No wonder they’re going extinct

This is one of those issues that I will refrain from opining on directly, because I like living in a world where different cultures have different attitudes ways of living. Far be it from me to tell the Japanese how to handle their attitudes toward dress and body hair. They can hash it out amongst themselves.

I don’t have experience in Japan, but I think part of this must have to do with a double-standard in their office culture. Like maybe the women are socially required to wear pants or tights, or shave their leg hair. I get the feeling that gender norms in Japan are way more entrenched than in western countries.

I think this article is a quite overblown. I don't think this is causing as many problems as the article implies. It's basically just quoting a few opinions from social media. And women may find my hairy legs unattractive, but so what. You're in the office to work. And wearing a suit in 40c temps is just silly.

Women have long been shaving their legs, and I think a lot of men would also say it's unattractive if women wore shorts with hairy legs. So before men get too outraged, it's worth acknowledging the double standard here.

And recently a lot of young men in Japan are shaving their legs. Even as young as elementary school, boys want to have no hair on their legs to emulate their idols in pro soccer, etc. That seems to be the current fashion trend even before the government started encouraging people to wear shorts to work.

This and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome make me feel like Japanese culture has somehow induced a unique kind of coddling within their population. People there seem to build up severely idealized views on many different things, to which the real-world equivalents can never live up; and then they are then either repeatedly disappointed/frustrated/disgusted by reality, or they refuse to engage with the real versions of things altogether, holding out for the impossible ideal.

(And, for however much of this effect is accidental, there are also parts of it which are maintained consciously/intentionally by the population and cultural institutions. Consider, for example, the Japanese public's idealized view of musical-performer "idols" as being "pure" [i.e. never being in romantic relationships.] This isn't just a mistaken idealized assumption that garners disappointment when corrected by reality; it garners actual backlash toward idols violating the assumption, often so widespread and vicious that the performers are effectively forced out of the industry. Which has caused the idols' production companies to effectively require their talent stays single [or at least hides their relationships from the public] — making what was originally a mistaken idealized assumption into a social-norm-enforced truth.)