Valentine's Day and not a chocolate clitoris in sight

Valentine's day has been adopted with all the enthusiasm that gimicky cutsie toys and stupid 'ingrish' 'love you' sayings spark in any Japanese consumer or company. And similarly to the adoption of Christmas, the event has been 'japanified' accordingly.

Valentine's day is for men in Japan. Women are the only ones who give gifts.

The companies' who introduced Valentine's day in Japan obviously were involved in chocolate manufacturing, and quite possibly some kind of subtle (or not so subtle) sexism. If you're really being the perfect japanese lady you will home bake cakes or chocolate krispies, not only that 'special' person in your life, but any man (and overwhelmingly it will be assumed to be a man... )that is important to you. For my flatmate, as she is the youngest in her company, this meant baking ten little cakes for each of the men in her office, not to mention tiramasu for our landlord, chocolate krispies for her dad and wrapping them up in cute heart shaped celaphane declaring 'I love you. I love you. I love".

I can't help but dwell on my own previous Valentine's days; hours spent filling chocolate vagina moulds so that we could sell them off and raise money and awareness for "East Fife Women's Aid" (A local charity working against violence against women in St Andrews); rehearsals and manic panic before performing in "The Vagina Monologues" last year and co directing and producing it in my first year; returning to my bedroom late the night of the last performance to find Chris had filled my entire bedroom with balloons and that I had completely forgotten the 'romantic' significance of the 14th Februrary.

Japan's health minister, (Hakuo Yanagisawa) last week declared that women were nothing more than "baby making machines' and thanks to Abe's support has not lost his job. Indeed his thoughts echo comments made in 2001 by Tokyo Governer Shintaro Ishihara's that after women lose their ability to have children it is a "waste" to keep them alive, and in 2003 former prime minister Yoshiro Mori's open criticism of women "who do not have children, enjoy using their freedom, and then ask for tax money when they are old". In this country, where the pill has only been legalised for a few years, where the idea of domestic violence or rape is so recent that it is barely discussed I can't help but feel that Japanese Valentine's day is just a sad reflection of the structure of this society more generally; yet another way to make sure that women know their place - in the kitchen making sweet things for the men in their lives.

I wish I'd brought my chocolate vagina mould and possibly a feather boa or two to stir things up a bit.