The Importance of Obligation Chocolates

Valentine's Day, Japanese Style, Part 2

By Margaret O'Connell
February 23, 2009

The girl-crush variation of the standard Valentine's Day behavior described in Part 1 of this article may or may not actually exist outside of the realm of manga to further complicate the February plans of Japanese girls and women. Even if it does not, there can be little doubt that the various non-romance-related obligations toward male acquaintances which have gradually accrued to the Japanese female role in celebrating Valentine's Day can be both cumbersome and expensive.

This is especially true for adult women. T. Ramune, a Japanese-born writer for the www.japan-101.com website, recounts how "As a young lady, I used to work for a Japanese company in Tokyo and on February 14 I would carry tons of chocolate to the office, running to each floor and giving chocolate to my boss and my male co-workers."

The amount and impressiveness of the chocolates handed out is normally determined by institutional pecking order, not the giver's personal feelings toward the individual recipients. Erstwhile Tartsville regular Rebecca McGregor, who lived in Japan for approximately ten years and spent two years teaching English at a junior high school in northern rural Honshu, observes,

every Valentine's Day my female coworkers would show up with adorable little boxes of chocolates to distribute to their male coworkers and larger boxes to give to the principal, assistant principal, and other administrators. Chocolate can be very expensive in Japan ... so this was no small gesture for the female teachers — they often had to budget for it and carefully select chocolates to reflect the recipient's status in the organization (can't give a big box to your male friend and a little box to your boss — that's rude to the boss).

A less punctilious elementary school-level version of this "obligation chocolate" ritual occurs in a flashback in volume two of Aya Nakahara's teen screwball comedy Love*Com (Viz). When her two closest female friends suggest that she join them in baking chocolate goodies to be distributed on Valentine's Day, tall, tomboyish Risa Koizumi, the only one of the three who doesn't have a boyfriend, reflects, "A valentine, hmm ... I never gave anybody one before. That one time in elementary school, when the girls gave chocolates to every boy in class, doesn't count." A flashback sequence depicts nine-year-old Risa reacting to a female classmate's reminder that each girl is supposed to give chocolate to five of the boys with a dismayed "Whaat? That many?"

Due to various complications, high school-age Risa's attempts to give a chocolate-cake valentine to Atsushi Otani, a much shorter boy in whom she has half-unwillingly become interested, seem doomed to failure. But later in the story her male childhood friend Haruka, a former crybaby who has grown up to be tall, handsome, and fervently devoted to Risa, fondly reminisces about receiving cheap "giri choco" from her back in fourth grade.

In the present-day storyline, the exasperated Risa winds up giving her homemade valentine to the excessively attentive Haruka after Otani refuses it in a jealous fit of pique. Undaunted by the "Just Friends" scrawled across the top of the cake in icing, Haruka declares, "It made my day anyway, cuz you made it yourself and everything. Back in grade school, all I got from you was five 20-yen chocolate bars. So this was a huge improvement."

"I gave you chocolate bars? As a valentine?" Risa asks, slightly embarrassed.

"You don't even remember?!" the Risa-obsessed Haruka asks incredulously.

"It was in fourth grade ...."

"Oh! That time all the girls gave to all the boys," the semi-oblivious object of his affections replies. "Were you one of my five?"

A flashback image shows grade-school Risa passing out plastic sacks of cheap candy bars, with other boys in the background exclaiming disgustedly, "Gyak! Koizumi's has gotta be the worst.... You can tell she was forced into it."

Nine-year-old Haruka, however, is visibly thrilled. As the present-day Haruka explains, "I was so happy to get a valentine from you, I didn't care what it was. It was my treasure. I kept those chocolate bars in my desk drawer to look at. In fact, they're still in there."

"Throw them out!!" present-day Risa exclaims in horror. "They're rotten by now!!"

"Your cake's too special to eat, too," her food-hoarding admirer continues dreamily. "So I ...."

"Please eat it!! Today!!" Risa interrupts, appalled. "It'll go bad!!"

"Okay ...." Haruka reluctantly agrees. "Seems like a waste, though."

"Jeez, Haruka," Risa exclaims, exasperatedly wiping her forehead. "You are freaky."

In addition to relatively low-priced "obligation chocolates" like Risa's cheap candy bars, most women either make or purchase a much fancier and more impressive confection for their actual love interest. These more genuinely heartfelt valentines are referred to as honmei ("prospective winner") chocolates, and, when store bought, are often handcrafted by an expensive upscale chocolatier. As an example of the latter, T. Ramune cites "Limited chocolate [imported] from Europe by air [that] can cost about $200 U.S." (Ironically, Ms. Ramune's husband actually prefers the less expensive Japanese confections usually given as giri chocolate, since "he claims Japanese chocolate is not so sweet and has a real cocoa taste.")

Although other sources tend to quote more moderate prices even for the relatively deluxe sweetheart-targeted chocolates, all this honmei and giri choco gift-giving can still add up to a fairly substantial sum. In a 2007 Time Magazine article, Toko Sekiguchi estimates that "Women spend about $20 for their truffle-worthy honmei, and an obligatory $6 each for their sweet-toothed coworkers, of which the average Japanese female knows six. That roughly comes out to $56 per woman, not to mention the accompanying [non-edible] gifts ($66 on average) and the fancy dinners that she pays for."

No wonder blogger/www.tenchi.us proprietor Troy S. Hogg, a former Japanese Exchange Teacher in the Hiroshima Prefecture, exploitatively crows,

Valentine's Day in Japan is the BEST! ... Boys are just on the receiving end of this LOVELY day! How "sweet" is that? ... So, for all of those gentlemen who would like to be showered with affection on Valentine's Day, purchase a ticket overseas ... just be sure you leave the country within 30 days [i.e., before the guys-give-back-to-girls holiday White Day] or you'll need another kind of VISA!

Naturally, these Christmas shopping-like customs are a bonanza for the confectionery industry — not to mention department stores, which begin setting up prominent heart-shaped chocolate displays as early as mid-January. Sekiguchi's Time article describes the Chocolate & Cocoa Association of Japan as stating that $400 million, or over 10% of their total annual chocolate sales in 2005, was spent in the run-up to Valentine's Day that year.

And that appears to be a conservative estimate. Other sources claim that amounts ranging from twenty-five to fifty percent of the Japanese chocolate industry's annual income are derived during the peak period leading up to February 14. This is not particularly surprising, considering that one consumer survey showed that nearly 80% of Japanese women in their twenties and thirties purchased Valentine's Day chocolate.

Under the circumstances, it's not exactly shocking that 70% of women who participated in one poll were suffering from sufficiently severe choco-fatigue that they wished the custom of giri-choco obligations could be obliterated. Even shopping for the perfect honmei choco for the guy they really care about can evidently be as stressful and exhausting as waiting all night for the latest model iPod or video game console in the Western holiday gift-giving season. According to the Time article, one poll showed that 58% of female respondents

felt that Cupid brought the blues, not because of a lack of dates but because of all the preparation involved. That would include, for example, standing in line for half an hour in the freezing cold to get their hands on that $55 box of four chocolate bonbons. Morinaga, a leading chocolate maker, has research showing that an increasing number of women in their 20s are now fighting the chocolate mission creep by making their own treats instead.

"Mission creep" is right. According to the Wikipedia article on Valentine's Day, some Japanese girls and women also give purely platonic so-called tomo-choco to their friends, including female ones. In the words of a commenter on the Slashfood website's Valentine's article, " 'Tomo-choco,' or friend chocolate given between girlfriends has become a buzzword (different from 'giri-choco' in the fact that it expresses a more casual attitude of friendship rather than formal gratitude)."

The more voluntary tomo-choco innovation is undoubtedly more gratifying on a personal level than being pressured into presenting chocolates to male bosses, teachers, co-workers or classmates whom you may not even like. Still, some of the descriptions of increasingly all-encompassing Japanese chocolate-giving protocols tend to evoke visions of eventually being socially required to exchange at least token Christmas gifts with virtually everyone you know. No wonder some women console themselves after all this Valentine's Day chocolate-shopping by indulging in "my choco" — chocolate purchased for themselves.

T. Ramune on workplace Valentine customs
Time Magazine article on Japanese Valentine expenses
Wikipedia entry on Love*Com