“When I die, I want to be buried with her in my arms.” So says Nisan about his love Nemutan: a photo print of a X-rated video game character decorating a large pillow. They go on normal dates, including car-camping, karaoke, restaurant dinners, and photo booths.
It’s a little creepy that Nemutan is about 10 or 12, and that her otaku human lover is 37 and has adopted the name “nisan,” which Nemutan calls her older brother.
The New York Times Sunday Magazine author Lisa Katayama, blogger at Tokyo Mango, cites three potential explanations for this extreme moe behavior: the high number of Japanese virgins (25% of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34; a movement led by Honda Toru against “romantic capitalism” whereby love is seen to have been commercialized that looks and money have replaced pure feeling; and one Japanese behavioral economist who compares 2D love to “becoming a Buddha.”
The article fails to explore what ladies who have given up on 3D love are doing for their fantasy and fulfillment. Maybe they are busy reading Boys Love, and fantasizing about female-created man-on-man love. Ahhh, Japan. Ever so frustrated, imaginative and perverse 😉
Tokyo Moe 
I’m glad you wrote something on this. I was reading this on the train home one night and felt kind of sick, but that could have been the alcohol. What did you think of them running an article on this phenonenom? I have to admit I am a little tired of all the articles about creepy Japan, I mean just how many people are this extreme? I do find the reasons Katayama gives more interesting than the issue they supposedly lead to though, as with a lot of things in the “creepy Japan”category.
I am interested in all forms of male and especially Japanese male behavior, from vanity to abjection. Katayama’s blog image was even more disturbing than the NY Times image. Getting the ick feeling out of my mind and body, and somehow compensating my readers required me to find many days worth of subsequent hot Japanese and guest Filipino male images as antidote posts.
GEG, have you ever seen a pillow-lover at the Shibuya clubs and your other alcohol-fueled haunts? I can’t imagine any of the Top Professionals (TP) of your kaisha bringing a pillow girlfriend on the fireworks yacht trip or other business socials. I have yet to see a pillow-lover and his beloved in a public space, but I think we cover different territories.
Personally, I’m fine with strange behavior as long as it isn’t hurting anyone. “Whatever makes you happy” as people say.
goody, you are more non-judgmental than me. that photo of the 2D lover and the incest fantasy are a bit over-the-top for me.
Unfortunately I have not come across any but it’s hardly surprising. The article makes it seem like these men go everywere in public with their pillow-mistresses but I suspect it’s mostly confined to Akiba or other places where such behaviour is more accepted.
Actually, after viewing this guy’s image, I feel fortunate not seeing him or his fellow pillow-lovers on Tokyo Metro or in my usual haunts.
I don’t even know where to begin with this one.
Oh yeah, the promise of a bombardment of hot Japanese/Filipino men. That’s ALWAYS a good place to start. 😉
T.T I’m not gonna lie, deep down inside I feel some sort of affection for the hopelessly-geeky, as if we’re all in it together.
The 10-year-old incest hentai is a bit much, I agree. But if anyone tried to remove my Kamanashi Kazuya metro pass sticker, I would behave in ways only people fighting bears should behave, so I kinda feel for him.
Looking at him though, some of that empathy disappears. (That must be the shallowness in me).
That Nisan guy is. . .really freaking me out. I can understand how the romantic / sexual despair many men undoubtedly feel would lead them to focus ONLY on fantasy females.
But if they’re gonna do that, don’t you think they could at least be a little more DISCREET about it?
These girls are figments of someone’s imagination, I highly doubt they’re gonna blow a gasket if their boyfriends fail to lug their image around on a giant pillow in public to a night club or a social gathering.
The phenomenon of men falling in love with non-existent females is nothing new. It’s as old as the story of Pygmallion of Greek mythology. But at least Pygmallion had the common sense not to introduce his friends to Galatea (the statue he created) as his beloved.
This guy is just. . .this guy has lost it completely.