義理チョコ文化の終焉か？　　　　　　気ままなリライト６３

いまどきバレンタイン事情｜市場調査ならインテージ

The custom of giving chocolate as a courtesy gift on Valentine’s Day is increasingly viewed with skepticism by many female employees in corporate settings. They are questioning what this tradition sugarcoates, wary of the real intentions hidden beneath the distribution of this sweet taste. The obligation to offer chocolate as a social lubricant isn't sitting well with them. Rather than a sincere expression of appreciation, this ritual is often feeling hollow and perfunctory, especially when the recipients are extending beyond those the giver genuinely wants to appreciate.

The traditional gift-giving custom adapted to Western tastes on Valentine's Day has inadvertently contributed to a global discourtesy, particularly evident in Japan’s workplace culture where giving chocolate as a courtesy is commonplace. The perfunctory ritual is masking a deeper global issue, the exploitation of underprivileged children in the cacao fields of impoverished regions like Ghana. In those poverty-stricken areas, cacao beans have been sourced from such unethical practices to produce chocolates, whose flavor belies the bitter reality of children forced to work as slaves. Japanese chocolate makers have turned the fruit of slave labor into sweets for the privileged, embodying the capitalist ethos.

An unwillingness to conform to what female company employees are asked to do as the blind followers of the chocolate-giving custom may have something to do with the fraudulent smell of courtesy chocolate their instincts are telling themselves about. According to a January 2023 internet survey of approximately 2,600 people aged 15 to 79, nearly 80% of the female respondents, all working as company employees, expressed their dissatisfaction with this custom. No respondent said in words about the ethical dilemma for chocolate consumers, who, often unknowingly, support those exploitative practices. By taking a stand against workplace customs, those women unconsciously may extend their empathy for the underprivileged children to advocate against such global injustices. The image of Ghanan children abused as workers on the margin may motivate them to reduce the moral obligation they owe to those children who don’t know about what is made of cacao beans and what chocolate tastes like.

In the interconnected global economy, it is hard to stay away from buying or consuming the products with slavery footprint marked in the supply chain as reputable brands are no exceptions. Considering the chocolate-giving custom as courtesy gifts from the perspective of cacao-pickers, the abolition of the custom would make cacao-picking Ghanan children unhappy as the demand for cacao beans from Japan is supporting their financial foundation to make them survive through Japanese customers’ influence on slavery. The image of children climbing on 10 meters tall cacao trees to pluck the fruit all day long without going to school is just one of the scenes of slavery. More and more people are being enslaved in sweatshops, in the fields of coffee or cotton, in the mines for raw material processing, where part of the stuff the privileged couldn’t bear the thought of doing without is coming from. For more than 60 % of the male respondents said that the chocolate-giving custom brought them no joy, the custom of receiving a gift not tinged with romantic flavor but tainted with a guilty feeling may be nothing but a pain in the neck. More than half of the respondents in their twenties said that the custom put them in euphoric moods with the surprising experience of tasting various chocolate brands. Even if they understand their inevitable touch on slavery in everyday life, they will forget about it under the influence of dopamine released by the sugar intake in the same way as the brain reacts to heroin and cocaine.