New Men Know
What's for Lunch

NOT ten years ago Japanese male activities in the kitchen were limited to opening the refrigerator door for a beer—and not always deigning to close it. But now with the rise of the dokushin otoko (single man), men in the twenty-five to forty-five age bracket are launching into new and meaningful relationships with their pots.

In the Tokyo area more men are carrying their own bento (boxed lunches) to work, cooked and assembled by their own selves in the early morning hours. Yamashita Minoru (35), a software engineer who works for one of Japan's largest electronics manufacturers, says, "I make my own bento because it makes me feel good. Sure, it's a lot of work and some mornings when I have to get to the office at 7:00 for a meeting, I just can't hack it. But I always regret it later when I'm lining up at the convenience store to buy bad sandwiches."

Yamashita is typical of a growing number of self-sufficient single men who know how to take care of themselves without the aid of wives and girlfriends. Once considered extra-terrestrials in Japan's heavily patriarchal society, such men live with the likelihood of staying single forever, and are okay with that knowledge. "Five years ago I was desperate to get married," says Yamashita. "But now I've learned to value my time and my freedom."

The first to tap into this emerging market of kitchen-oriented single men are publishers, who have been quick to come out with cookbooks geared specifically for businessmen on the go from early morning till midnight. These books give detailed instructions on, say, marinating a slice of pork upon coming home at 11:00, then getting up at 6:00 to let it cook it on a sheet of aluminum foil in the toaster for ten minutes and in the meantime, jumping into the shower. They include information on twenty-four-hour supermarkets, on shopping for toxin-free ingredients at convenience stores when nothing else is available, on the least messy way to cook an egg and tuck that over a mound of rice.

Watanabe Keita, who works the men's fashion floor in Tokyo's high-profile Isetan department store, says, "The trick is in the assembling, like figuring out which shirt goes with which jacket, and so on." Watanabe is a snazzy-looking thirty-two-year-old who says his personal brand of choice is Louis Vuitton. But two years ago, he had been overweight, too tired to work out and with no prospects for finding a girlfriend to look after him. "But then I decided to take my health into my own hands, and started taking bento to work," he says. "I've shed 5 kilos, and feel much better and more energized. Even being girlfriendless doesn't bother me much." Watanabe's home bookshelf is stacked with cookbooks for men, among them a well-leafed copy called Bento for Men Only, and described as "my personal bible." According to a publishing survey by Dentsu Inc., cooking and household related books for men comprise a nice little niche market, estimated to cull over 100 million yen in 2009.

Men who cook have also become the subject of bestselling manga, like the enormously popular Kinou nani tabeta? (What did you eat yesterday?) by Yoshinaga Fumi, now in its third volume and selling over 500,000 copies. The protagonist is a gay lawyer in his forties who lives with his hairstylist boyfriend in cozy, cook-at-home harmony, and the story unfolds in a way that includes detailed recipes of the lawyer's elaborate meals.

Media analyst Ohtani Mitsuharu says the men's manga market is "dividing up" into two camps: the "Akiba"-indoctrinated sex and violence genre, and the stories for single men who are or aspiring to be self-sufficient in their personal lives. Says Ohtani, "The latter camp often double as instruction manuals on cooking, cleaning, DIY stuff—basically, they provide entertainment while instructing the reader on how to live the quality life, all on their own."

Interestingly, the market is heavily gendered: women have their own store of instructional fiction to better their lives, and there's not a whole lot of mixing and interacting. With this interest in self-styled well-being for one, it's little wonder that fewer Japanese are bothering to get married.