Today is Valentine’s Day (in Australia, although the date above is set by the US based host of this blog), that day when expressions of affection are made public, where couples are given the liberty to renew vows of matrimony or provided with a sharp reminder to declare everlasting devotion to their significant other (or face the consequences). On this day, presents are often exchanged, most notably chocolate – a substance that in its own right has fairly questionable aphrodisiacal qualities but when combined with sugar becomes the embodiment of romantic love. Or so one is led to believe if approaching things from a Western perspective, for the tradition of Valentine’s Day has a somewhat different interpretation in Japan, and it is one that makes it quite a fascinating study in human behavior and social expectations.

Japan, as a non-Christian nation (meaning not founded on or around Christian beliefs), was initially slow to adopt this most Western of traditions, however from the mid-20th century onwards the spread of Western mass culture to Japan brought about a shift in mindset and the adoption of Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to celebrate personal relationships. However unlike in the West, the expectations surrounding Valentine’s Day were focused on female relations with men, for under Japan’s traditions women did not play as prominent a role in public matters and so were expected to defer their own ambitions to their male counterparts.  Hence rather than give chocolate as a sign of genuine affection for someone, women employed in the corporate world of Japan were expected to provide chocolate to their male colleagues out of a sense of obligation. Since it was the male employees of a company that dictated how the company was run and whether it would succeed or fail, any encouragement to the male workers of the company was deemed beneficial (particularly to the continued employment of women in the company), and so rose the concept of “義理チョコ, or obligation chocolate”.

However department stores in Japan, aware that a one-off hit of chocolate sales were good but two were better, came up with the idea of “White Day” in the 1960s, whereby male staff would repay their female colleagues for their kindness by providing chocolate in return.  Hence the concept of “obligation chocolate” runs both ways, although in terms of marketing and overall corporate interest Valentine’s Day is by far a much bigger deal than “White Day”. While it is often considered better “form” to make one’s own chocolate and then distribute this in the form of a gift, the pace of modern life in Japan means that most people purchase chocolate from department stores and give these to their colleagues.

Yet one chocolate maker has gone out on a limb to try and overturn the concept of “obligation chocolate” and return Valentine’s Day to its more traditional image as a genuine expression of affection. Or at least that seems to the reason why, earlier this month, Godiva Chocolates Japan took out a full-page ad in the Nikkei Shimbun calling on Japan to “end the practice of obligation chocolate”.  According to the text in the ad, CEO Jerome Chouchan declares that Valentine’s Day should go back to its origins and not be used as something to just “improve relations around the office”.  However as this article by Jake Adelstein notes, the reaction to the ad has been mixed. While some agree with its sentiment, others have interpreted it as a cynical marketing ploy, given that Godiva chocolates are not usually given as gifts on Valentine’s Day and thus halting the practice of “obligation chocolate” would benefit Godiva’s sales.

Yet the fact that most reactions to the ad have been positive shows that the issue of “obligation chocolate” is one that people have been mulling over for some time.  It seems that giving chocolate as an obligation is regarded as more of a nuisance than anything else, and one office practice that is unlikely to survive much longer as workplace diversity and a falling workforce participation rate forces changes on corporate Japan that are ultimately replicated across society as a whole. 

I’ve been examining aircraft crashes as of late, primarily in relation to the confirmation last weekend by the RAAF that an EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft belonging to the Australian Air Force had been damaged while participating in Exercise Red Flag at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, USA. The jet suffered extensive damage to one of its rear tail sections after an apparent engine failure and fire following an aborted take-off attempt.

This incident, which raised barely a murmur here in Australia, stands in stark contrast to recent events in Okinawa, where in late December 2017 part of a CH-53E Super Stallion fell off the helicopter in flight over the city of Ginowan and landed in the grounds of a kindergarten.  This was the latest in a series of mishaps involving US (primarily Marine) military equipment over Japan, and served to heighten the fears of city residents about the mechanical state of US Marine Corps aircraft traversing over the city. Protests were lodged by the Okinawan prefectural government with both the federal government in Tokyo and the local US Marine Corps command, who (eventually) apologized for the incident and promised to ensure that there would be no repeat of it (I say eventually as the Marine Corps originally denied that the part fell off one of their helicopters in flight, only to confirm a few days later that it did in fact fall off a Marine Super Stallion).

Then late last month the Japanese government took the extraordinary step of appointing some of its own Ground Self Defence Force inspectors to Marine Corps bases in Okinawa in order to check the airworthiness of Marine equipment, specifically the AH-1Z Viper and UH-1Y Venom helicopters. According to Defence Minister Onodera, “The Ministry of Defense will promptly confirm and verify the state of inspections and maintenance conducted by the U.S. side utilizing the Self-Defense Forces’ professional and technical knowledge.”

It was not without a sense of irony, then, when news came on Tuesday morning of the crash of a GSDF AH-64 Apache helicopter into a residential area of the city of Kanzaki in Saga prefecture. In a press interview given later in the day, Defence Minister Onodera confirmed that the main rotor head on the helicopter had recently been changed during maintenance, thereby indicating that this may have been the cause of the accident. During Diet budget deliberations, PM Abe also issued an apology to city residents on behalf of the government, promising that everything would be done to prevent a similar incident from occurring.

This serves as a reminder that no matter how confident one might be in one’s technical prowess, accidents and mishaps are an inevitable part of base operations, and that goes double for the Marine Corps given the high tempo of activity in the western Pacific.  The powers that be might want to take this into consideration when voicing criticisms of Marine Corps, and might express some degree of sympathy for the aviators whose professionalism and sacrifice have prevented any greater disaster from occurring.