I was the one who asked yesterday about women in their teens to mid-20s seeming more transactional. Thank you for your replies.

At first, most women tend to be very transactional and quite assertive（笑） When I first met my current companion, I was the one thinking, “Wow!” and “Seriously?”（笑） That said, I don’t feel that my companion has had that many previous partners. How do I know? Because “those who know what to look for can tell.” Also, after seeing each other for around three years, she started opening up and coming much closer（笑）. Around then, she finally started calling me handsome, and it began to feel more like papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan). Since then, we’ve both looked forward to our dates every other week, and I get the feeling that she genuinely enjoys coming to see me.

By your mid-20s, both men and women are fully grown adults who’ve experienced most things—and, honestly, they’re already “middle-aged” in the eyes of younger people. Once you’re past your mid-20s, it’s unrealistic to expect there to be no sense of a transactional relationship. What Aya wrote is the reality. The complaints you hear from women behind the scenes—regardless of papa-katsu—are something else… If you understand that, I think you may still be able to stand out as a rare bright spot. Those who are still fresh-faced and in their mid-20s or younger probably have some possibility left. That said, it goes without saying that you have to be chosen—you need to offer something that makes you worth choosing. Unless you understand that papa-katsu is something neither men nor women would want to do if they didn’t need it, I don’t think you can eliminate that need for the other person.

Why do women in their teens and early twenties come across as so transactional? An essay by Atsuhiko Nakamura, a nonfiction writer who continues to interview women involved in papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan), may offer some insight. On your smartphone, try reading the piece titled: “Be Careful with Women in papa-katsu Who Claim to ‘Like Older Men’… ‘There Isn’t a Single Woman in Her Twenties Who Likes Old Men!’ [Atsuhiko Nakamura’s Nameless Column]” You’ll see just how much young women today hate older men and try to squeeze money out of them. Apparently, driven by anxiety about the future amid Japan’s growing poverty—and heavily influenced by social media and its emphasis on looks—these women see every man in his late forties or older as less than worthless. So, in order to lavish money on young hosts or handsome idols they support, they easily extract cash from the older men they despise. I’m not part of Generation Z, so I don’t take it quite that far, but I can understand the feeling fairly well. Don’t you have even one gray hair? Any wrinkles or sagging skin? Is your body still the same shape as when you were young? What about bad breath? Do you whiten your teeth? As Mr. Nakamura also says in another article, older men should take a photo of their face with their smartphone and compare it with Shunsuke Michieda of Naniwa Danshi, whose image comes up when you search Google. Young women today like clean-cut, handsome men like that, while older men are instinctively repulsive to them. Even President Mikitani, one of the wealthiest men in Japan, has reportedly been rejected by women in their early twenties. A teenage female acquaintance even said of Sho⚪︎ Sakurai from Arashi, “He looks like a frog—it’s hilarious.” Sakurai is 41, but he should be one of the most handsome men in Johnny’s. Simply being an older man can make someone an object of disgust—even if he’s a Johnny’s idol. Rather than turning away from an unpleasant reality, use this as an opportunity to think about what you should do, knowing that young women basically dislike you. You should also show it to any friends who are likewise trying to pay for the company of young women—assuming they’re all older men, of course.

What do you think those “highly transactional, with a long list of past partners” women in their teens to mid-20s were like at the beginning? Surprisingly, many of them were actually innocent and rather easy to deceive—the kind who readily took men at their word. The questioner is trying to satisfy his own sexual and romantic desires by giving money to the young woman in front of him while calling it “pseudo-romance,” right? I’m not criticizing him; I’m the same way. It’s not as though he’s reaching out because he genuinely cherishes the girl. Once she realizes that, she starts to develop that “transactional” attitude. In other words, the girls who are openly transactional, or the young women who constantly vent here—perhaps to relieve stress—are actually the pure ones. It’s all a matter of perspective, though. The questioner can’t let go of his preconceived notion that “young women are highly transactional,” can he? In the same way, women in their 30s who are just getting into papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) may have once thought, when they were younger, “Papa-katsu is disgusting. I could never do that.” You could say that people who are prone to being trapped by those kinds of fixed ideas tend to get along. Their wavelengths match, so why not? At some point, when an innocent girl who’s easily deceived by men becomes “transactional,” she must have suffered a major setback and lost hope. I don’t have what it takes to remove those thorns, so I try to protect and take in young women before they reach that point. That’s the strategy I follow.