Eyeball licking. Or, isnt Japan wacky?

[BagOfCrisps 24]

The British press this week are informing me that the new craze 'sweeping Japan' is eyeball licking.

 

Can I presume it's yet another 'isn't Japan crazy' massively exaggerated puff piece?

 

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Warning: don't read this if you're eating, prone to sudden bouts of queasiness or unable to even think about Un Chien Andalou without simultaneously bursting into tears and dry-heaving. Believe me, I'm speaking from experience here.

 

Because this is an article about oculolinctus, an eye-licking fetish that is currently sweeping across the schools of Japan like, well, like a great big dirty bacteria-coated tongue sweeping across a horrific number of adolescent eyeballs.

 

Sometimes known as "worming" – which somehow makes this whole thing worse – oculolinctus is being blamed for a significant rise in Japanese cases of conjunctivitis and eye-chlamydia, which is actually a thing. It's apparently seen as a new second-base; the thing you graduate to when kissing gets boring.

 

The craze is thought to stem from a music video by Japanese emo band Born (there's a chance that the eyeball-licking scene was only included to distract everyone from the fact that the song sounds like it belongs on a menu screen for an EA Sports game about snowboarding from a decade ago, but at this point that's just speculation).

 

Tumblr, inevitably, is filling up with drawings and unnecessarily close-up photographs of the act, and YouTube is no stranger either. One theory about why it has taken off so spectacularly is down to the sheer number of nerve endings in the cornea. The eyeballs are incredibly sensitive because they need to detect grit and other small particles, and the sensation of oculolinctus is supposedly akin to that of toesucking.

 

Unwilling to try it myself – because my tongue isn't long enough, I don't want eye-chlamydia and just writing about this has made me retch uncontrollably – I can't tell you firsthand if that's true. Luckily, one student from the US Virgin Islands with an oculolinctus fetish has explained: "My boyfriend started licking my eyeballs years ago and I just loved it. I'm not with him any more but I still like to ask guys to lick my eyeballs ... it turns me on."

 

However, the dangers of oculolinctus are very real. As well as spreading pink-eye like nobody's business, there's also a risk of corneal scratching, which can lead to ulcers and blindness. Plus, there's a strong chance that you'll have to go to school the next day in an eye patch. At least with lovebites you could just throw on a poloneck jumper and be done with it.

 

Hopefully oculolinctus won't catch on here and will remain one of those peculiarly Japanese fads such as bagelheading (injecting saline into your forehead until it swells out of all proportion, yaeba (undergoing dental surgery to give you crooked teeth) and shippo (wearing a neurologically controlled tail that reveals your moods). Because frankly, if oculolinctus does ever make it to these shores, I'm never going to be able to look at a lychee again.

[hellyer 216]

uggh

 

those wacky japanese

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Never heard of it

[Dunga 1]

Ha! Gold.

[Metabo Oyaji 71]

Never heard of it, but I'm not a teen-ager, so probably wouldn't know anyway.

 

But, what is with super-cutesy writing style? Is that what passes for journalism these days?

Reads like something a first-year university student would have cranked out to amuse his or her friends.

[snowdude 44]

Never heard of it. But then I am way past being a teenager.

 

[Karnidge 2]

Yes, it's more than likely one of those weary "file under Japan is mad" things that pop up quite often.

[Error404 0]

First I have heard of it, not been on the news here in Japan. It must be a cover-up!

[JA2340 16]

It's been in the news here in Oz. I just don't see the attraction (pun intentional!).

[Chriselle 158]

And one thing leads to another.....

 

 

 

[JA2340 16]

Great balls of ...

[Slippery Jim 65]

Aiyi yai yai!

[muikabochi 208]

That looked like yummy hot chocolate before I saw the eyes!

[grungy-gonads 54]

Yes I noticed this on a few of the UK news sites last week. First I have heard of it as well.

They just love their Japan is mad 'stories'.

[Chriselle 158]

Yesterday, out of the blue, I turned to my wife and said I had the overwhelming urge to lick her eye...... All she gave me was the stink eye..

[BagOfCrisps 24]

OK good.

Thought it would be as much.

Cheers.

[mina2 6]

Last night this was on one evening program. Funny thing was, they were basically reporting that overseas media were reporting this - rather than the licking thing itself.

[Chriselle 158]

Have any of you found anyone that knows anything about this? I can't.. but I'm quite old and so are my friends.

[peterson 0]

No-one.

 

And asked a few fairly youngish types too.

[BagOfCrisps 24]

This week's "isn't japan wacky" article!

 

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As many as a million young people in Japan are thought to remain holed up in their homes - sometimes for decades at a time. Why?

 

For Hide, the problems started when he gave up school.

 

"I started to blame myself and my parents also blamed me for not going to school. The pressure started to build up," he says.

 

"Then, gradually, I became afraid to go out and fearful of meeting people. And then I couldn't get out of my house."

 

Gradually, Hide relinquished all communication with friends and eventually, his parents. To avoid seeing them he slept through the day and sat up all night, watching TV.

 

"I had all kinds of negative emotions inside me," he says. "The desire to go outside, anger towards society and my parents, sadness about having this condition, fear about what would happen in the future, and jealousy towards the people who were leading normal lives."

 

Hide had become "withdrawn" or hikikomori.

 

In Japan, hikikomori, a term that's also used to describe the young people who withdraw, is a word that everyone knows.

 

Tamaki Saito was a newly qualified psychiatrist when, in the early 1990s, he was struck by the number of parents who sought his help with children who had quit school and hidden themselves away for months and sometimes years at a time. These young people were often from middle-class families, they were almost always male, and the average age for their withdrawal was 15.

 

It might sound like straightforward teenage laziness. Why not stay in your room while your parents wait on you? But Saito says sufferers are paralysed by profound social fears.

 

"They are tormented in the mind," he says. "They want to go out in the world, they want to make friends or lovers, but they can't."

 

Symptoms vary between patients. For some, violent outbursts alternate with infantile behaviour such as pawing at the mother's body. Other patients might be obsessive, paranoid and depressed.

 

When Saito began his research, social withdrawal was not unknown, but it was treated by doctors as a symptom of other underlying problems rather than a pattern of behaviour requiring special treatment.

 

Since he drew attention to the phenomenon, it is thought the numbers of hikikomori have increased. A conservative estimate of the number of people now affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one million.

 

The average age of hikikomori also seems to have risen over the last two decades. Before it was 21 - now it is 32.

 

So why do they withdraw?

 

The trigger for a boy retreating to his bedroom might be comparatively slight - poor grades or a broken heart, for example - but the withdrawal itself can become a source of trauma. And powerful social forces can conspire to keep him there.

 

One such force is sekentei, a person's reputation in the community and the pressure he or she feels to impress others. The longer hikikomori remain apart from society, the more aware they become of their social failure. They lose whatever self-esteem and confidence they had and the prospect of leaving home becomes ever more terrifying.

 

Parents are also conscious of their social standing and frequently wait for months before seeking professional help.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Japan sure has some wacky people....mostly men, but certainly a lot of weird women too

[Metabo Oyaji 71]

Hikikomori is real, I know someone like that. Very sad situation.

 

Though of course, shut-ins are not unique to Japan.

[grungy-gonads 54]

But they do emerge at times do they, MO?

[Tubby Beaver 209]

So what's the difference between these and agoraphobics?

[cal 6]

They're scared of spiders!