posted about this before but it continues to fascinate me. I'm also not talking about the more obviously fucked up topic of the sexualising of teenage girls in Japanese media, but what constitutes an "older" person over there.

I'm currently watching the Netflix adaptation of One Piece, and saw some Japanese discussion about the show's portrayal of Shanks and the actor playing him, who looks like this on the show:

Show

There were comments saying that he "looks too much like a man past his prime" but also comments like "I like seeing attractive older men in media" and I'm just confused since he looks like a perfectly normal handsome actor man. They talked about him like Western social media talked about a 65-year-old Jeff Goldblum

I guess you turn into an ossan immediately after your 25th birthday

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    They have a whole word for it

    In Japan, women had traditionally been expected to marry at a young age,[19] and those who were unmarried after the age of 25 were metaphorically referred to as (unsold) Christmas cakes (クリスマスケーキ) in reference to items which are still unsold after the 25th.[20] The term first became popular during the 1980s[21] but has since become less common[22] because Japanese women today can remain unmarried with somewhat less stigmatization.[23] An equivalent term does, however, still exist that hearkens to the "unsold" nature of unmarried women, urenokori (売れ残り, "unsold goods").

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cake

    Japan is full of single, lonely MILFs because society doesn’t want to have sex with them. Incredibly sad

    • HerbalGamer@lemm.ee
      ·
      1 year ago

      Japan is full of single, lonely MILFs because society doesn’t want to have sex with them. Incredibly sad

      So that's where those internet ads were poiting to!

    • TheDialectic [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      volcel-judge

      I am shocked how strong the urge is to say regrettable things about a group of hyperexploited colonized people.

      Japan really has been forced to embody the worst of anglo idology.

      • Big_Bob [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Does Japan count as a colonised country when they were an (insanely fucked up) empire for most of its existence?

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]
          ·
          1 year ago

          They were an empire that failed and became a client state. They’re not colonized at all unless you’re counting the indigenous people

          • TheDialectic [none/use name]
            ·
            1 year ago

            We paid the yakuza to shoot leftists, they are still a one party state using only institutions we created, and every one of your favorite hentia tags was created because of a law we put in place. Are you telling me the plaza accords would have happened if we didn't have them under control.

      • replaceable [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Japan was never colonized, the opposite is true, they were the colonizers

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Japan absolutely was colonized by the US, though it was not half as vicious as the Japanese colonial occupation of China and Korea

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Lol you really think their ideology and work culture would be any different if they had won the war? Colonized my ass

        • TheDialectic [none/use name]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, the seccond most popular ideology in Japan is comunism. Third is ecofashism. So yes, if we didn't install neoliberalism it would look very different