There was a pivotal moment for me in Episode 15 of Boys and Girls In the City: the panel reacts to Uchi and Minori's new relationship by mentioning that they are the fourth couple in the show's history. Yes, that's right: 114 weekly episodes had led to four couples at that point. Doesn't Bachelor in Paradise have like four hook-ups per episode? (I've never seen an episode of Bachelor in Paradise.) Is there any wonder that Japan has the third lowest birth rate in the world? One of the theses implicitly supported by the show is that courtship should be easier and more casual in Japanese culture, and part of that support is seen in the framing and reaction to Uchi's and Taishi's strategy "of ask them all out".
There are a lot of patriarchal rules around dating in this show (and, presumably, current Japanese culture in general), and many of those rules are similar to the rules in the West not too long ago. Terrace House, in this respect, sometimes feels a bit like a dire dating etiquette educational film from the Forties or Fifties in the US. Only guys can initiate dates. Women are encouraged to reveal any interest indirectly through food. Men are expected to act swiftly and decisively when they've identified the sole woman who has sparked their interest by asking the object of their affection out on successively more romantic dates. Women must demure, at least initially, even if they are interested. Feelings must only be intimated at rather than spoken from both sides. I'm sure those of you with higher EQs than I can add deeper rules to the list where successive layers of potential hurt are anticipated and protected.
It's no wonder that Tokui's reaction to B&GND was to host a softcore parody of Terrace House called Pero Pero House ("Happy House") as part of an ongoing series of comedy specials for an Adult satellite channel. The joke. from what I can tell, of the first one, for instance, is that one of the girls gives head one at a time to all of the guys while in an adjacent room the remaining housemates are doing the usual "What's your type?" initial maneuvering.
And so it is interesting when Uchi declares his week, and Taishi declares that he is going to keep trying to find his "love worth dying for" even when he is mocked as a guilty samurai and later dressed down by Cheri for not being clear to all the girls he's asked out. They are breaking some of the rules of social etiquette and doing seems to facilitate the process more directly even if it's a bit self serving. To their credit, they both seem interested in tailoring the dates to the individual women.
The larger issue that all these kerfuffles hide is the almost complete lack of agency (at least, in terms of their romantic life) that is granted to the women on the show. The women do occasionally ask out the men on the show, but it's much rarer. Minori's writing "coward" is probably the strongest act of self-determination in these matters that we see on the show until Cheri pops in from an American reality show and asks out Eric directly (which I found refreshing).
There is also an apparently patriarchal bias in the casting of the romantically unavailable housemates. It's hard to argue a trend from four instances, but, thus far, the two unavailable males I've seen (Shoto in B&GND and Hansan in B&GITC) have girlfriends and the two unavailable females (Rie in B&GND and Riko in B&GITC) have jobs which contractually preclude them from forming a sexual relationship. There's no real equivalent for men in Japanese culture as far as I know (Maybe a Buddhist priest? Are there hot young Zen masters?), but why not cast a young woman with a current boyfriend?
Terrace House as a franchise seems to support the idea that dating should be easier in Japanese culture. Certainly, doing so publicly on a television show that can be watched by your fellow housemates must only make dating more difficult. While I liked Aloha State, I'm fairly sure that a physical move to the West and towards more Western Reality TV tropes is not the right solution for this show. What we really need is a female version of Uchi and Taishi in the next cast: a Wonder Woman to Uchi and Taishi's Batman and Superman. (Or is that what Seina became? Those of us waiting for the fansubs will see eventually, I suppose.)
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