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Chocolates and Valentine’s Day in Japan and Korea

In cultures that observe Valentine’s Day, it is usually the men who are under a lot of pressure to make a dinner reservation and buy a gift for their wife or girlfriend. In Japan and Korea, however, it is customary for the women to give gifts to men on Valentine’s Day instead. Typically, the gifts are boxes of chocolate, which most women purchase for all of the men in their lives: their bosses, male co-workers, male friends and family members. These are called “giri choco,” or “obligatory chocolates.” It is not unusual for a woman to buy 20 or 30 boxes of chocolate for this occasion. In fact, more than half the chocolate sold in Japan is purchased around February 14th!

Japanese women also buy “honmei choco” for their special someone – typically a larger, more expensive box of chocolates, or another gift, such as a necktie or cufflinks. And recently, women have started giving “tomo choco” (friend chocolates) to their girl friends.

But Japanese men don’t escape completely. Thanks to marketing efforts by department stores and chocolate manufacturers, March 14th has been established as “White Day” – the day when men are expected to return the obligation by giving a box of chocolate, candy or flowers–often priced slightly than the boxes that they had received a month earlier–to the women from whom they had received their Valentine’s Day gifts!

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