{"id":69479,"date":"2025-02-14T12:12:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T03:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/feb\/14\/valentines-day-japan-boys-men-gift-giving-tradition"},"modified":"2025-02-14T12:12:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T03:12:05","slug":"sweet-romance-japanese-boys-start-buying-into-gift-giving-on-valentines-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=69479","title":{"rendered":"Sweet romance: Japanese boys start buying into gift giving on Valentine\u2019s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Women are traditionally expected to buy chocolates for male colleagues on Valentine\u2019s Day but teenage boys are shunning the one-sided custom<\/p>\n<p>It has been several years since Japanese women first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/feb\/11\/japanese-women-push-back-against-valentines-tradition-of-obligation-chocolate\">signalled their contempt<\/a> for the long tradition of showering male colleagues with chocolates on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/valentines-day\">Valentine\u2019s Day<\/a>. Now the country\u2019s young people are slaying another sacred cow associated with Friday\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/feb\/13\/valentines-day-may-be-the-worlds-most-hated-holiday-but-i-wont-be-joining-the-pile-on\">orgy of commercialised romance<\/a>: one-sided gift giving.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally, women are expected to buy gift-wrapped chocolates for the men in their working lives, usually senior colleagues and others to whom they feel indebted \u2013 a tradition called <em>giri choco<\/em>, literally \u201cobligation chocolates\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/feb\/14\/valentines-day-japan-boys-men-gift-giving-tradition\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Women are traditionally expected to buy chocolates for male colleagues on Valentine\u2019s Day but teenage boys are shunning the one-sided customIt has been several years since Japanese women first signalled their contempt for the long tradition of showerin&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,2502,88,1115,281,42,1050],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-chocolate","category-japan","category-valentines-day","category-women","category-world-news","category-young-people"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69480,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69479\/revisions\/69480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}