All you Valentine's Day haters can now rejoice. You're not alone in thinking love is dead.
A group of single Japanese men staged an anti-Valentine's Day protest in Tokyo on Saturday, The Telegraph reports. The demonstration was organized by a group called Kakumei- himote doumei, which roughly translates to the Revolutionary Alliance of Men That Women Are Not Attracted To, according to the Japanese culture blog Spoon & Tamago. The group goes by the name Kakuhido for short.
However, it's not that these guys are like the rest of us Valentine's Day haters that loathe the annual reminder of their bachelor status and are totally against romance now. What they're really protesting is the commercialization of the holiday by big corporations and the societal pressure that men are expected to shower their partners with outlandish gifts.
"They have made relationships solely about money," Kakuhido Chairman Makoto Watanabe told The Telegraph. "There is a system of discrimination in place in Japan now by which the value of a man is measured by how many gifts of chocolate he receives from women."
You see, in Japan, it's custom for partners to not exchange gifts on Valentine's Day but for women to solely give their partners presents, which actually can be quite the hectic experience with everyone feeling pressure to snag their loved ones the perfect gift. Men, on the other hand, are supposed to return the favor on White Day on March 14, a holiday created by the Japanese confection industry in 1978, according to The Telegraph.
Kakuhido was founded in 2006 by Katsuhiro Furusawa after he began reading Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto after his girlfriend dumped him. This convinced him that his lack of luck with the ladies was a class issue, according to Spoon & Tamago.
A release about the Valentine's Day protest on Kakuhido's website read, "the blood-soaked conspiracy of Valentine's Day, driven by the oppressive chocolate capitalists, has arrived once again. In order to create a brighter future, we call for solidarity among our unloved comrades, so that we may demonstrate in resolute opposition to Valentine's Day and the romantic industrial complex," as reported by Spoon & Tamago. Kakuhido has also previously protested Christmas because the group members were reportedly "tired of feeling lonely and depressed by the lack of female companionship during the holiday season," according to The Japan Times.
Though Watanabe expected about 20 people to join the demonstration, The Telegraph reports that about seven men actually showed up. The protesters chanted "Destroy St. Valentine's Day" and "Do not be fooled by the conspiracy of chocolate makers" as couples tried to carry on with their Valentine's Day festivities in Tokyo's chic Shibuya shopping district. That had to be a buzzkill.
