4.a Valentine giri and hontou gifts

The case of Valentine is one of the paradigms of modern gift exchange in Japan. On Valentine’s Day, Japanese women give heart-shaped chocolates to their bosses and male acquaintances at work. Bosses reciprocate, only if they wish, a month later, on White day (15th March). Women and men call these chocolates giri-choco (obligatory) gifts of chocolate. Women give giri choco to their bosses to thank them for the help given during the year. Giri choco cost between 300 and 600 yen (£4). For Japanese women these gifts have a similar value as a drink or a coffee. Women also give hontou-choco, real (sincere) gifts of chocolate to their lovers and friends. Many women do not count husbands as recipients of hontou-choco. Husbands, like the male boss at work, receives giri, obligatory chocolate. Only young women (and students) give hontou chocolate to spouses, friends and males at work (or teachers and boys at school). Only in very rare cases, do women give giri or hontou to a single male recipient.

Valentine’s Day was known to Japan through contact with European and American travellers. In 1936 Morozoff, a Kobe-based chocolate company, launched the first chocolate selling campaign, mostly targeting the needs of foreigners. He imported Valentine’s Day from Europe as the day of ‘romantic love’ in which lovers exchanged chocolates and cards. There are many disputes among chocolate-selling companies as to who was the first chocolate company to introduce Valentine chocolate campaigns successfully. Valentine’s Day did not take off until late 1970s. This coincided with three major social changes. The nuclearisation of families, women working outside the home in office work, a decrease in arranged marriage, and the economic success of Japan which allowed women to spend money on commodities such as drinks and chocolates. In 1996 estimated chocolate sales were of 23.2 million tons or about Y49.6 billion (£ 261,000 million) worth of giri-choco. According to a 1991 survey (by Morozoff Ltd) 83.8% of women gave Valentine’s Day chocolate to people who helped them (always male) Only 27.5% of these women said they gave chocolate to their lovers and spouses.

Valentine’s Day gifts are an ‘office tradition’. Valentine’s Day, however, soon become widespread, in what some commentators saw as a ‘consumeristic fashion’, becoming one of the most interesting sociological events in recent Japanese history. Observers argued that the development of giri and hontou was as a result of the practice of arranged marriages. Romantic love was something that only few men and women contemplated, this being the main reason behind the ‘particular adoption of Valentine’s’. However, this does not suffice as an explanation. From the ethnographic material I argue that imagine in Valentine’s Day as women use Valentine’s gifts to ‘tease’ men.

During fieldwork, all the means of communication, television, newspapers and foreigners criticised Valentine’s Day as betrayal of its original concept. They argued that Valentine’s Day was not romantic because the main recipients were bosses and teachers, it was obligatory and consumeristic: the idle pursuit of women (salary ladies) with new economic power in a hierarchically given society (Asahi Shimbun 1996[62]). The criticism against being ‘not-romantic’ because giri, blurred observers’ attention to a very important fact. As seen in Chapter Three and Five, gift exchange has predominantly been a male activity, with women exchanging only with their kin and in-laws, children deities and elders. Men, by contrast, exchange gifts with other men at political events from which women are mostly excluded. Valentine’s Day is one of the first occasions in which young people (children at school) and women give. By giving they coerce men to accept gifts, and thus contract certain obligations for a return and thus establish relations. Women exercise some control through gift giving which was until now unavailable.

Valentine’s Day in Kamikatsu is not as widely celebrated as in Tokushima city or other parts of Japan. A large part of the population is elderly and does not follow any particular fashion. Some farmers do not know about Valentine’s Day, or White Day either. In contrast, Valentine’s Day is widespread and well known among women, people who work at the administrative office, children and young women and men. As in all forms of exchange, villagers emphasise its character of ‘itsumo osewa ni narimasu’, the day-to-day co-operation that is necessary to define the immediate community of givers and receivers.

In 1996 Valentine’s Day was observed by seven main groups: the town-office, the schools, shops, Japan Agriculture co-ops, Onzen hotels, post-offices, elder’s homes, with a total of less than 150 people. Out of a total of 98 people interviewed (52 women and 46 men), women gave 320 pieces of chocolate (both hontou and giri) and men reciprocated less than half of them. The differences among women were important, with most women giving one to three gifts to one man at work, in addition to their husbands and friends, to a few women giving up to 17 gifts of chocolate to nearly all the men they had daily contact with. In order of importance, women gave giri choco to male bosses at work and ‘those men around ‘ tonari hito, 50% (meaning men close to their desks and offices); 25% of chocolate was given to male friends; 5% of giri choco was for husbands; 2% for their own children, with 1% giving to the ie (ounces, grandparents). Of all these men, only a few bosses at work, and ‘men around’ reciprocated the chocolate on White’s Day. Some gifts of chocolate to husbands and bosses were said to be giri, but some were ‘light giri’, they contained ‘real feelings’ for the person and were not mere ‘obligation’. Giri as such was not a matter of strict ‘obligation’.

An employee of the town-office, a young woman in her mid-thirties explained: Hiraoka, my boss, is the most kind. His manners are gentle, and he always remembers you. He helps me during the year, every time he goes on a trip he returns with an omiyage gift, and offers it to the office. I will give him a giri chocolate. It is it a good occasion to ‘thank’ him. People enjoy giri chocolate at the office, too. We laugh and it is exciting, we tease the young men, too. When I was at school it was very scary, but now it is fun and I find giri is very light.

Different ideas of obligation emerge from this picture. Giri is presented as ‘light’ and having few social repercussions. As an adult woman, she thinks giri is a good way to thank her boss, but it is also good to classify man. Young men are teased, people enjoy the gossip and the fun. In the same group of women as the informant, other women argued that they gave for three reasons: because the men had helped during the year ‘tetsudai’, to thank them ‘arigatou’ and it was funny, odd, interesting ‘omoshiroi’. These three conceptions clearly indicated different ways of thinking about ‘obligation’ as responses to different qualities of help and thanks.

Valentine’s Day has had the greatest impact at school. The extent of chocolate giving, however, caused a minor commotion. The school authorities were shocked to realise that most if not all of the students at the primary school were exchanging chocolate inside the school. Children were terribly excited. Girls from the secondary school answered that they gave because it was ‘tanoshii’ (amusing), osewa (to thank for help), ‘kansha’ (gratitude) (especially from young girls to their teachers). Indeed, one of the particularly good-looking teachers had received gifts from almost all of his female students. One of the senior male teachers who overheard our conversation came to speak to me: ‘Valentine is so popular, that we have to stop it. [Children] start giving Valentine’s gifts as early as six and seven years old. We do not want small children spending their money on Valentine’s gifts. So they cannot do it at the school’.

However, Shouko, the seven-year old girl from my household, gave a different account. According to her account children of all ages gave each other chocolate. It was not only girls to boys, but mostly girls to their friends of either sex. She had come back home with two pieces of chocolate from her two best girlfriends, to one of whom she had also given chocolate. One girl in her class had given chocolate to nearly all her girl friends. Atsuko, Shouko’s mother, said that this girl was well known for giving things to other girls. In short, Valentine’s gifts are not only a ‘creative response’ women use in most office context to coerce men to engage in new types of communication. Valentine’s gifts are also used by children as a reflection of their wish to give. From birth until late in youth, children are recipients of gifts. Here children express their awareness of the importance of giving which they know exists around them. As I witnessed, children used games of giving and receiving gifts to replicate adult behaviour, especially to mimic models of politeness.

Finally, those who exchanged Valentines gifts at post-offices, shops and elder’s homes, said that they gave obligation chocolate because: ‘omiyage’ (it was like a souvenir), ‘ureshii’ (it was a happy thing to do, it caused happiness), mainichi no orei desu (thanks for every day help) and orei, (thanks for help). An informant summarised these different views by saying: ‘giri gifts give pleasure to people, giri is forgotten, it is zembu, all in one, giri and hontou’. As this informant seems to point out, Valentine is another way to think about prestations and obligation. It resembles omiyage in their spirit to bring ‘enjoyment’ to others, and it resembles orei, in the sense that it has the function to thank.

For women, it was also interesting to see how men would accept a ‘sweet’. As Cobbi (1995) has suggested in her analysis of ritual gifts to the deities, Japanese classify themselves in amato (soft-taste) and karato (strong-taste). People who are amato like eating sweet things like cakes, while karato are people who like drinking sake and it strong taste and the salty dishes that accompanies sake Cobbi 1995: 206). Japanese representations separate men and women, both in their tasks, their attributes - strength and beauty, taste, strong taste and soft-taste. She argues that finally, the kami (Shinto deity) are karato and Buddhist deity are amato (ibid.: 207). Men accept chocolate from women, although they might not always consume it. Like many giri gifts, they pass them to others or re-cycle them. Men give Valentine’s Day gifts to their spouses, and in some exceptional cases, share some of it at the office before taking the rest home for their spouses. However, the importance of Valentine’s Day resides in the capacity women have to make Valentine prestations within the community. It is through them that giving is generalised to individuals beyond the self and the immediate group (i.e. office). They are a good example of ‘creative responses’ to a new situation.

Because Valentine’s Day has so many romantic overtones, people are prone to dismiss the view that shopping for Valentine’s is crucial to the creation of the ideology of romantic love. What I suspect most Europeans and Americans find disturbing about the way Japanese understood St. Valentine’s Day, is that it reveals that ‘romantic love’ is not always about love in the West either. Most newspapers in Japan for foreigners talk about Valentine day as: ‘imported from the West...and subsequently transformed into a decidedly less-romantic question’ (Asahi Shinbun 1996). For most observers, St. Valentine’s Day in Japan is not about love. It is about ‘obligation’. Western types of St. Valentine’s Day might be commercial in nature, but romantic love is rarely put into question.

I will argue that the Japanese case illustrates at its best that Valentine’s Day is about shopping, and that shopping is the key element in the romantic construction of love. Following Carrier’s argument for Christmas I would argue that romantic love is constructed in opposition to the world of commercial relations. At Valentine’s Day most Japanese newspapers, for example, question why the ‘western’ ideology of romantic love has not been reproduced in Japan?. This is however, a misleading question. Japanese Valentine’s Day is as much about romantic love and consumerism as any other type of Valentine’s Day. To deny Japanese women the capacity to manipulate through shopping ideas about the relation between men and women, because it does not ‘look’ romantic according to western standards, is to deny them their capacity as consumers and active members of their society. As a friend put it: ‘after all, we do have hontou chocolate don’t we? Yes, I give many giri at the office, but I also give my husband a home made chocolate cake, only to him, it is very romantic. I will argue that giri chocolate is the way heterosexual Japanese women have of getting around a strong ideology of male dominance. Giri chocolate are small pieces of bribery to figures of authority, to attract them out of their distant position, to force them to renounce to their power in arranging marriages. They are, in Mauss’ word, ‘poison’. As I describe in 3.a, villagers do not find it difficult to separate home and work. Their gifts indicate, however, that they find difficult to separate categories of male authority within. Women place bosses at work and husbands on the same list of recipients of gifts on Valentine’s Day, not because of a lack of distinction between home at work, or house and kin. In fact, women put bosses, husbands, uncles, grandsons and all males they have relations with, in the same category of recipients of obligatory gifts. Women give ‘romantic’ chocolate to those men who have fallen out of the general picture of male authority, lovers, young teachers, young male employees and male friends.

The importance of Valentine gifts is that, for the first time, women are seen actively ‘giving’ outside domestic contexts, having a large measure of control over their expenses, and using their general affluence to spend money on gifts on their bosses. This is something which, until recently, was out of reach for women.[63] Thus, giri in this context is not only a manifestation of ‘gratitude’, but also a veiled form of resistance and social change.

Just as there are several conceptions of obligation, so there are changes in the perception of return gifts and the way money is used for gift giving. I know of families where the money used for gifts is not a burden, and where the basic use of money is for buying gifts. In others, money is the main gift, with villagers seeing the giving of money as an obligation one has as one acquires responsibilities inside one’s groups. In these cases gifts of money are usually not wrapped. Festivals, as seen in Chapter Five, are occasions in which money given as a gift and money given to pay the expenses of a festival are treated much the same and not wrapped – gift, economic transaction and the obligation to pay taxes being treated in the same way. They are also exhibited for all to see. To throw money in order to ask for useful things is not morally wrong; on the contrary, it provides people with a set of social and supernatural processes that contribute to the welfare of one’s household (see Chapter Four). Mochi, a form of ‘pure currency’ is thrown, forcing neighbours to compete with each other while those who give achieve prestige as providers of well-being (Chapter Three). Other households perceive gifts as a burden. Gift exchange at the school, and children’s use of money for personal gifts, are not seen as good practices. Underlying these variations, however, there is a growing concern about the use of money for buying commodities for return gifts.

Until recently, to return a gift was seen as one of the best moral actions which exemplified everything about Japanese gifts. It gave thanks and expressed rank and respect. Okaeshi epitomised the considerations of rank, obligation, and politeness. To a certain extent okaeshi was problematic but it had a social function. The problem with okaeshi was that It created a snowball effect, as most returns were made in order to acknowledge rank. The higher the rank of the recipient the more people returned.

The problem of okaeshi is best exemplified by the case of funeral gifts, which are accepted only on the condition that they can be returned. Around 10% of the value of the original gift is returned after the funeral. The case of sickness follows the same logic. Gifts for inauspicious occasions are usually gifts of money, and occasionally small gifts of fruits and flowers. They are always wrapped in ‘sad’ wrapping papers. Close neighbours, friends, workmates and relatives give gifts on these occasions. Funeral gifts are called koden or incense money; sickness gifts are called mimai or ‘sympathy’ gifts. They are always returned, but never in the form of money. Return gifts for funerals in Kamikatsu were commodities such as pens, envelopes, calculators or anything the giver may see as ‘useful’ or ‘needed’ for that occasion, and salt. It is interesting to note the construction of usefulness: pens are useful to write on the envelopes, envelopes are needed to wrap the money, calculators are helpful for calculating the value of the gift and its return, salt is useful to ward off pollution. Traditional koden were used to pay for the incense sticks used in mortuary rituals. Nowadays koden gifts are used to cover any expenses the bereaved family may incur. The bereaved family, pays in advance for returning gifts using their own money. Thus koden money becomes a ‘compensation’ for the expenses incurred (for the funeral and the gifts), rather than ‘help’ for expenses to come. In theory, both gifts ‘help’ economically as well as psychologically. In practice such gifts are a burden, and many of the worries at funerals and in cases of sickness revolve around the gifts given and returned. Gifts are a burden because villagers insist they cannot accept them without a return, usually immediate. In order to return the gift immediately, kodenokaeshi gifts are usually bought in advance, before the funeral takes place, and before visitors and family arrive to give their condolences. The koden gifts are given to a ‘secretary’, a friend or neighbour who greets the visitors, collects their gifts, writes down the amount and name and gives the return gift usually on departure. The problem lies in the fact that return gifts must be bought before the actual gift is received; givers anticipate the expenses this will cost and add more than they would have originally intended. As a result, giving and returning becomes tedious and expensive, exacerbating the psychological stress of the occasion. A fifty year old informant exemplified what most villagers think about these gifts: they are given to ‘keep the connection, or relations with people although they are a nuisance, mendoudakeredo hito to hito no tsunagari wo tsutsukerutameni wa hitsuyoudesu. The following case exemplifies the kind of problems with gifts on these occasions:

At a funeral in town a bereaved family bought twenty five return gifts from a firm in Tokushima, which specialises in funeral return gifts. The commodity chosen on that occasion was a calculator. The gift was wrapped in a cardboard box shaped like a book. On the left hand side of the book’s sleeve there were words of condolence. On the right hand side was the calculator itself. The book was the actual wrapping container of the commodity, sealed with a second layer of cheap noshigami which held the sachet of salt. Givers of okaeshi gave a wrapped envelope with money. Both appeared as exchanging equally wrapped commodities. Tanaka san argued that okaeshi are not useful, and they are, sometimes useless. It is a problem with the companies that take care of memorial services. They arrange the gift for the bereaved family, the wrapping. It is all very expensive.

The level of affluence of the Japanese society means that return gifts do not always bring benefit to the recipient. The gifts also make people feel ‘sad’. Mie, another informant argued that she felt ‘bad’ (kimochi warui) that the bereaved family had had to spend most of the money she gave them to return her a gift. They had invested her money in buying something that, for her, was not very useful. She said, however, that return gifts would not stop, ‘naka naka kawaranai’, because people felt a strong obligation to ‘thank’. Such is the problem of such redundant gift giving that in 1996, during fieldwork, local administrations made a serious pledge to abolish okaeshi. In the style of the local administrations their pledge, said:

‘Please keep the rule. We made an enquiry about [the presents of] return gifts. We are conducting a campaign to abolish okaeshi in the town by mutual consent. Let’s abolish okaeshi. Some groups in Kamikatsu unfortunately don’t keep to these rule. Let’s abolish the okaeshi of omimai (sickness) and okuyami (condolences) in the town completely again. Let’s put useful things in the envelopes. Let’s put kokoro zukai, cards instead in the envelopes to express our sympathy from the bottom of our heart kimochi woo osame.

After this pledge, the town office offered an alternative solution to returning gifts, by sending a sympathy card. The words were published for the villagers to copy:

Please accept our modest thoughtfulness. We anxiously await your return home. We do not need okaeshi [consideration]. Our Kamikatsu town, village of ikkyu and irodori (fun and maple leafs) aims at simple hearts and comfortable life in as much as we continue the campaign to abolish okaeshi. We would like to ask you to understand this main point of the campaign and approve it.

This letter, which in theory each villager should send instead of sending a gift or receiving one, was an important point of discussion. Villagers in general considered it a good idea. Those who had connections with the town office stated that they were no longer sending okaeshi gifts. The reactions were many in favour and against it. The general opinion was that okaeshi would not stop or only a few people would stop. Villagers say that they should ‘change their minds’, some saying that either they do not ‘like the meaning’ (competition for status) or it has ‘no meaning anymore’ (people live democratically). The issue of status and democracy was always present:

A eighty-nine year old man said conspicuously: ‘I think it is an expression of thanks to send a gift back, which should be in accordance with your grade/rank. But we shouldn’t send too much, or send gifts based on price and quality. I think that in some situations we may have to obey the government’s office (yakkuba)’.

While some villagers feel that there is strong pressure from the government to stop, others feel that the pressure will not change a life-time habit. The problem, however is that individuals cannot ‘stop’ okaeshi by themselves. Okaeshi is a ‘communal’ or ‘social ‘ problem as a sixty year old woman lamented: ‘it will be a pressure for me to have to stop giving okaeshi. I can not do it alone’. Okaeshi can not be stopped because it is too embedded in the social fabric:. ‘It is like a circle we can’t stop’. But if the economic cost is too high, the social cost of loosing okaeshi is also high because ‘it makes people connect with each other’.

Okaeshi is an ‘embedded’ practice because it is used to express feelings and also because there are market and economic constrains to it. A seventy old woman argued in long and indirect style:

‘The problem with okaeshi is that for the price of a gift I received I have to think about the price and kind of my okaeshi. It is going to be difficult because even if we talk about stopping it, in fact we think it is against the obligation [giri], so we are keeping it. But I hope that everyone will stop for ever’. A very elderly lady sitting next to her admitted what many are reluctant to say: ‘some of the gifts are useless’. And to make the point, she added quietly: ‘there are a lot of gifts in my closet!’

While some argued in favour of the obligation, other villagers were completely against it. A fifty five year old men saw the impersonality of the gift as the main problem. He makes clear that gifts without sentimental value are not good return gifts. He sees obligation and redundancy aspects of the same phenomena:

‘Giving among people should be a matter of the human heart, it should come naturally. An okaeshi is not an okaeshi if it does not include the human heart. A gift is not a gift when a person presents useless goods. We should be free from custom. We should share good foods and many things with everybody. I think it is good idea to change such a custom’.

Villagers good intentions to ‘stop’ okaeshi clashes with the reality of their practice. As Figure (N) below shows (see also Chapter Three), okaeshi was practised by 74%[64] of the population. At a quantitative level, the results reflect not only okaeshi but also some tatemae (public façade); at a qualitative level I hope to have reflected the some of the complexity of okaeshi as villagers experienced it

The town-office solution of sending a card did not take off, and left the question of okaeshi unresolved. The reason why villagers could not stop okaeshi was because, despite the fact that it was excessive and expensive, okaeshi was a good medium for expressing their preference for certain types of dominance within a neighbourhood. Commodity exchange, as in the case of Valentine’s Day gifts, facilitated the expression of relations between households and individuals in a group. It was certainly more expensive, but as villagers know, social life is expensive. To send a card was not perhaps the best of ideas. A card was not a substitute for a gift.

The paradox with okaeshi is not the sanction. The problem is that other return gifts such as wedding gifts, which are as redundant as funeral and sickness gifts, are not sanctioned. Why then are only funeral and sickness gifts sanctioned? A first observation is that we are faced with the opposition between auspicious and inauspicious gifts. Funerals and sickness are inauspicious times, and gifts are given to sever relations and re-create relations with those with whom relations have been severed. I cannot, however, reduce the explanation to the belief in auspiciousness and inauspiciousness. What it is easier to argue is that a certain amount of redundancy, like wrapping, is inevitable and desirable in capitalist gift exchange. It is through this redundancy that people ‘keep in touch’. The necessity for redundancy, however, is social and not economic. Those informants, such as Moto in Chapter Three, who refused forms of exchange that were useless, coercive and redundant, became marginal to the neighbourhoods and town.

Why then is okaeshi sanctioned and not the other forms of redundant exchange? What would happen if funeral and sickness okaeshi were eradicated? The question that worried me during fieldwork was answered by the local administration. It offered to create a team of volunteers to help in cases of distress. The town office reduced the matter to one of economic redundancy. To reduce okaeshi to a matter of economic redundancy is useful because it reveals the fact that it is the state, through administrative bodies, and the households that work in these bodies, that have organisational power within a neighbourhood. This would, in theory, help to remove the class distinction that is so profoundly veiled in a neighbourhood.[65] When villagers argued that they would not stop okaeshi, in their polite way they were saying that they wanted to maintain the differences among them, and veil them at the same time. Villagers might want to maintain class differences among groups. They do not always want to cede control to the households that are in the local administrations. Villagers clearly understand the power of these new administrations in transforming their villages for making a better town. Debates about the future of okaeshi were still raging when I left the field, and today many households still debate whether to send cards instead of wrapped commodities.

I have not so far mentioned wrapping. Wrapping was never an issue for villagers at funerals. It was what the large hotels and businesses did. Wrapping here reflected the same kind of redundancy as that contained in the action of giving. It did not add a new meaning to the gift. Many of the wrapping papers for funeral gifts were torn and discarded as soon as the recipient arrived at her/his house and opened the gift, whose fate was to be left in some cupboard. Wrapping, for these villagers, was as redundant as the gift itself. Villages, however, thought that to take care of the envelopes for gifts of money was important. They used small wrapping cloths to wrap the envelopes. They distinguished between the kind of commercial wrapping applied to gifts, and the action of unwrapping the gifts before giving them. In approaching a funeral house, the visitors, friends and kin would bow to the receptionist table, show their sadness, and unwrap their envelopes from the cloth, and hand the envelope to the person in charge. The action of unwrapping the cloth was a meaningful action that spoke of the sadness, care and feelings of the donor and recipient. Unwrapping, unlike giving, is usually a silent action, one that is done in private. To me, unwrapping the gift, seemed an expression of sentiment, of revealing in public, the human and material condition (money) of their relationship.

[62] ‘Sweet obligation’ and ‘O’love’s sweet loss to the company’s boss’ Asahi Shimbun 7 and 12 February 1996
[63] It is important to mention that women give chocolate, which is classified as sweet. Man usually make the statement that they do not consume sweet things, they are a feminine thing. Certainly, most men do not consume the chocolate (although they might eat one or two) and give it to their wives or other women. The fact that they do not consume the chocolate but they give it away for others to consume does not deny the idea that they are, nevertheless, forced to accept the gift and make a return.
[64] One of the problems in the gathering of data and its analysis was the fact that some people who say that do not practice okaeshi, do in fact, practice it. I found impossible to verify in some cases if it was a case of tatemae (people giving opinions they imagine to be the ‘acceptable’ opinion in that context despite what they believe or practice themselves) or what they thought I wanted to hear, or what the town office was asking them to do. The difference between people not practising and people saying that do not practice was thus, difficult to establish, and here they refer to the same data. I can only acknowledge the fact that many people did not like to admit they were still practising okaeshi because the town office was against okaeshi, but they did not know how to stop it.
[65] It is also really veiled in the country to the extent that in mid-eighties one of the most popular ideas was that Japan was the country of the middle class, where 80% of the people were equal in their economic power. As later historians and economics and anthropologist have argued this is not true. There were large economic differences not only in Kamikatsu but Tokushima. Such differences though were the most veiled ones.