Translated by Yuko Enomoto

Think of a Japanese male, and the image that comes to mind for many is a man who insists on being master of his home. However, today’s young Japanese men are starting to change that stereotype.

A phrase that has been in the news a lot lately in Japan is “Herbivorous Boy” (草食男子，soushokudanshi). It’s typically used to describe a man who is domestic, gentle and doesn’t get all pent up about finding the right woman or climbing the corporate ladder.

The Herbivorous Boy might think that while sex and love can go together, they don’t necessarily have to. He may not be that interested in winning the next promotion, intent instead to savor his private time and hobbies. He might lie in bed with a woman all night without ever making a move. He may even like sweets and cooking.

A large marriage consultation company took a survey of single men in their early 30s in 2008 and found that 61% said they tended to be Herbivorous Boys, while another 13% responded that they definitely were Herbivorous Boys.

The Herbivorous Boy of today is often compared to the men in their 40s and early 50s who started working during the Bubble economy of 20 years ago. Back in the 1980s, everyone believed economic growth would continue forever. “Want to work for 24 hours?”  was the phrase of the day from a TV commercial hawking an energy drink. Men competed as “salarymen” for good salaries and prestigious positions. Women wore tight-fitting “body-con” outfits and long hair, and men would woo them by buying them brand-name handbags and taking them on dates to fancy restaurants. Like carnivorous predators, men of that generation pursued with abandon high pay, prestigious positions and good-looking women. Women also played along, competing for grooms that had the three “highs”:  high pay, an academic degree from a high-ranking school and physical height. While the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law created room for lots of authentic career women during the Bubble era, most women were still consumed with the idea of getting a man with the three highs. They wanted the comfort of a good salary and the life of a housewife. Meanwhile, the men largely were content to have their wives at home tending to domestic chores.

After the Bubble burst, Japan went through the Lost Decade of the 1990s. The system of so-called lifetime employment began to teeter and the wives of the “three-high” men saw their husbands get lost in the corporate restructuring process; many women then went out to find part-time jobs. This is the Japan that today’s marriage-ready twenty- and thirty-something men grew up in. And these are the men who don’t get excited at the thought of a good job or a good wife – the Herbivorous Boys.

However, Maki Fukasawa recently wrote in her marketing column that “the Herbivorous Boys have a new kind of manliness.” There’s a certain attractiveness to the traditional macho image of a man who pursues his career and his women like a tiger, but it’s doubtful whether these sorts of men become good husbands and fathers at home. Today’s young males may not be as resourceful as those of past generations, but they are cooperative, they don’t have trouble with their wife’s career, and they are willing to divide housework and child-rearing duties – they are more like goats than tigers, and it could be argued that they’d be a smarter choice for a husband. This is the thinking we now see in many women’s magazines in Japan.

Nikkei Woman magazine did a survey this year in which it asked single men between the ages of 20 and 39 whether they wanted their wives to be full-time homemakers when they got married. Only 5.2% said yes. Meanwhile 56.8% said they could be stay-at-home dads. When asked if they would have trouble marrying a woman who earned more pay and had higher status at her company than them, 85.2% said no, and just 14.8% said yes. The old image of the man being in the lead has been “herbiverized” by today’s young Japanese men. And one of the direct reasons for this change is that the men want their women to earn as much as they can in this prolonged recession.

The Herbivorous Boys have a contemporary counterpart: the Carnivorous Girls. They intensely pursue men and careers. These independent women have no problem going to a bar by themselves. Carnivorous Girls are on the rise in Japan’s metropolitan centers. Many women’s magazines have articles explaining how Carnivorous Girls can “catch” their very own Herbivorous Boy. Magazines are winning readers when they run specials showing how CGs can catch their HBs through aggressively appealing to these passive men.

Herbivorous Boys and Carnivorous Girls. These trendy phrases help capture a Japan that is changing from a society where men worked and women stayed home with the kids to one where all sorts of lifestyles are accepted. Today men can garden and cook, working mothers can be bosses of male employees – the stereotypes of old Japan are becoming things of the past.