I also came from a fairly well-off family, but my parents’ company went bankrupt while I was in university, so I had to start receiving scholarships partway through.
I remember thinking, “If only papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) had existed back then…”
These days, though, there are probably a lot of young people who are short on money, since parents’ generation is less financially comfortable than before and nearly everyone goes on to higher education.
As Aya has explained, the details—and the accurate facts—are probably just as she says.
Even if someone isn’t actually doing it to pay tuition, I do think society is in a situation where saying that would be believable enough.
Marika
My first reaction after reading the question was, “If teenagers’ sexuality is warped, then so is yours.”
My apologies if I’m mistaken.
By the way, I paid all my own tuition and graduated. I came from a reasonably well-off family, too.
I wonder if that means I wasn’t loved.
Questioner, are you perhaps in your 50s? The situation surrounding student loans has changed dramatically from what it was 30 years ago.
Just to explain: in 2004, the Japan Student Services Organization was established, turning student loans into a financial business.
The organization aggressively promoted interest-bearing loans, and now one in every two people who attend university takes out a student loan.
The rise in student-loan use is also connected to higher university enrollment rates, soaring tuition fees, and declining incomes among parents.
Back when university enrollment wasn’t nearly as high as it is today, only wealthy people went to university, so not many students needed loans.
Now, however, the university enrollment rate has risen to around 50%. Meanwhile, the annual incomes of people in their late 40s and 50s—the parents of today’s university students—have fallen by as much as ¥1 million from their peak.
Despite that, university tuition has continued to rise. At national universities, tuition went from ¥30,000 in the 1970s to ¥530,000 from the middle of the Heisei era onward—more than a 15-fold increase.
With all these factors piling up, it’s no longer unusual for young people to graduate with ¥4–5 million in debt.
Given all this, it’s easy to understand why more female university students are turning to papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan).
Of course, plenty of girls probably claim it’s “for tuition” when they really just want to spend money, so you still need to judge each case carefully.
My condolences.
Who knows? I don’t think it matters what she uses the allowance for.
Personally, I never ask women about it in the first place.
That said, I once met a woman who, without me even asking, went on and on about how legitimate and justified her reasons were for needing the allowance. I don’t believe some reasons are more respectable than others, so being suddenly subjected to that kind of self-serving performance really put me off.
I have no interest in whether complete strangers are lying or whether I believe them. Either way, it has absolutely nothing to do with my life.
I don’t care whether a teenage girl has a warped view of sex, either. But I do think there’s something warped about your personality for going out of your way to post this in a question box.
