Narratives of Love in the Contemporary Japanese Society.
In the 1990s, during the economic boom known as Japan's bubble economy, there was a growing social awareness that money was the most important thing for people. As if to oppose it, a pure love boom occurred. It was thought that love in the intimate sphere was considered to be extremely valuable as a purer relationship. At that time, no specific techniques or manuals with psychological advice had appeared yet.
After that, a new phenomenon appeared in the 2000s due to the recession of the Japanese economy and the backlash of the pure love boom. There was an awareness that relationships of love should be maintained in consideration of factors such as high education, high income, and height.
What has emerged in this context was the spread of romance manuals that use clinical psychology knowledge. It provided psychological know-how on how to meet and maintain relationships between opposite sexes.
In this way, there is a shift in the narrative from love as a pure relationship to love that takes into consideration factors such as money and educational background. At the same time, the subjects who talk about love are being replaced by psychological knowledge.
What can be seen in this transformation is the social consciousness of love. There is a big shift from the promotion of romantic relationships based solely on love to the emphasis on forming romantic relationships using money, social status, and psychological knowledge.
In this presentation, while exemplifying several love manuals, I will show that this change in social consciousness has related to what people have thought of love and pure relationship.