Hidaka says that it was designed to give women the chance to show their feelings. “In a macho, male-dominated era, I guess that made sense,” she says. Like White Day, the origin story behind Japanese Valentine’s Day is a bit fuzzy, but around 1970, department stores started encouraging girls to buy chocolates for boys, so they could show their interest without using words.
Shigematsu thinks that people having less discretionary income has more to do with the holidays’ decline. After all, some estimates say that the average disposable income for a Japanese worker is the lowest it’s been in 30 years.
“Gender roles and gender identity are shifting in Japanese society, as elsewhere. The invented tradition of females giving gifts on Valentine’s Day, followed by a month later by males reciprocating them on White Day, is just not holding in terms of sales figures, given the other economic and social shifts happening.”
Yamaguchi, meanwhile, thinks that the exotic, Western allure of Valentine’s Day is running dry for modern Japanese at this point, being replaced by more recent imported celebrations like Halloween.
Puratos’s Nagase says that both Valentine’s and White Day are becoming more casual and less rigidly defined by romance: “Chocolate lovers, not only women but men, spend a lot of money to buy premium chocolates for themselves.”
So can White Day survive if Japan’s Valentine’s Day continues its identity crisis? Perhaps both could be rebranded for younger generations – a holiday where you treat yourself, rather than getting trapped in an expensive cycle of gift-giving.
“With the gift-giving-back culture, it does add up,” Hidaka says. “People have started to rethink.”
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Bryan Lufkin is BBC Capital’s features writer. Follow him on Twitter @bryan_lufkin.
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