For people in many cultures, cheating on a partner signifies the ultimate betrayal. However, a lot of online content has made it easy to be convinced that cheating is common in Japan. But what is the cheating culture in Japan really like, and how does cheating compare to those of other countries?
Before diving in, two terms are used in Japanese to refer to different types of cheating. The word uwaki (浮気) refers to situations like drunken mistakes or cheating as a quick way to end a relationship. The second word, furin (不倫), refers to an extramarital affair. Based on the language, it is already apparent that uwaki, or “floating spirit,” is not always treated as a big deal.
On the other hand, it seems that furin, which can best be translated as “adultery” or “immorality,” is taken very seriously. However, this has not always been the case.
History of Cheating Culture in Japan
Most People Consider it Cheating
How Often Do People Cheat in Japan?
History of Cheating Culture in Japan
In many cultures, cheating on a partner is a serious crime. However, historically in Japan, marriages served to form alliances between families and secure the production of heirs. Romantic love played no role, with one proverb stating, “Those who come together in passion stay together in tears.” Instead, desires for passion and romance were typically satisfied outside one’s marriage, a common practice for both men and women.
In a patriarchal culture, there have always been more opportunities for men to cheat than women. For centuries, concubines and geisha, a word that literally means “artist” and describes traditional female performing artists, catered to wealthy men and held a respectable position in society. Even lower-class prostitutes did not receive as much stigma as they would in other cultures.
In the 20th century, perspectives shifted. Cheating came to be seen as common and inevitable husband behavior. Men worked to earn money for their families, while women were expected to stay home with their children. The reasoning was that the men deserved to relieve their stress however they saw fit, and yet a woman who cheated was considered to be disrespecting her husband and children.
Hostess Clubs and Sex Work
Japan’s nightlife culture is more secretive today, but the attitudes are similar as long ago. Activities that many cultures would consider cheating are not deemed as such in Japan. These activities are not only semi-legal but prevalent in larger Japanese cities.
After work, groups of businessmen often frequent various establishments catering to them. The tame options are kyabakura, or hostess clubs, “girls bars,” and “snack bars,” where female workers provide male patrons with drinks and flirty conversation. The same is true of host clubs catering to female customers. Other businesses, such as pink salons, soaplands and “delivery health,” offer more direct sexual services, even though prostitution is illegal in Japan.
Japanese law defines prostitution as sexual intercourse with a stranger, so these places find loopholes, such as giving the customer and sex worker time to “become acquainted” before having sex. Other private services, some that cater to women as well, are also becoming more popular, offering boyfriend or girlfriend experiences.
Because these are paid services that involve no emotional attachment, they are generally not considered cheating by some people in Japan.
Most People Consider it Cheating
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43 Comments
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David Brent
I work in an all Japanese workplace, and I have asked my male coworkers (blue and white collar) about this issue over the years. The majority of them cheat on their wives. I asked how they would feel about their wives cheating on them; "Couldn't care less" was the polite version of their response.
It seems once wedding vows are said, and the first kid comes along, cheating is the norm here.
virusrex
According to the numbers in the article it is as much of a norm than in other countries that were investigated in the same way.
GuruMick
Live in a condo complex where 99% of women are in their 80,s and older and cheating never really crosses your mind.
Personally I dont and would not cheat...mainly because it would hurt my wifes feelings.
Also because I am old and such urges dont "raise their head " much anymore.
proxy
After 20 years in Japan, I know nothing about these establishments nor cheating culture.
But I have witnesses what I assumes were prostitutes in hotels in North America many times and even been offered services by cleaning staff. The oldest profession in the world is just as prevalent outside of Japan and is why so many conferences occur in Vegas.
Redtail Swift
Cheating is more rampant among women. Mainly due to the fact that their form of cheating goes beyond just physical intimacy. One compliment a day, keeps the cheating away. An eye glance, an open door, or even a smile towards a woman satisfies her self-esteem. No more is needed at that point which is why they rarely get to the stage of physical cheating. READ ON!
One study found that just under 20% of married people in Japan admitted to cheating on a partner, though there is quite a gender gap: 40% of married men and less than 20% of married women admitted to having extramarital affairs.
The key word here is "admit". Women are 10x times more secretive than men. They calculate plans more than men do. Their actions are direct and purposeful. Men, on the other hand, are just sloppy, but the evidence of affairs is there and easy to find because.....they simply can't communicate or dare not communicate their desires to their partner due to fear of rejection.
We want to say that cheating is unethical and immoral, but when are we going to ADMIT that sexless marriages are unethical, immoral, and I'll include not healthy. Unfortunately, marriage here in Japan is contractual and these men are being held hostage. Make joint custody a thing and all of these things go away.
Japanese men or men in general living here have the deck stacked against them. God forbid you end up in a sexless marriage. LEAVE! GET OUT! STOP WORKING! No man should be going to work every day, paying the mortgage, and not get any love at night. Leave her! Blow it all up! You'll be no worse off than you were in that hostage situation.
I'veSeenFootage
I knew I was in for a wild ride when this comment started like this, and boy I was not dissapointed.
virusrex
That is a non sequitur. If women are more secretive on a study that only means you don't have reliable information to form a conclusion about them. Not to mention that this is just a prejudice without evidence to support the claim.
So, you conclusion that women cheat more is based on two invalid premises, one that you think (without proving) that women are more secretive, the second that in absence of reliable information you can just assume an imaginary number and pretend that is the real percentage of women that cheat.
Redtail Swift
@virusrex There are many intangibles in life. Things like the pain you feel when someone cheats on you. Anyone can dismiss the idea that you are in pain. However, we are all human and admit that someone is hurting.
Any survey or the conclusions can be dismissed. We are seeking honest dialogue here. There are plenty of women who would honestly admit they cheated, but buried that bone 6 feet deep. And the truth is....it's our fault as men. We shamed them. A high body count = shaming.
Get a couple of glasses of wine in a woman plus a healthy dose of trust and they'll start sharing the truth. They do it with each other while you are at work all the time.
However, being respectful, you are more than welcome to live in your reality. But if you think for one second, that your darling hasn't done any cheating, then I want you to bet your paycheck. Give me a dollar for every fool that thinks their woman, their angel, their sweet innocent-looking woman, doesn't have a bone buried in the backyard, I know I'll be a rich man.
Negative Nancy
One of the biggest lies in human history is the benefit of monogamy. When sex became separated from procreation, the need to attach it solely to marriage became redundant. Its not 'cheating', its enjoying someone else's company. We can have multiple friends, so why not multiple sexual partners? And specific to Japan... there's the very real common issue of not getting any at home.
I'veSeenFootage
"All women cheat!!!!". This is turning into parody now.
Abe234
What they say to you in the office is one thing, what they say to a questionnaire is something different. The major difference is the reality of being caught. We do care! So I’d put all the Japanese anecdotes of my mate said this, my office worker said that, and I know one girl who works there and did, and try telling your wife you went to soap land and you partake in delivery health while your kids are at school and she’s cooking, doing the laundry. Good luck! As for the hostess/host bars, that depends on just chatting and the scam of draining the yen out of your pocket and how strong your liver is. And the odd one or two who do partake in extra curricular activities.
GillislowTier
Eh, the instagram and TikTok brain rot videos interviewing people on the street and cutting out the 95 who say no and the 5 that said yes to cheating is skewing the perception even harder than it already was.
People cheat because they can and there’s no consequences. Pure and simple. Even weirder is the idea that it’s expected so people do it so they do…
Jeremiah
There is no valid excuse for cheating. Ever. None. It is wrong.
kohakuebisu
I cannot answer this question, partly because I really don't want to know about cheating, but find it laughable for someone else to think they have the experience and knowledge to take it on and give a definitive answer. As noted above, many things online are driven by clicks and sensationalism is the fastest way to get clicks.
I live in the countryside, so most women I meet are 70 plus or mothers who've adopted the inaka mother dress code and aren't dolled up to the nines. If I lived and worked in a swanky part of the city surrounded by lots of temptation, I'd probably take a different view of cheating.
Derek Grebe
I’d never cheat on my wife.
Because call me old-fashioned, but I happen to love…my house.
Bob Monkhouse.
virusrex
Then the only position you can take is that you don't know, not just making up imaginary numbers and claim that is what is real.
Only if you can identify objective arguments to do it, else you are just making the mistake of thinking that if something is not 100% reliable (nothing is) then it is 0% reliable, that is not rational.
Being honestly mistaken because of obvious logical problems is not useful in any dialogue. Being honest would be to recognize you have no idea how much (if any) more secretive women are, or how this would affect the results of a survey.
When someone is able to use logic and valid arguments to refute claims you make that means it is also your reality, even if you decide to be in denial of it.
It is cheating when you promise someone to be in an exclusive relationship.
Hearsay is not enough to be able to claim this, the article gives a very clear example with the well reported case of the Miss Japan winner that was forced to resign her crown for dating a married man, meanwhile there was no apparent social punishment for the man. Women are routinely being sued for adultery as well, the excuses do not automatically eliminate consequences for the women.
Bruce Pennyworth
Cheating doesn't even exist from the mans side and is a cardinal sin for women. Just look at all of human history, is it a coincidence that every culture in the world accepted and promoted alpha males to positions of power and any man who wielded power had multiple women. While women who committed just one act of indecency were shamed?
Redtail swift also made a good point. Men more likely then not just get ho**y and deal with their business and go home. Women are calculated and devious when it comes to these actions.
From experience have been with multiple women who were married or in relationships and they all lied and kept it secret until the deed was done. Whereas I when in a relationship am always honest and still have women in the workplace and friends who would be willing to sleep with me.
John-San
Is there such a word for this in The Japanese language??? lol Cheating. Is there such a word in my culture??? I am caring for my ex wife who has dementia. What I did in our relationship like rooting around is it really cheating??? I will debate any person to tell me that I was A cheater when my daughter mother is care for with dignity by a person they both trust the most. It a stupid women thing (cheating) or rooting around on your partner that they feel degraded some how. Build a bridge and get over yourselfs.
virusrex
So you think there is no example where a man feels cheated when his wife (or girlfriend, lover, etc.) sees another man behind his back? Like, Othello became a famous play because men found it impossible to understand?
The "alpha male" concept is a myth
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_myth_of_the_alpha_male
Women are treated differently because of gender discrimination, cheating is just one of the many ways women are treated differently without having a real justification, the same as blindly assuming they are better at housechores or raising kids, and worse at positions of power.
GuruMick
Cripes...Maybe I got my wife all wrong all these 30 years ?
Maybe she is a real little vixen, a temptress, with a come hither look ?
Ah... I think I would have noticed seeing how we spend every waking hour together.....but when she is at work, at the old peoples home....who knows what evil lies in a womans heart !!!!
She,s banging grandads isnt she !!!!
Redtail Swift
Hearsay is not enough to be able to claim this, the article gives a very clear example with the well reported case of the Miss Japan winner that was forced to resign her crown for dating a married man, meanwhile there was no apparent social punishment for the man. Women are routinely being sued for adultery as well, the excuses do not automatically eliminate consequences for the women.
Hearsay?
1) The numbers I posted came from the original post. Click the "Read More" link at the bottom of the article. Yes, that one that you probably didn't click on.
2) My friends are lawyers here in Japan. I get my information from the source.
3) I've supported my friends who have suffered the worse. Google: Left Behind Parents Japan. There's so much content and most of the "factual" stories there will make you lose your appetite.
4) I've got over 30+ years living here in Japan. I've seen the transients come and go. I've been there to help them move out and find new places when their cheating wives did them HELLA DIRTY.
5) I'm not without my own personal stories. I was just smart enough not to go down to the ward office and sign my life away.
Listen, I'm not mad at the women for doing what they want to do. I'm not even mad at you for having a difference of opinion. You can dissect what I have to say till the cows come home. However, I am telling you that I know what I know. Not everything we read is true, especially in this century. I'll tell you this though. For women, the battle is always perception and narrative. When they walk into that Family Court, telling the judge how much of a victim they are, with the crocodile tears pouring out of those cute Manga-Mei eyes, they are there to win and their cheating is often excused.
It would be behove you to stop to being a white knight for a princess that sneaks out of the castle at night. Women know who they can finesse like sharks can smell blood in the water.
FireyRei
When my students found out I had divorced, I received quite a few phone numbers, then the 'fun' began, including married women. I didn't pursue them, I indulged their desire, plain and simple. Yes, it is very clear that many Japanese married women want something on the side as an exciting hobby, certainly not a full-blown relationship. I believe each of these women had no sexual relationship with their husbands. Once that marriage is sealed, the bills are paid, and security is assured, many Japanese wives will seek out extra marital affairs.
virusrex
Yes, hearsay, you quote zero numbers that prove family courts don't hold women accountable when they are discovered in adultery, just what you say happens, this is hearsay. There is zero numbers about this on the full article. Just your claim without any basis.
Hearsay again, without credentials or at least a source this claim is impossible to confirm, so it has no value as an argument. Someone saying that his friends are judges on family court and they say you are completely incorrect would have the same "argument". Would that be enough to prove it? after all their friends "outrank" your friends.
Again hearsay, anybody saying they supported friends that have it "the worst" and say the opposite would have again the same argument.
Appeals to authority from anonymous accounts are meaningless, if someone comes and say you are wrong and he has been in Japan for 80 years, would that be enought?
Which again are hearsay without any way to confirm them, in the same way, someone with double the amount of stories that say you are wrong, would prove it so because of it?
Irrelevant, the problem is that you are making baseless claims, so unless you can give logic arguments or reference to prove them they can be ignored as without value as arguments, the motivation you have to make this non-arguments do nothing so change the lack of value they have.
But you are also telling that you can't support what you supposedly know, and can't refute the examples that refute your claims even from the same article (such as the Miss Japan example).
The problem is not a "difference of opinion" as you misrepresent, the problem is that you are making claims that were easily refuted and try to defend those claims only with completely unverifiable hearsay. Believing in something (no matter how much) do not make that something actually correct, for that you need to argue and present evidence.
GuruMick
"My friends are lawyers "....and lawyers never lie !
They take an oath !
u_s__reamer
"Cheating" is just Nature at work (because IT and not we is in the "driver's seat"). Of course, the consequences can be messy and painful, but they must be "triangulated" by all concerned with commonsense and understanding of the "Call of the Wild", the pitiless sex-drive that trumps "morals" as an afterthought. Passion rules the body.
Geeter Mckluskie
Same as anywhere else
Redtail Swift
@virusrex
Good luck to you. Pray you don't learn the hard way.
For every man with a sob story about adultery, there was someone nearby he could have simply asked.
But here's some speculation that you may truly enjoy. There's a bunch of women laughing at a white knight dying on his own sword.
*sips tea Not really my concern should you choose not to believe or doubt everything.
If you're having girl problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but cheating ain't one.
I'veSeenFootage
And there's even more women laughing at corny misguided fools who proudly spout stereotypes about a whole gender.
GuruMick
Good to see the Mods dont think my wife is "bangin Grandads at the old people home "
Tamarama
My 2c. I've always thought that sex in Japan simply isn't that big of a deal. It's a bit of fun, nothing to get too crazy about, and as long as it's done with a little discretion and nobody gets hurt, not such a big deal. I've always kind of liked the light and playful Japanese attitude to sex.
Coming from a Western Judeo-Christian cultural background that has a weighty cultural perception of 'sin' around sex and cheating, the Japanese perspective of sex and cheating can be confronting. But, they are different folks, with different strokes, you might say.
They cheat a lot. But it's totally fine.
virusrex
Don't learn what? that hearsay is not an argument? That is the whole point.
Thinking that making obvious arguments that don't hold somehow means the person must blindly believe the opposite makes no sense either. My point is simply that trying to force a personal belief you hold as if it were a fact is not valid.
Nonsensical as well, proving that you have no argument in no way makes anybody a white knight nor it automatically means the opposite extreme in beliefs, it just means that people can poke many holes in your arguments so there is nothing objective about what you claimed about women.
falseflagsteve
Adultery should be a crime. Anyone who cheats on their partner is despicable and cannot be trusted in any aspect of their lives.
I have cut ties with many over the years over this matter and I’m ruddy well glad I did.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Are you going to make lying also a crime? I imagine adultery is a complex issue where people would like to continue the relationship with the cheated on partner but just want some action in their lives.
falseflagsteve
Taiwan
Yes and that type are dishonest, disloyal and beyond contempt.
Simon Foston
falseflagsteveToday 12:00 am JST
No, only an action that causes tangible and demonstrable loss of or damage to life, health or property should be a crime. Such a law would be totally unenforcable given the amount of offenders there would be that would need to be prosecuted, tried and convicted, including I daresay quite a few police officers, prosecutors and judges.
Do you think being "despicable" should be a crime too? For all you know, you have friends or colleagues you've always trusted impliciltly and you have no idea that they're carrying on behind their partners' backs.
Tamarama
But the Japanese don't think so, and this is their country and culture.
Let's be honest, JT is a bunch of non-Japanese people musing on life in Japan, a lot of the time. And what you see a lot of is non-Japanese judging the Japanese through their own cultural lens, and often disapprovingly. But that kind of culturally imperialist perspective does not allow for diversity and differing cultural values.
You will often see Japanese people say, visiting a prostitute/soapland/cheating is OK, as long as feelings aren't developed between the 2 parties. This is the line they draw. If it turns into an affair with emotional ties, then you have overstepped the mark.
It's just different.
Simon Foston
TamaramaToday 06:56 am JST
Perhaps it's being implied that adultery should be illegal everywhere, not only Japan.
Negative Nancy
Adultery should be a crime? Absolutely not. It is a matter between the people involved, and nothing more. My wife cooks at home, and I sometimes eat elsewhere too. Why can't I appreciate both? We may be financially and legally wed, but we don't subscribe to spiritual marriage, thanks. We have a happy and secure family unit, but we also allow each other some freedom.
virusrex
The difference is what is being promised, an "open marriage" and similar understanding means there is no adultery because there is no expectation of exclusivity.
Tim Sullivan
Never had the slightest problem with cheating here. There are so many opportunities...
Tim Sullivan
Adultery should be a crime. Anyone who cheats on their partner is despicable and cannot be trusted in any aspect of their lives
Won't happen in Japan my friend because nearly everyone is doing it here.
Negative Nancy
No, the difference is discretion. Nobody wants to hear the details, but it is assumed that is it happening. We both know our hearts are with each other, but my wife is in a profession that is energy intensive and requires shift work. We know not to spend too much time or money on side quests, but it satisfies an itch and ultimately it is a means of reducing stress.